China announced Sunday that it and Vietnam had agreed to hold talks on how to resolve conflicts arising from a sovereignty dispute over the South China Sea, an issue that has escalated tensions between them and led to angry protests by the Vietnamese.
The announcement came after Dai Bingguo, the senior Chinese official in charge of foreign affairs, met with Ho Xuan Son, a Vietnamese vice foreign minister and special envoy, on Saturday in Beijing, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency.
Xinhua said both countries had agreed to “adopt effective measures to jointly safeguard peace and stability of the South China Sea” and to take seriously a multination pact reached in 2002 that was supposed to help resolve territorial disputes. The pact has long been ignored.
The Chinese and Vietnamese navies held joint exercises this month despite the intensifying maritime tensions.
Xinhua’s report gave no details of how the China-Vietnam talks would proceed. The dispute over the South China Sea, which is believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits, has festered for years, and neither country has made any concessions despite conflicts involving fishing vessels, maritime surveillance boats and oil exploration ships. In January, Nguyen Van Tho, Vietnam’s ambassador to China, said the two sides would hold more talks at some point on the dispute, and that he was optimistic. The talks never took place.
Then in two episodes in May and June, Vietnam accused Chinese vessels of severing cables to Vietnamese oil exploration ships. Chinese officials said any such events were accidental or provoked by what they called Vietnam’s unilateral oil exploration. China has insisted that countries should only explore jointly in the region.
Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei also have made claims to all or parts of the sea.