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True enough. But at the same time, Hanoi bureaucrats appear to be lining their pockets by selling Vietnamese natural gas rights to the Chinese.

Latest Gulf of Tonkin Incident Reveals China's Imperialist Designs

Commentary, Thi Q. Lam,
Pacific News Service, Feb 14, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO--Vietnamese communities in the United States, Europe and Australia are protesting the Jan. 8 killing of Vietnamese fishermen by the Chinese navy. On that day, navy ships from the People's Republic of China shot and killed nine Vietnamese fishermen and injured seven others in the Vinh Bac Bo (Gulf of Tonkin). Eight fishermen were kidnapped.

[snip]

The 2000 Vinh Bac Bo Pact [with China] includes only a vaguely worded clause stipulating that "when gas is confirmed, the two sides will explore it together." Nguyen Dinh Sai, an engineer who has done extensive research on the Vinh Bac Bo, has written about a secret agreement between Vietnam and China that spells out in detail how the proceeds from gas production would be distributed between the two parties. From this we can infer that some kind of understanding between the two countries regarding the allocation of the proceeds from gas production must have been reached before the exploration operations can begin.

If true, the fishing rights issue may be only a cover, and the Jan. 8 massacre may be part of a well-concocted scheme to terrorize Vietnamese fishermen and to discourage them from venturing into Chinese gas exploration areas.

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=48b8f8c6203529cbd50b4ca149abeac4

Those are The Old Men that I even heard lesser fonctionaires speak of as the ones who all are waiting to pass away. Communism in Viet Nam resembles now the Mafiaism of New York and Chicago more than it does Marxism or Leninism. Beneath the level of the Old men who survive from The War the communists want to retain the system only to the extent that it provides them sinecures. They want to Americanize just so far as they do not lose their jobs. They will lose their jobs.

The Vietnamese are not Chinese. They do not revere the Center, they see no Mandate of Heaven. The bosses cannot get away long with allowing them economic freedoms without the whole kit. The Veecee (the universal Vietnamese term for the government people) think to emulate China in allowing the freedom to get rich and withholding the liberties that threaten their positions but, again, they Vietnamese are not Chinese. Things Communist will fall apart.