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China’s Legal Position on Protecting Chinese Residents in Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Hungdah Chiu
Hungdah Chiu*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland School of Law
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Type
Current Developments
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , July 1980 , pp. 685 - 689
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1980

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References

1 See Lies Cannot Cover up Facts, Jen-min jih-pao (People“s Daily, transliterated as Renminribao since 1979), June 10, 1978, at 1, translated in Peking Rev., June 16, 1978, at 20.

2 A PRC Foreign Ministry statement issued on June 9, 1978, asserted:

It is well known that there are one million and several hundred thousand Chinese residents in Vietnam …and about 90 percent of whom reside in south Vietnam…. And now, the spokesman of the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asserted that back in 1956 almost all the Chinese residents in south Vietnam adopted Vietnamese nationality. They are no longer Chinese nationals but Vietnamese of Chinese origin. In this way one million and several hundred thousand Chinese nationals in south Vietnam are written off at one stroke. This is absolutely unacceptable to the Chinese Government.

Statement of Chinese Foreign Ministry on Expulsion of Chinese Residents by Vietnam, Peking Rev., June 16, 1978, at 12, 14.

3 Vietnamese statement quoted from History Stood on its Head—On the Vietnamese authorities’position concerning the question of Chinese residents in South Vietnam, id., July 7, 1978, at 28.

4 China Seeks Settlement Though Consultation of Question of Chinese Nationals in Vietnam, id., Aug. 18, 1978, at 26.

5 The agreement was not published in the official PRC treaty series or in other official sources, but it was repeatedly referred to in the PRC’s official statements on the subject. Vietnam did not argue that the agreement was not valid but insisted that it had been fully executed; see below.

6 For a summary of the statement, see Ngo Dinh Diem’s Persecution of Overseas Chinese, People’s China, June 16, 1957, at 40, reprinted in J. A. Cohen & H. Chiu, 1 People’s China and International Law, A Documentary Study 772-77 (1974).

7 China Seeks Settlement, supra note 4, at 27-28.

8 Statement on Vietnam’s Expulsion of Chinese Residents by Spokesman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, Peking Rev., June 8, 1978, at 16.

9 See summary of the Vietnamese position in Vietnamese Authorities Must Return to the Roadof 1955 Agreement, Jen-min jih-pao, August 19, 1978, at 6. The Vietnamese statement did not clearly indicate whether all Chinese in North Vietnam had become Vietnamese nationals. According to the PRC, of the 160,000 or so Chinese ”expelled“ to China up to July 16, 1978, 95% came from North Vietnam, and only some of them had Vietnamese nationality. See Jen-min jih-pao, July 18, 1978, at 4.

10 It is not possible to find any PRC official statement committing the PRC to accepting the repatriation of overseas Chinese to China. Earlier, on May 20, 1975, then PRC Foreign Minister Ch’iao Kuan-hua already pointed out the difficulty of repatriating overseas Chinese to China for settlement. He said:

Since there are millions of overseas Chinese, how many of them can we evacuate? And after they are evacuated, how do we settle them? This is not a simple matter… . Our people residing overseas numerically rank first in the world. Even if China were the most powerful country in the world, she could not settle all of them.

Ch’iao Kuan-hua’s Address, May 20, 1975, Issues & Studies, December 1975, at 106.

However, it should be noted that the PRC indicated that, among the people ”driven“ to China, there were some with Vietnamese nationality, and it considered that ”the Vietnamese side is duty-bound to receive them back and make proper arrangements for settling them in Vietnam.“ See Hanoi Talks, Vietnam Should Abide by the 1955 Agreement, Peking Rev., Sept. 15, 1978, at 19.

11 See Maintaining Agreement Governing Sino-Vietnamese Boundary, Defeating Vietnam’s Conspiracyto Expel Chinese, Jen-min jih-pao, July 13, 1978, at 4. It is not possible to locate the alleged agreement mentioned in this report.

12 Chinese Government Decides to Send Ships to Bring Home Persecuted Chinese from Vietnam, Peking Rev., June 2, 1978, at 15.

13 Who’s to Blame?, id., July 7, 1978, at 30.

14 See id. at 30, 39.

15 Jen-min jih-pao, July 29, 1978, at 5.

16 Translated under the title, Stop Vietnam’s Refugee Export — An Urgent Matter, Beijing Rev., July 13, 1979, at 24.

17 Chinese Foreign Ministry Statement Calls for International Action to Stop Vietnam from Exporting Refugees, id., June 22, 1979, at 22.

18 Geneva Conference, China’s Stand on the Question of Indochinese Refugees, id., July 27, 1979, at 22.

19 Radio broadcast of ”Voice of Vietnam,“ Hanoi, September 12, 1978, cited in Yu Chi, Hanoi-Peking Disputes Over Overseas Chinese Problems, Chung-Kung Yen-Chiu (Studies in Chinese Communism), October 15, 1978, at 109.