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.
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