Anti-Chinese Violence Turns Deadly and Spreads in Vietnam

International New York Times | 15 May 2014

Firefighters rested on Wednesday near a Chinese-owned shoe factory that was set afire in the Binh Duong Province of Vietnam. Credit Thanh Tung Truong/Reuters

BINH DUONG PROVINCE, Vietnam — Violence against foreign-owned factories spread elsewhere in Vietnam and took a deadly turn, with officials saying Thursday that one Chinese worker had been killed and scores more injured when hundreds of protesting Vietnamese went on a rampage in a factory in the central part of the country.

The explosion of violence — initially centered outside the southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City — reflected growing animosity in the region as China works to solidify its claims over vast parts of two seas that other nations have long considered their own.

In Ha Tinh Province, in the northern part of central Vietnam, hundreds of protesting Vietnamese workers entered the Formosa Plastics Group steel plant on Wednesday afternoon, attacking Chinese nationals contracted to work there, the Taiwan-based company said Thursday. One Chinese worker was killed and 90 were injured in the violence, according to the company.

The protesters set fires and smashed and looted equipment, the company said, adding that it had asked the local authorities to beef up security as soon as the assault began and that the government sent vehicles to evacuate Chinese workers, who were removed by about midnight. The head of the Ha Tinh provincial government visited the factory around 10 p.m. Wednesday and met with security officials to try to restore order, Formosa Plastics said, but the rioting continued until early Thursday.

The spasm of violence afflicting the country was ignited by anger over China’s decision to deploy an oil rig escorted by a flotilla of coast guard and other ships off the Vietnamese coast despite promises to settle territorial disputes by diplomacy.

The plants that were the target of the protests, part of an influx of international investment in recent years, have contributed to more than two decades of uneven, but at times rapid, economic growth in Vietnam, with some of the tensions rooted in anger at an influx of Chinese workers.

While the initial violence was tied to Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea, the protesters focused some of their rage at workers from Taiwan, prompting China Airlines to send two charter flights Thursday to Ho Chi Minh City to handle a surge of people from Taiwan who wanted to leave the country. Along with two regularly scheduled flights, the airline it would be able to transport 1,325 passengers Thursday, it said in a statement. There were also reports of hundreds of mainland Chinese fleeing across the Cambodian border to Phnom Penh.

Speaking to a legislative panel Thursday, Taiwan’s minister of foreign affairs, David Lin, said Taiwan was taking steps to ensure that all its citizens who wanted to leave Vietnam could do so. He added that Taiwan would definitely seek compensation for damage to its business interests in Vietnam.

As the violence spread elsewhere in Vietnam, factory managers in Binh Duong Province, an industrial area north of Ho Chi Minh City, surveyed the damage from previous days’ rioting and complained that the police response had been listless or nonexistent.

“I called the police, called and called,” said Pang Chi Wa, a Hong Kong man who works as a manager at HWA Jong Group, a garment maker based in Taiwan with a factory in Binh Duong. He said that the crowds of protesters had circled the streets around the factory several times before deciding to attack and that during that time, his pleas for police help went unanswered.

Demonstrators waved Vietnamese flags during a protest at a Chinese-owned factory in Vietnam's northern Thai Binh Province on Wednesday. Credit Reuters

“Maybe it was deliberate, maybe it was too much for them to deal with, but now they seem to regret it,” Mr. Pang said of the police response. He said he and other staff members had tried to reason with the protesters but then hid from them as they pushed into the factory premises and began looting.

The front office of his factory was a mess of shattered glass, toppled potted plants and records strewn on the floor. He and other people who witnessed the mayhem said the crowds often shouted patriotic slogans and denounced China, but then the political message gave way to looting and untargeted attacks on factories.

“I don’t even know where this came from. We’ve never seen this here before,” said Mr. Pang, who said he had worked in Vietnam for a decade. “It seemed to start as something against China, but then that became an excuse.”

The riots come as China has been pushing on several fronts to assert its territorial claims against several nations in the region. Vietnam is heavily dependent on China for trade and investment, but officials have also been willing to whip up anti-Chinese passions through the state-controlled media when it serves the government’s purpose.

Peng Zhi-ming, a manager at another Taiwan-owned factory in the Binh Duong industrial suburbs, said he thought he recognized several former employees in the crowd that invaded and trashed the factory, which employs about 70 workers. Mr. Peng said the crowd grew as people appeared to sense they could act with impunity.

“They came around again and again,” he said. “We called the police, but nobody came. I don’t know why they didn’t come, but the fact is they didn’t.” He said the looting of his offices died out only because the crowd moved on to fresh targets.

Another Taiwan factory owner, who requested anonymity citing fears of recrimination, said he and other investors had little choice but to repair and rebuild their factories, relying on friendly factory owners elsewhere to fill in orders until production resumed. In many cases, he said, the production equipment was relatively unscathed, while front offices were ransacked.

“Investors will have to think more about Vietnam, but we’re here already and can’t back out,” he said. “We don’t want anything to do with politics, so why did they pick on us?”

A Chinese woman with the Weibo handle M___zi, who works in the timber industry, posted photos of her smashed office on Thursday morning on her Weibo social media account.

“All the computers in the office were taken. The ground is filled with files and fragments, the doors and windows of the dormitories were all smashed. Some parts of the plant that were set on fire have been pretty much burned,” she wrote, calling the mob “frenzied demons.”