Vietnam's call for China to release a captured fishing boat and nine crewmen points to Beijing's contradictory policies on maritime disputes, analysts said Thursday ahead of key regional security talks.
Vietnamese foreign ministry officials on Tuesday met their counterparts from the Chinese embassy in Hanoi to demand the immediate and unconditional release of the vessel and its crew, the official Vietnam News Agency reported.
It said they were seized almost one month ago while fishing in the Paracels, a South China Sea archipelago occupied by China but claimed by Vietnam.
The case illustrates "China's double standard when it comes to this kind of issue," said Ian Storey, a regional security analyst at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore.
He said the seizure of "hundreds" of Vietnamese fishermen by Chinese vessels in recent years contrasts with Beijing's response to the September 8 arrest by Japan of a Chinese trawler captain. His boat collided with two Japanese patrol vessels near a disputed island chain in the East China Sea.
China issued threats and cut all high-level diplomatic contact with Tokyo. It sent two Chinese fisheries patrol boats to protect its fishermen near the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
Japan released the captain in late September but China's patrol boats did not withdraw until Wednesday, Tokyo said.
Given China's reaction to Japan, Vietnam's call for the release of its vessel will "show the Chinese as inconsistent," said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam specialist at The University of New South Wales in Australia.
Vietnam's demand also ensures that the South China Sea sovereignty issue will be raised next week when defence ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hold their first-ever meeting with counterparts from the United States, China and other regional powers, Thayer said.
"It will be raised," he said.
Vietnam and China are engaged in a long-running dispute over control of the Paracels and a more southerly archipelago, the Spratlys.
Since last year Vietnam has reported numerous cases of fishing boats and equipment being seized by China.
Taiwan also claims the Paracels and has a claim to the Spratlys, as do ASEAN members the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
At a US-ASEAN summit last month both sides agreed on the importance of "freedom of navigation" including in the South China Sea.
Nobody at the Chinese embassy in Hanoi could be reached for comment Thursday.
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