3 scenarios for spat over Chinese oil rig in Vietnam’s waters Lieutenant General Pham Van Dy, Political Commissar of the High Command of Military Zone 7. Tuoi Tre China may respond in three scenarios to Vietnam’s protest against its oil rig illegally placed in Vietnamese waters since early this month, a senior military official warned in a program aired on the Voice of Ho Chi Minh City radio station on Saturday.   Lieutenant General Pham Van Dy, Political Commissar of the High Command of Military Zone 7, said that China used force to occupy Vietnam’s islands for five times in the past and the unlawful deployment of the Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling rig to Vietnamese waters in the East Vietnam Sea on May 1 is the sixth time China has resorted to force to violate the Southeast Asian country’s sovereignty since 1946. Since being dispatched to Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, the rig has been relocated twice – on May 27 and June 1 – and it is now located at 15°33'22'' North latitude and 111°34'23'' East longitude, still in the Vietnamese waters. China has also deployed a large number of vessels including warships to the area to guard the platform, with the support of military planes. Vietnam has issued two diplomatic notes to China, protesting the stationing of the rig, emphasizing that China has seriously infringed upon Vietnam’s sovereign right and jurisdiction over its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, and demanding that Beijing remove the rig from the sea area immediately. By planting the rig, China has also acted against the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Vietnam Sea (DOC). However, China has maintained the platform there, causing increasing tension in the area, despite Vietnam’s restraint and peaceful measures to settle the issue, Lieutenant General Dy said. China will take action in relation to the rig, depending on how Vietnam and the international community will respond to its wrongful acts in the coming time, the general said. Dy forecast that China will act in one of the three following scenarios: In the first scenario, China will remove the rig from Vietnam’s waters. If this happens, it will be a great blessing for both Vietnam and China. This scenario will unfold if China sees reason and listen to reason, Dy said. “In the second scenario, China will maintain the tension while waiting for us to make mistakes and fall into their ‘trap’ that provokes a military conflict between the two sides. If we open fire first, this will be a chance and reason for China to launch dangerous military acts in the East Vietnam Sea,” the official said. “Therefore, we need to keep calm and should be clever enough to avoid that ‘trap,’” he added. “In the third scenario, the worst one, China, for whatever reasons, will continue escalating tensions and Vietnam has to increase levels of responses. In the event that the situation becomes tenser and China use weapons to settle the dispute, then Vietnam will have to do the same, as every nation has its sacred right to self defense,” Lieutenant General Dy said. “However, we hope that the first scenario will happen, and we are taking peaceful measures to ease the tension. This scenario benefits not only Vietnam but also China,” he added. Six Chinese invasions since 1946 China has used force six times to violate Vietnam’s sovereignty over its seas and islands since 1946, Lieutenant General Dy said. After the World War II ended that year, the United Nations requested China to disarm the Japanese troops. And the Chinese took unfair advantage of this chance to use force to occupy Phu Lam Island, part of Vietnam’s Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago and Ba Binh Island, belonging to the Southeast Asian nation’s Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago. Ten years later, when the French administration withdrew its troops from Vietnam under the 1954 Geneva Accords and the army of the Republic of Vietnam was still weak, China used force again to seize nearly all of the eastern part of Hoang Sa. In 1959, China continued to send forces to the western part of Hoang Sa but it failed to occupy the area as the troops of the Republic of Vietnam were guarding it. The fourth time happened in early 1974, when the U.S. withdrew its Seventh Fleet from the East Vietnam Sea, and the Republic of Vietnam cut the naval force on Hoang Sa by half, China used its air, sea and land forces to attack and occupy a group of islands in the western part of Hoang Sa on January 19. The fifth came 14 years later, on March 14, 1988, when China used force to invade and occupy Gac Ma Island, part of Truong Sa. And the sixth time occurred on May 1, when China illegally positioned its drilling rig in Vietnam’s waters in the context that the international community was focusing their attention on developments in Ukraine. Tuoitrenews