Vietnam regrets anti-China riots, offers compensation

After nearly three months of face-off over Chinese oil rigs in the disputed South China Sea, China and Vietnam today sought to bury the hatchet as Hanoi expressed regret over the anti-China riots and offered to compensate affected firms and hundreds of Chinese workers.
"Vietnam regrets the incidents happening to foreign invested companies in mid-May, including Chinese investors and workers as well as feels sorry for the fact that some Chinese workers were dead and injured during these incidents," state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Le Hai Binh, spokesperson of Vietnamese Foreign Ministry as saying.
Vietnamese side will offer humanitarian assistance to the affected Chinese firms and workers, Binh said.

Reciprocating Vietnamese gesture, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China hopes Vietnam will implement remedial measures for incidents leading to the death of Chinese workers. The violence followed Chinese attempts to place a huge oil rig close to the disputed waters in SCS.
Five Chinese workers were killed and over a 100 injured in the anti-China riots in which over 1,100 companies mostly belonging to Chinese and Taiwanese investors were damaged.
China pulled out about 7000 of its workers because of safety concerns.

Also boats of the two countries clashed in the disputed waters over Vietnamese navy's efforts to hit the rig.

In a statement, Hong said the ministry has noted remarks on the incidents by a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson today.
China acknowledges the Vietnamese side's actions and attitude, Hong said.
The rapprochement came after China withdrew the rig ahead of the schedule saying that it completed its mission and back-channel talks between the two countries to mend the ties.
Also, Vietnam is deputing Le Hong Anh, a Politburo member and permanent member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee to visit China from tomorrow as the special envoy of Nguyen Phu Trong, CPV general secretary to hold talks with the Chinese leadership.

Vietnam besides the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei disputes China's claims over almost all of SCS and the Philippines has already approached International Court of Justice for arbitration, which China has refused to accept.