New | Ethnic Chinese live in fear as looting and violence strike Vietnam factories
Eye-witness accounts tell of violent anti-Chinese demonstrations destroying property and facilities at factories near Ho Chi Minh city in southern Vietnam
The group of three men flinched at the sound of a car horn as they were sitting in what was left of their office. Nervously they looked towards the factory gate, where only days ago hundreds of demonstrators forced their way in to destroy the Taiwanese company’s office. But it only was the car.
The three Taiwanese are among the few ethnic Chinese left in a suburban district of Ho Chi Minh city in Southern Vietnam where the most violent anti-Chinese protests in decades erupted earlier this week.
“We didn’t expect this to happen,” said Jacko Chou, the general director of Wei Lung Printing and Packaging, a Taiwanese manufacturer in Binh Duong. “We expected a demonstration, but never that it would be this violent.”
In the company’s office, littered with shards of glass and broken furniture, the 28-year-old recalled how his work over the last two years in southern Vietnam was unexpectedly smashed into pieces. Over twenty computers and the company safe had been stolen by rioters who forced their way into the factory. Once bullet-proof glass was now lying shattered on the ground. Chou said he hadn’t cleaned up because he thought the demonstrators might come back.
Last week, the placement of a Chinese oil-rig in waters claimed both by China and Vietnam led to orderly anti-Chinese protests over the weekend in nearby Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon.