Border Treaty

Those of us who were able to read the border treaty between Vietnam and China uniformly experienced dismay at the format it was done, leaving the content aside. The document looked like a xeroxed copy with blurred characters. The fonts were horrible. The document looked like a draft and yet it was presented as a final agreement, the date 30 of December 30, 1999 was handwritten, and most importantly as far as the Vietnamese people are concerned, the identity of the Vietnamese official was glossed over by a scribble in the signature area. The official didn't sign it legibly. He just scribbled some short ineligible name. There was no typewritten disclosure of his full name. His Chinese counterpart, au contraire, signed his name fully in Chinese. The document specifically spelled out on the very first page that the treaty took effect as of July 6, 2000.

There are several contemporary issues which are emotional to all concerned Vietnamese.They all concern China: the sovereignty of the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands, the border with China, the 50-year lease of hundreds of thousands of acres to the Chinese, the presence of 100,000 Chinese workers on Viet soil, the construction of dams (4 already finished and opertional and at least 4 more are forthcoming) in the upper reaches of the Mekong River affecting adversely the Mekong Delta, and the selling of Viet women to Chinese.

All Vietnamese must realize that Vietnam does not belong to the Viet communists. It belongs to all of us. The VC government has no political legitimacy per se. It is not truly elected by the people. It cannot sell our land to our historical enemy so the leaders of the VCP can get obscenely rich. The people must take the matter into their own hands and defend themselves, otherwise they will be the ones who will suffer the most once China completely rules Vietnam. They have to ask themselves if they want to live in subjugation, torture, impending assimilation, and threats of death as the Tibetans and Uighurs are now living, or they want to live in freedom and be masters of their own land, the land their forefathers shed blood and tears in order to bequeath to them. They must realize China has harbored an ambition to digest Vietnam once and for all, so it can expand into Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. Of the countries (Vietnam, Korea, and Japan) which were influenced by Chinese culture, Vietnam is regarded the most sinicized and the most vulnerable. Korea and Japan were never ruled for one thousand years by China as Vietnam was. Korea and Japan don't have strategic location as Vietnam does. I laughed my head off when some ignoramus tried to analyze current political situation in light of history when he didn't have the full grasp of historical facts and intellectual acumen. In addition, he didn't see the severity of the existential crisis that Vietnam is facing.

This border issue is serious and merits attention from all Vietnamese. They all need to get involved.