Hanoi, A 1,000-strong mob stormed a Taiwanese steel mill in Vietnam overnight, killing at least one Chinese worker and injuring 90, Taiwan’s ambassador said today, the first deadly incident in a wave of anti-China protests prompted by Beijing’s deployment of an oil rig in disputed seas.
The spreading unrest is emerging as a major challenge for
Vietnam’s authoritarian and secretive leadership, and is damaging the country’s
reputation as an investment destination.Companies from Taiwan, many of which
employ significant numbers of Chinese nationals, are bearing the brunt of the
protests and violence.The overnight riot took place at a mill in Ha Tinh
province in central Vietnam, 250 kilometres south of Hanoi, operated by the
conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group, one of the biggest foreign investors in
Vietnam, according to Ambassador Huang Chih-peng and local hospital officials.Huang,
who spoke to a member of the management team at the mill this morning, said
rioters lit fires at several buildings and hunted down the Chinese
workers, but did not target the Taiwanese management. He said the head of the
provincial government and its security chief were at the mill during the riot
but did not “order tough enough action.”
He said he was told one Chinese citizen was killed in the
riots, while another died of natural causes during the unrest.He said around 90
others were injured. A doctor at the Ha Tinh General Hospital said about 50
people, most of them Chinese nationals, were admitted to the hospital last
night and early morning. He didn’t give his name because he was not authorised
to speak to the media.Huang said the rioters left the complex at 6 am, but he
feared they “might be going for a rest and could come back.”Anti-Chinese
sentiment is never far from the surface in Vietnam, but it has surged since
Beijing deployed an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea on May
1.
The government protested the move as a violation of the
country’s sovereignty and sent a flotilla of boats to the area, which continue
to bump and collide with Chinese ones guarding the rig, raising the risk of
conflict.In the last two days, mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned
factories in southern Vietnam near Ho Chi Minh City, believing they were
Chinese-run, but many were actually Taiwanese or South Korean. Authorities said
they had detained more than 400 people.
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