Vietnam Seeks to Silence its China Critics 

Bloggers and online journalists beware. Big Brother is watching

AsiaSentinel.com – 21 Sept, 2009

For vocal critics of the Chinese government, there's only one place where it's more dangerous to speak out than in mother China and that's Vietnam.

Although many Vietnamese remain highly suspicious of China, which ruled Vietnam for 1,000 years and launched a short but bloody border war against it in 1979, the Communist government has become increasingly nervous about criticism of its northern neighbor. The rationale for this crackdown is not communist solidarity or a new drive to stamp out xenophobia but cold, hard cash.

The global financial crisis has left Vietnam more dependent than ever on investment from China, its biggest trading partner. With the Chinese hyper-sensitive to any criticism, the Vietnamese government, which already ranks toward the bottom of most press freedom league tables, has intensified its crackdown on those who question the nature of China-Vietnam relations.

In the latest sweep by Vietnam's media police, two bloggers and an online journalist were arrested and detained for several days under suspicion of "abusing democratic freedoms" to undermine the state. Blogger Bui Thanh Hieu, who used the pen name "Nguoi Buon Gio" or "Wind Trader", journalist Pham Doan Trang, who works for popular news website VietnamNet and Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who blogged as "Me Nam" or "Mother Mushroom", had all written critically about Vietnam-China relations on the internet.

They were detained after police got wind of a small-scale plan to print tee-shirts bearing slogans that called for an end to controversial Chinese investment in a massive new bauxite mining project in the Central Highlands and rejected Chinese claims to sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Although the trio were eventually released earlier this month, their computers and other personal effects were seized and Quynh, who was detained for 10 days, said she was only let out after pledging to cease writing her blog.

These were just the latest in a continuing crackdown on those who have railed against the government's increasingly close relationship with China. A number of other journalists and writers were arrested or lost their jobs after openly criticizing China earlier this year.

The global financial crisis has forced many international companies to rethink their investments in riskier, emerging markets such as Vietnam – foreign direct investment fell by 82 percent to just US$10.4bn in the first eight months of the year, according to government figures. Vietnam's cash-strapped government has also found it hard to issue new bonds, with market yields above the level that the country can afford.

As a result, the Southeast Asian nation has become increasingly reliant on China. Vietnam runs a large trade deficit with its former conqueror and has been pushing China to increase investment in order to rebalance this relationship.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung traveled to China in April on a major trade mission, where he met Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and promised to make it easier for Chinese companies to do business in Vietnam.

This cozying-up to China has not gone down well with Vietnam's army of online patriots. But although distrust of China has a long history in Vietnam, bloggers and other commentators in Vietnam insist that the growing sense of unease at China's creeping involvement in their country is about much more than mere xenophobia.

Many fear that Vietnam has little to gain and much to lose from openings its doors to Chinese investment. They also worry that their government's reliance on Chinese money will lead to a softening of Vietnam's territorial claims to the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, which are believed to be surrounded by extensive oil and gas reserves.

Concerns have coalesced around the involvement of Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese mining group, in a large bauxite extraction project in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Critics ranging from monks to scientists and even war-hero General Vo Nguyen Giap have spoken out against the plan because of fears over national security and the poor environmental record of Chinese mining companies.

After Giap, who masterminded the defeat of the French and Americans in two successive wars, voiced his concerns publicly earlier this year, the government seemed to allow an unprecedented level of debate about such an important policy, even letting skeptical scientists hold a conference to discuss the mining project.

However, this "Hanoi spring" was sadly, if predictably, short-lived. The government may not have been in a position to silence 98-year-old Giap but it soon made it clear that it was not willing to countenance criticism of its key business partner from lowly bloggers or journalists.

The suppression of anti-Chinese voices has been part of a wider crackdown on dissent ahead of the all-important party congress in 2011, when Vietnam's top three political posts are likely to be reshuffled.

The government brought in new restrictions in December that make it illegal for bloggers to cover political issues or write under pseudonyms. The police have also arrested other perceived threats to national security such as Nguyen Xuan Nghia, a writer and pro-democracy campaigner, and Le Cong Dinh, a prominent human rights lawyer.

While the Vietnamese government maintains a tight grip over the more than 700 newspapers and magazines that are available on the newsstands of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, it has found it much more difficult to control the internet.

With some 21 million internet users and anywhere between one and four million blogs to police, Vietnam does not have the resources or technology to take the Chinese approach to internet censorship, rolling out extensive firewalls that block unsavory websites.

Instead, the media police prefer to take the kind of approach practiced by Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, shaking down popular bloggers in the hope that it will have a chilling effect, making others afraid to discuss even vaguely controversial issues.

International press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters without Borders have condemned the latest arrests and warned that the increasing clampdown on free speech will harm the fight against corruption in Vietnam. But the government has dismissed these censures, with a foreign ministry spokesman insisting that the arrests were "consistent with the Vietnamese laws" and arguing that "some organizations and individuals have intentionally exaggerated and distorted this issue with ill intention."

Some dissidents believe that China effectively bought off the Vietnamese government by advancing them a secret $50bn bailout package during the height of the financial crisis when, they claim, Vietnam was on the brink of fiscal collapse.

There is no evidence for such conspiracy theories but, with Vietnam forced to turn to the Asian Development Bank this week for a $500m loan to supplement its unhealthy-looking budget, it is clear that the government is in no position to spurn China's advances.

 

 

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