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Vietnam shaken by worst anti-China unrest in years

The Philippines warned on Wednesday that China may be building an airstrip on a reef in the South China Sea as the Asian superpower asserts its claim to most of the strategic area.

Hanoi gave its tacit approval to large anti-China demonstrations Sunday with at least 1,000 people gathering in Hanoi and a similar-sized crowd in Ho Chi Minh City.

The government allowed these rare protests to express their extreme discontent with China but now people have taken this too far, historian Duong Trung Quoc told AFP.

“This is a lesson for the state,” he said, adding authorities would likely try to control anti-China demonstrations more closely in future.

Vietnam’s communist rulers are also exposed because the real anger underpinning the riots and protests is not simply directed at China, said Adam Fforde, a professor at the University of Victoria in Australia.

Faced with Beijing’s assertive stance, the Vietnamese people are also reacting “against a regime that offers no order or leadership capable of the efforts that will be needed” to stand up against China, he said.

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