Vietnam Advances Plan to Protect Disputed Maritime Claims with Stronger Fishing Fleet

Voice of America

13 November 2019

Vietnamese boats fish so far outside their territorial waters that authorities in Malaysia and the Philippines sometimes spot them. Now Vietnamese state agencies are falling in line behind a long-term blueprint that analysts say would increase use of their country’s fishing fleet to assert sovereignty over the South China Sea that is contested by five other governments. “I would say it’s actually politically smart because, end of day, you are using fishermen to assert your sovereignty to show that ‘I always have a presence there, they are not military personnel, because I don’t think they will wear uniforms at all when they are operating out there,’” said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at NTU Singapore.

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