Top Chinese diplomat to visit Vietnam amid SCS tensions

A top Chinese diplomat will visit Hanoi for talks with Vietnamese leaders amid raging tensions over China's move to place an oil rig in the South China Sea, even as Beijing began building a school on one of the disputed islands.
Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi will be in Hanoi this week for an annual dialogue on bilateral cooperation amid maritime tensions between the neighbours, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post today said quoting Vietnam officials.
Yang will arrive in Hanoi for the latest round of meetings of the China-Vietnam Steering Committee on Cooperation and is expected to hold talks with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, the daily quoted Tran Truong Thuy, director of the Institute for East Sea Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam as saying.

"This is a regular meeting on cooperation, but the main topic this time will be focused on issues in the South China Sea," Thuy said.
The source close to Vietnam's foreign ministry said the meeting would be on Tuesday, the Post report said.
Yang's visit will be the highest-level meeting between the governments since China's deployment of an oil rig in disputed waters off Vietnam's coast on May 1 triggered sea confrontations that soured ties.

Four Chinese were killed and over 100 injured in anti-China riots in protest against the deployment of the rig and Beijing withdrew over 7,000 Chinese workers after several hundreds of factories with Chinese investment were burnt down.

The naval vessels of the two countries rammed into each other several over 1,500 times in and around the area where the rig is deployed.
Both countries took their case to the United Nations.
The two governments agreed to carry on with the high-level meeting despite recent tensions, Zhang Mingliang, a Southeast Asian affairs expert at Jinan University in Guangzhou said.
Zhang said neither side appeared ready for the talks as no effective solution to the dispute was in sight.
"This is not very good timing for such a high-level meeting, but they don't want to cancel it because they have to address the problems," Zhang told the Post.

Meanwhile, China began building a school in one of the islands also claimed by Vietnam, for its military personnel as well as the settlers there.
Sansha City, China's youngest city in Hainan Province, started to build its first school with an investment of of USD 5.76 million, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The construction of the school on Yongxing island including a kindergarten and a primary school, is expected to be completed in a year-and-a-half, said mayor Xiao Jie.
Sansha City, on Yongxing, one of the Xisha islands, was officially established in July in 2012 to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha island groups and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea, the Xinhua report said.

Vietnam, the US and the Philippines criticised the establishment of the island city in 2012. The island group which known as the Paracels is also claimed by Vietnam.
Besides Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan contest China's claims of sovereignty over almost the whole of the South China Sea.