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Several Vietnamese fishermen were severely injured in an attack by two ships identified as Chinese law enforcement vessels, in what is believed to be the most violent clash between the two sides in disputed waters of the South China Sea for years.
According to Vietnamese official media reports, a Vietnamese fishing boat with a crew of 10 was chased and sandwiched by two steel-hulled foreign vessels in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands early on Sunday morning. The reports gave the hull numbers of the foreign ships as 301 and 101, corresponding to a Chinese local maritime law enforcement command.
Tien Phong, the newspaper of the youth wing of the Vietnamese Communist party, quoted the fishermen as saying that 40 foreign crew members boarded their boat and beat them with iron bats. “The fishermen are still being treated here,” said a clerk at Quang Ngai General Hospital reached by phone on Wednesday.
China’s foreign ministry said the Vietnamese reports were inconsistent with the facts, but confirmed an operation against Vietnamese fishermen in the area. Reiterating Beijing’s claim of “indisputable sovereignty” over the Paracels and adjacent waters, a ministry spokesperson said the Vietnamese crew had “illegally fished in the waters of the Paracel Islands without approval” from the Chinese government.
“The relevant authorities took measures to stop them,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. “The operations on the ground were professional and restrained, and no injuries were detected.”
China seized the Paracel Islands in a naval battle with Vietnam in 1974, but the archipelago, which is located in an area where the two countries’ exclusive economic zones overlap, remains contested.
According to ship tracking data reviewed by the Financial Times, San Sha Zhi Fa 301, a vessel under the San Sha City comprehensive law enforcement division, was sailing in waters around the Paracels at the time of the incident and took a zigzagging route corresponding to the pursuit and encirclement of a target.
Duan Dang, a maritime security analyst based in Vietnam, said the San Sha Zhi Fa 101 was also in the area.
“The matching hull numbers, location, and reported aggressive behaviours strongly indicate these were the vessels involved in the attack,” he wrote in a blog post.
The clash highlights the rising levels of hostility in China’s disputes in the South China Sea with rival claimants other than the Philippines.
In June, Chinese coastguard personnel rammed and boarded Philippine government ships and hacked holes in their hulls with axes near the contested Second Thomas Shoal, in the most violent confrontation between those two countries.
Since that incident, there have been several more rammings of Philippine ships by Chinese coastguard vessels. Last week, Chinese Navy missile boats targeted a Philippine fisheries administration aircraft with lasers, according to the Philippine government.
Vietnamese fishing crews have also complained of occasional coercive behaviour by Chinese coastguard and other government ships, such as a ramming incident in the Paracels in 2018.
But observers said Sunday’s encounter marked a sharp escalation.
The two countries’ largest maritime clash since the 1974 naval battle occurred in 2014 when China deployed an oil rig near the Paracels within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone.
That action triggered a tense, two-month stand-off that involved naval, coastguard and fishing vessels from both sides and resulted in the sinking of one Vietnamese fishing vessel and several injuries.