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In a David and Goliath move, Vietnam seized a Chinese vessel , disguised as a fishing boat, late last week that state media said had made an incursion into its territorial waters.
The An Ninh Thu Do newspaper said on Sunday that a border defense force discovered the vessel carrying 100,000 liters of diesel near Vietnam’s Bach Long Vi Island in the Gulf of Tonkin. After seizing the Chinese ship, the defense force towed it to the northern Vietnamese port city of Hai Phong. Its captain and two sailors, all Chinese, are under the supervision of Vietnamese authorities. According to the report, the captain told authorities the fuel was to be sold to Chinese fishing boats operating in the area. As of Monday morning, Beijing had not yet officially responded to the incident.
The newspaper report added that in the last two weeks of March the Vietnamese coast guard had chased 110 Chinese fishing boats out of Vietnamese territorial waters.
This latest move comes as tensions in disputed waters off of Vietnam’s coast and tensions between China and several of its neighbors, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, over rival South China Sea claims continue to escalate. On Friday, Malaysia summoned China’s ambassador over alleged Chinese encroachment in Malaysian territorial waters. The Malaysian coast-guard and state media said at least 100 Chinese fishing vessels had been involved.

US and Philippine soldiers salute as their national anthems are played during the opening ceremony of the annual joint 11-day Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) military exercise in Manila on April 4, 2016.US and Philippine troops began major exercises on April 4 as China’s state media warned ‘outsiders’ against interfering in tense South China Sea territorial disputes. Photo: TED ALJIBE/AFP/Getty Images)
China claims over 80% of the South China Sea, in what is known as China’s nine-dash line, and has been aggressively extending its claims, particularly in the past year by land reclamation activities, while ten days ago China deployed anti-ship cruise missiles on Woody Island, despite earlier pledges by Beijing to not militarize the South China Sea.
Oil and Gas Reserves
The tensions are heightened by several factors. First, the area is rich in fishing resources and depending on who you believe could hold large quantities of hydrocarbons, seemingly more natural gas than oil. One older Chinese estimate places potential oil resources in the South China Sea as high as 213 billion barrels of oil, though that estimate seems extremely high. A conservative 1993/1994 US Geological Survey (USGS) report estimated the sum total of discovered reserves and undiscovered resources in the offshore basins of the South China Sea at 28 billion barrels.