^
Doesn't really work for us either:
VietNamNet - UK to give US$114 million aid to Vietnam | UK to give US$114 million aid to Vietnam
I dunno which is worse, contributing to the Euromillions so that some fetid porngobbling continental dwarf can move out of his mother's, or dishing out a large dollop of bribes under the guise of "development aid", charity on behalf of the British tax-serfs.
Still, I rather suspect that Vietnam is in the process of building relationships beyond Mao Dynasty China, to kick a wedge into the door
Sharp Increase of US Investment in Vietnam | Vietnam Business News
Vietnam willing to welcome US businesses - Vietnam willing to welcome US businesses - VOVNEWS.VN
US-Vietnam Trade Council
Investment Climate -- U.S. Commercial Service Vietnam
Quote:
Originally Posted by
thehighlander959
^^
I think you are missing the point my friend. If I really was pissed off with the Vietnamese there are a few ways to put the dampers on them economically, number one for me would be to continue to Dam-up the Mekong inside Chinese borders. At the last count it runs through at least six countries I know of.
Where does the Mekong hit the ocean? Mekong Delta South Vietnam voila!!! as the French would say.
That doesn't really work with China's long-term ambitions to control SEAsia, if they pursued a policy of deliberately disrupting the Mekong, they would also be disrupting all the Chinese business interests in SEAsia, and their guanxi tentacles would risk being severed in favour of the warm furry embrace of the wicked Lao-Wai.
The french would probably say "can you take back these vietnamese immigrants we foolishly admitted in the republic, thinking they would be just as french as us", in french, of course.
China has as much claim on the South China Sea as the UK does on, say, Iceland... i.e. some very tenuous historical documents from very long ago that mention a bloke once went past one of the islands there, that fishermen from somewhere else had been going to for ages.
You won't be surprised to hear that the Vietnamese name for the South China Sea is something a little less China-related... they just call it "The East Sea" (a bit like how the Koreans call the Sea of Japan, "The East Sea"; naturally the Filipinos call it "The West Sea"). The original name is the Champa Sea or Sea of Cham... named after it's more ancient autochthonous Austronesian (i.e. pre-Chinese, pre-Vietnamese, pre-Phillipines, and pre-Siamese, and pre-Khmer) inhabitants... it might help if in English we reverted to the original name.