Vietnam hopes China would show restraint in the South China Sea in 2020 after a Chinese oil survey vessel and its escorts spent months within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in what Hanoi called a blatant violation of its sovereignty.
Vietnam, the region’s most forceful challenger of China’s extensive maritime claims to be the busy waterway, will take on the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2020.
The Vietnamese minister said it wasn’t that other ASEAN countries supported China’s actions, but that they did not protest in the same way. More than $3 trillion a year in trade pass through the waterway, which also has oil and gas reserves and historic fishing grounds for the surrounding countries.
source: Reuters
