Is Beijing escalating South China Sea territorial claims with areas claimed by Vietnam in the same way as with the Philippines, except that Hanoi chooses to keep the incidents off the international radar? At the beginning of July, China appeared to be holding a rare twin carrier exercise in the South China Sea with the Shandong aircraft carrier and at least eight warships, according to satellite imagery. They were also spotted about 50 miles northeast of Woody Island in the Paracels, an archipelago previously held in part by Vietnam until China seized all in a naval battle in 1974. Taiwan also claims the territory. China’s “monster” coast guard ship has several times this year patrolled Vietnam’s oil fields in the Spratlys, most recently in June. And in March, Beijing redrew its coastal baseline in the Gulf of Tonkin between Vietnam and China, a move that breaks with an agreement reached by Hanoi and Beijing in 2000. How is Vietnam handling these moves by China and will it take a stronger stance toward its more powerful neighbor? We also take a look at cooperation between Vietnam and the Philippines and whether the two South China Sea claimants can stand together against Beijing’s increasingly assertive behavior. Our guests: Alexander Huang- Chair, Council on Strategic & Wargaming Studies- Kuomintang (KMT) international affairs director and representative to the U.S.
