The 2018 Vietnam protests, June 10 Events, or Protests against the Special Zone Act and the Cybersecurity Law (), were a series of both violent and nonviolent protests that erupted across Vietnam in June 2018, chiefly in response to two drafted pieces of legislation: the Special Zone Act and the Cybersecurity Law.
The Special Zone Act (also known as the Special Zones Law or the Special Economic Zones Law) proposes the opening of three special economic zones (SEZs) across Vietnam, where foreign investors would be allowed to lease land for up to 99 years. Despite no specific mention of China within the lines of the bill, many Vietnamese feared that the SEZs would be dominated by China, leading to worries about the loss of national sovereignty. On 9 June 2018, the Vietnamese authorities eventually yielded under enormous public pressure and postponed voting on the law indefinitely.
The Cybersecurity Law has been described as “largely a copy-and-paste version” of the Chinese Cybersecurity Law that commenced a year prior. The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the law on 12 June 2018 despite local and international opposition and it has been in effect since 1 January 2019.
Context
Protest culture in Vietnam To mainstream media and many nongovernmental organizations, Vietnam is often perceived as harsh and uncompromising regarding the right to freedom of assembly. Reports from Human Rights Watch and the US State Department depict the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) as extremely illiberal and unforgiving of political dissent of any kind. Freedom House’s report on Vietnam in 2020 scores the country at 1 out of 4 for freedom of assembly, specifically citing the arrests and convictions as a result of the 2018 protests as the reason for its score, and 0 out of 4 for freedom for nongovernmental organizations and trade unions or similar professional organizations. Amnesty International also reports harassment and prosecution of pro-democracy activists, independent journalists, authors, and publishers in its Vietnam 2020 review. According to Human Rights Watch, in April 2018 the chief judge in Hanoi sentenced political activists to 7 to 12 years of imprisonment each under Article 79 of the Criminal Code for political activism.
Scholars and observers of Vietnam, however, have a different outlook. Many agree that the country has actually been exercising a responsive-repressive strategy since the 1990s, taking certain measures to show its responsiveness and tolerance to criticism from its citizens and exercising repression only as a last resort. Political scientist and Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University Ben Kerkvliet found that Vietnamese citizens “frequently and publicly” spoke out in criticism of their living and working conditions, most often through thousands of strikes, occasionally with thousands of participants each. His 2019 book Speaking Out in Vietnam: public political criticism in a communist party-ruled nation showed that at least since 1990, public political criticism has evolved into a prominent feature of Vietnam's political landscape. In the book, he also showed how government officials were in reality often sympathetic to workers’ demands, accommodating to concerns with land confiscation, and even to some extent tolerating calls for democratization that threatened the ideology of the regime.
Past anti-China protests in Vietnam
Although public demonstrations are not common in Vietnam, anti-China protests has occurred on numerous occasions and are met with a balance of responsiveness and repression by the state, albeit with extra caution given the addition of an external party – China, no less – into the state-society relationship in Vietnam.
Among the Vietnamese populace, anti-China sentiments act as a converging space for their dissatisfaction with a variety of social issues in the country such as unfavorable labour conditions, environmental pollution, socio-economic development, and foreign policy. Placing China as a ‘common enemy’ thereby acts as a linkage between these social groups with mutual encouragement and reinforcement of these sentiments. Post–Cold War, and especially since 2010, the sharpest crises and ensuing anti-China protests in Vietnam have involved public outrage over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
In May 2011, for instance, a Chinese maritime vessel cut the cables of a Vietnamese ship conducting research operating in Vietnamese waters in the South China Sea, and hundreds in Vietnam took to the streets for over three months in sustained protest. Demonstrators in Hanoi sang patriotic songs, chanted slogans, and carried banners and flags, including a Chinese flag digitally altered to include a pirate’s skull and crossbones. Public anger flared up even more intensely in 2014, when China deployed Haiyang Shiyou 981, a giant oil rig in an area of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam. This incident triggered large-scale anti-China demonstrations with thousands of participants that quickly turned violent. Protesters set fire to industrial parks and factories, hunted down and sparred with Chinese workers, and attacked police during the confrontations, leaving at least 21 people dead and nearly 100 injured.
Such territorial disputes are particularly affective because they are viewed as challenges and violations of Vietnam’s sovereignty, an especially sore subject when it comes to China given the history of border clashes between the two countries until 1991, such as the two-month bloody Sino-Vietnamese border war not four decades prior in 1979. An op-ed in the Vietnam News sums up the ground sentiments for anti-China protests in a message of solidarity: "The Vietnamese people are angry. The nation is angry. We are telling the world that we are angry. We have every right to be angry. […] The message from all these demonstrations is simple and straightforward: China should stop violating international law and respect Viet Nam's sovereignty. […] We are a small country, but we are not weak. We will stand as one, united in the cause of protecting our motherland's integrity."
Vietnamese state response When it comes to the Vietnam government’s response, observers note that authorities have generally allowed such anti-China protests, only clamping down on protesters in the presence of violence. Appearing compliant to China could harm the political careers of the Vietnamese politicians as being seen as anti-nationalistic and weaken legitimacy. Additionally, scholars have noted that the international coverage and sympathy due to such protests may be used to communicate the extent of outrage in Vietnam and legitimize the country’s pleas for international support. In both the 2011 and 2014 instances, authorities clearly tolerated the demonstrations in the beginning, allowing protesters to march the streets and stopping or redirecting traffic several times to let them cross streets throughout the march. The government further took steps to mollify public anger and show support for the protesters by echoing their sentiments in harsh rhetoric and strongly-worded official statements against China using words such as ‘brazen’ and ‘illegal’.
However, Hanoi walks a very thin line to maintain their careful hedging strategy in relations with China. Given the clear differences in size, capacity, and military power and force, antagonizing China and pushing the issue too far could seriously impact bilateral relations and threaten the existing asymmetrical relationship that has been carefully negotiated throughout the centuries of history. Vietnam’s population size is 7% of China’s; its Gross National Product 3% of China’s; its military budget less than 1% of China’s. Vietnam’s total trade with China was 20% of its total trade in 2015, and a quarter of tourists to Vietnam in 2013 were from China. Vietnam is also partially dependent on China for ideological and economic support, with China being Vietnam’s biggest guide and protector in Marxism-Leninism and market socialism. With all of this in mind, both the 2011 and 2014 protests were eventually met with curtailment and suppression, as the authorities ordered a crackdown after deeming the invisible line to be crossed. In 2011, the Hanoi city government issued an order to end the protests that were “undermining national unity” and “complicating diplomatic efforts”, warning demonstrators that authorities would “take necessary measures” against those who disobeyed, and following up on the threat when marches continued.
The relationship between the two countries is not totally skewed, however – both sides are bound by the 16 Word Guideline, a statement announced by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 as a guide for Sino-Vietnamese relations in the future. Specifically, it stipulated that both countries commit to “long-term, stable, future-oriented, good neighborly and all-round cooperative relations”. A study analyzing major diplomatic events from the 1990s to 2018 between the two countries showcase how this official term has been brought up at every single summit meeting since its conception, reminding both sides of their commitment to maintaining bilateral relations. The author thus provides an alternate view to the traditional approach of power politics that emphasize asymmetry between China and Vietnam, instead arguing that the 16 Word Guideline has led to a powerful coercive rhetoric that exerts strong influences on both sides to avoid domestic instability and military conflict.
Regarding the South China Sea in particular, Vietnam pursues a strategy of ‘cooperation and struggle’ with China – for instance, engaging in a defence self-help programme at home with deliveries of kilo-class submarines while engaging major powers including the United States, Russia, India, and Japan to maintain the power balance in the Sea. While the anti-China protests did not change Vietnam’s foreign policy towards China both during the disputes or in the long-term, the pressure was successfully manipulated for Vietnam’s benefit, with the United States acceding the sale of equipment and weapons for maritime defense purposes, India extending a $100 million credit line for defense procurement, and Japan providing six maritime vessels and training to Vietnam’s coast guard (and with improved relations) during the crises.
All in all, within this trio – the Vietnamese people, the Vietnamese government, and the Chinese government – it is all about preserving a delicate balance between appeasing protests and approving of nationalism while maintaining the negotiated asymmetry and avoiding harm to bilateral relations. A study based on an analysis of 570 Vietnamese newspaper articles shows how the Vietnamese government was truly balanced in its response to anti-China protests, extensively publicizing the conflict to show opposition to Chinese aggression but also channeling the anger towards China into a “more positive and constructive form of pro-government nationalism”. Scholars ultimately agree on the general approach taken by Vietnam to such anti-China criticism and rallies: that demonstrators were allowed and sometimes even encouraged to protest, with broad media coverage of the demonstrations and issuances of official statements in a sympathetic nature towards protesters that condemned Chinese actions. This permissive stance would continue until events escalated and turned violent, where there would then be a heavy-handed, definitive crackdown often involving arrests and brute force.
Background