Protesters hold up an anti-China banner as they march along a street near the Chinese embassy in downtown Hanoi (AFP, Hoang Dinh Nam)
HANOI — Up to 100 Vietnamese rallied outside the Chinese embassy in Hanoi for the third weekend in a row on Sunday over an escalating maritime row with Beijing.
The group sang patriotic songs, chanted and carried signs such as "China stop violating the territorial waters of Vietnam," referring to a dispute over the sovereignty of two archipelagos in the South China Sea.
Anti-China sentiment has recently brought people to the streets of Vietnam, where protests are rare (AFP, Hoang Dinh Nam)
"The East Sea is not the village pond of China. I come here to show my patriotism," said one protester, who asked not to be named, using the Vietnamese name for the sea.
Demonstrations are not common in authoritarian Vietnam, where small land rights rallies are tolerated but advocates of other political causes risk arrest, yet anti-China sentiment has recently brought people to the streets.
Police at Sunday's rally, who outnumbered the crowd, noted their patriotism but told them through loudhailers: "Your gathering here may complicate the situation, influencing diplomatic relations between the two countries."
The communist neighbours are at odds over the potentially oil-rich Paracel and Spratly archipelagos and surrounding waters.
Tensions have heightened in recent weeks in the South China Sea, with Vietnam holding live-fire military exercises after accusing Chinese ships of ramming one oil survey ship and cutting the exploration cables of another.
China staged its own three days of military exercises in the area, which state media said were aimed at boosting the country's offshore maritime patrol force.
The United States and Vietnam on Friday jointly called for freedom of navigation and rejected the use of force in the sea.
After talks in Washington, the former war foes said that "the maintenance of peace, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is in the common interests of the international community".
China has myriad disputes in the sea with countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines -- which said Friday that it was sending its ageing naval flagship into the disputed waters.
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