China and Vietnam announced that they have at long last reached an agreement on demarcations of their land border. From AP:
The Vietnam News Agency reported that the two countries issued a joint statement, at the conclusion of four days of meetings, in which the border demarcation was announced as “an event of great historic significance in Vietnam-China relations.”
The two sides, represented by Vu Dung, the Vietnamese vice foreign minister, and Wu Dawei, his Chinese counterpart, pledged to build a border of “peace, friendship and long-term stability,” it said.
China backed the Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War but sent troops to invade Vietnam in early 1979 for ousting the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia.
Read reports from Xinhua and Nhan Dan, Vietnam’s party newspaper. The BBC reports that now everyone in Vietnam is necessarily happy with the agreement:
Many in Vietnam believe that their government has been pushed by Beijing into finalising agreements that are only beneficial to China.
Some also fear that Hanoi has conceded too much land, their concerns fuelled by the fact that no detailed map of the agreed boundaries has been made available to the public.
The Vietnamese government has always denied making any concessions.
