Update | Vietnam jails two for anti-China riots as anti-Beijing march is held in Hong Kong

Two Vietnamese workers were sentenced on Sunday for a total of 48 months in jail for "stealing" and "causing trouble" during anti-China riots in the southern province of Binh Duong, according to provincial authorities, the Lao Dong  newspaper reports.

The men, the first among 276 defendants detained two weeks earlier, were said to take advantage of the demonstrations against China’s deployment of an oil rig in the disputed South China Sea to steal office supplies, provoke the crowd, and destroy others’ properties, the report said.

Meanwhile on Sunday, about 200 protesters staged an anti-China protest in Hong Kong over the sovereignty dispute – the first of its kind so close to the mainland.

The protesters, many of them Vietnamese now resident in Hong Kong, and other supporters, marched peacefully from the government's headquarters in Admiralty to a branch office of China's foreign ministry brandishing red-starred Vietnamese flags, singing patriotic songs and chanting Vietnamese slogans.

The protesters, watched by around two dozen policemen, were led by a young Vietnamese man holding a portrait of their country's late, wispy-bearded revolutionary leader and former president, Ho Chi Minh.

"China, the whole world knows, is now invading into our territorial waters … We love our country," said one of the protest organisers, Mo Pak-fung.