~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2002]

Jiang to visit Vietnam amid mounting sensitivity over relations

Chinese President Jiang Zemin is to visit Hanoi next week amid mounting controversy in Vietnam about relations with its giant neighbour and communist ideological soulmate. Jiang will make an "official friendship visit" from February 27 to March 1, foreign ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said in a statement Wednesday. There was no immediate announcement from Beijing.

But Vietnamese officials said the Chinese president and communist party chief would hold talks with all of Vietnam's top leadership in the capital before visiting the central cities of Danang and Hue. It will only be Jiang's second visit here since the communist neighbours normalised relations in 1991 after their brief but bloody 1979 border war. A 1994 visit crowned the rapprochement between the former foes thrashed out in secret visits to Beijing in 1990. But his new trip comes amid mounting criticism within Vietnam of the territorial cost of the thaw in relations.

In recent months, dissidents have orchestrated a vocal campaign against the twin agreements the communist authorities signed with China in 1999 and 2000 demarcating their common border on land and in the Gulf of Tonkin. Journalist Bui Minh Quoc was placed under house arrest in January after making a two-month tour of the border region in a bid to expose the concessions made under the accords, which have never been published. The neighbours only began installing new border posts in December, giving the first concrete indication of the changed frontier.

Diplomats say the issue remains highly sensitive for Vietnamese authorities as the agreements angered nationalist hardliners within the armed forces as well as government critics. "Dissatisfaction over the concessions made in the agreements was one pretext advanced for the ouster of communist party chief Le Kha Phieu last April," an Asian diplomat told AFP.

Analysts said they did not expect any new pacts to be signed during Jiang's visit. The neighbours remain at odds over a fisheries deal required to implement the Tonkin Gulf border agreement signed in December 2000, diplomats said. At Beijing's insistence, Hanoi agreed to the establishment of a common fisheries zone for 15 years giving Chinese vessels access to disputed Gulf waters to be retained by Vietnam.

But the two governments have yet to agree on the size or number of Chinese vessels that will be admitted amid reluctance by Hanoi to be seen to be making further concessions, the Asian diplomat said. Attention is likely to focus instead on the amount of aid which China is prepared to grant its poor communist neighbour. Hanoi has been seeking soft loans from Beijing to help finance several key infrastructure projects, including the controversial Son La hydroelectric scheme, which it has been unable to finance from Western sources, diplomats said. Vietnam's importance to Beijing has fallen massively since the close of the Cold War brought an end to the superpower involvement here of first Washington and then Moscow.

Diplomats put the lack of public reaction from Beijing down to a desire not to mar the run-up to US President George W. Bush's long awaited first visit there later this week. But analysts say that in China's eyes Vietnam's historical rivalry with its giant neighbour still makes it a potential ally for any future opponent to Beijing. Beijing will be particularly keen to clarify Hanoi's plans for a key Russian naval base on Vietnam's central coast after Moscow gives up its lease in 2004, analysts said.

Washington announced earlier this month that it had begun negotiations with Hanoi for access to the Cam Ranh Bay base after the Russian lease expires. The base, which was originally built by the Americans before being lost to Russia after the US humiliation in the Vietnam War, has long been a source of concern to China.

Agence France Presse - February 20, 2002.