Senior Chinese and Vietnamese officials have agreed to settle their maritime disputes without resorting to “megaphone diplomacy,” the official Xinhua news service said on Saturday.
The agency’s report follows a meeting in Hanoi on Friday between Chinese political advisor Yu Zhengsheng and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, and it comes as Beijing backs off from aggressive attempts to press its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
“Megaphone diplomacy can only trigger volatility in public opinion, which should be avoided by both sides,” the report quoted Yu as saying.
“The maritime issue is highly complicated and sensitive, which requires negotiations to manage and control differences,” he said.
Although major trading partners and sharing the same nominal commitment to communism, China and Vietnam have a long history of distrust and conflict, including a short war in 1978 when Chinese troops invaded Vietnam in response to Hanoi’s invasion of Cambodia, run at the time by the China-backed genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.
Both governments, which lay claim to revolutionary credentials of resistance to foreign invaders, must also placate their respective nationalists demanding more aggressive defense of territory.
