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 A senior foreign ministry official in Beijing demanded that
Vietnam withdraw its ships after its southern neighbor asserted that
Chinese vessels used water cannon and rammed eight of its vessels at
the weekend near the rig. Hanoi said two vessels were badly damaged
and six people were wounded in the worst setback to ties between the
two Communist nations in years.
China said the drilling operations were being carried out in its
territory and it had acted with the "utmost restraint" in using
water cannons in response to rammings it blamed on Vietnam.
Yi Xianliang, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs' Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, said China had
only sent civilian vessels to the area while Hanoi sent several
armed ships.
"Our aim, our only aim, is to guarantee our reasonable, legal,
normal drilling operations," Yi said, adding China had no choice but
to increase its security measures in response to what he said was
Vietnam's provocations.
"The operations by China in the waters off Triton Island in the
Paracel Islands are China's sovereign right and have nothing to do
with Vietnam," he told reporters at a hastily-arranged press
briefing, referring to the part of the South China Sea where the rig
has been operating.
 China has parked about 80 ships around the rig, Vietnamese officials
have said, adding that seven of them were military. Its foreign
ministry has shown reporters what it said were video clips of
Chinese ships hitting Vietnamese Seaguard vessels.
"We don't care about what China said," Ngo Ngoc Thu, vice commandant
of Vietnam's coast guard, told Reuters on Thursday.
"We have been only doing our job which is protecting our territory
and sovereignty. We only sent ships following the laws but China has
missile ships supporting its civilian ships."
Yi's comments were a departure from earlier remarks by Vice Foreign
Minister Cheng Guoping, who said he believed there had been no
"clash" at sea, although he said he did not have detailed knowledge
of what had happened.
China was willing to try and resolve the issue with Vietnam via
talks, but Hanoi had to withdraw its ships, Yi added.
"We can appropriately resolve this issue. We have the ability, the
confidence and the wisdom to do so," he said.
The two Communist nations have sought to put aside border disputes
and memories of a brief border war in 1979. Vietnam is usually
careful about comments against China, for which it relies on for
political support and bilateral trade that surpassed $50 billion in
2013.
Still, Hanoi has strongly condemned the operation of the drilling
rig, the first such action by Beijing in contested waters, and told
the owners, China's state-run oil company CNOOC, to remove it.
LEGAL ACTION
Hanoi has also hinted at international legal action and said it had
requested dialogue with China's leadership, but was awaiting a
response.
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Daniel Russel, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia
and Pacific, reiterated Washington's concerns about "dangerous
conduct and intimidation by vessels" in the disputed area. He met
senior Vietnamese leaders on Thursday and said the row had been
discussed at length. "It's fair to say both Vietnam and China have
rights to claim sovereignty over the Paracels (islands)," Russel
told reporters in Hanoi.
"It is not for the U.S. to say which position is stronger. It's
within the rights of the United States and the international
community to call all parties to address the dispute in a peaceful
way."
The row with its neighbor sent Vietnam's stocks markets plummeting
on Thursday. The benchmark VN Index in Ho Chi Minh City closed down
5.9 percent, its biggest one-day fall in nearly 13 years, while the
smaller Hanoi bourse dropped 6.4 percent, its biggest slump since
May 2010.
The row comes days after U.S. President Barack Obama visited Asia to
underline his commitment to allies including Japan and the
Philippines, both locked in territorial disputes with China.
Obama, promoting a strategic "pivot" towards the Asia-Pacific, also
visited South Korea and Malaysia, but not China. Washington has been
trying to court Vietnam as a new ally in the region with trade and
military incentives, ostensibly to lessen Hanoi's uneasy dependence
on Beijing.
However, regional military and diplomatic sources who have been
briefed on U.S. navy movements said Washington had not deployed any
warships close to the disputed area, although routine surveillance
flights over the South China Sea were on-going.
Tensions are also brewing in another part of the sea, with Beijing
demanding that the Philippines release a Chinese fishing boat and
its crew seized on Tuesday off Half Moon Shoal in the Spratly
Islands.
Philippine police said the boat and its crew were seized for hunting
sea turtles, which are protected under local laws.
(Additional reporting by Greg Torode in Hong Kong, Sui-Lee Wee in
Beijing, Mai Nguyen in Hanoi and Manuel Mogato in Manila; Writing by
Michael Martina and Martin Petty; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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