Riots in Vietnam leave 1 Chinese dead, 90 injured

A 1,000-strong mob stormed a Taiwanese steel mill in Vietnam overnight, killing at least one Chinese worker and injuring 90, Taiwan's ambassador said today, the first deadly incident in a wave of anti-China protests prompted by Beijing's deployment of an oil rig in disputed seas.
The spreading unrest is emerging as a major challenge for Vietnam's authoritarian and secretive leadership, and is damaging the country's reputation as an investment destination.
Companies from Taiwan, many of which employ significant numbers of Chinese nationals, are bearing the brunt of the protests and violence.
The overnight riot took place at a mill in Ha Tinh province in central Vietnam, 250 kilometres south of Hanoi, operated by the conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group, one of the biggest foreign investors in Vietnam, according to Ambassador Huang Chih-peng and local hospital officials.

Huang, who spoke to a member of the management team at the mill this morning, said rioters lit fires at several buildings and hunted down the Chinese workers, but did not target the Taiwanese management. He said the head of the provincial government and its security chief were at the mill during the riot but did not "order tough enough action."
He said he was told one Chinese citizen was killed in the riots, while another died of natural causes during the unrest.

He said around 90 others were injured. A doctor at the Ha Tinh General Hospital said about 50 people, most of them Chinese nationals, were admitted to the hospital last night and early morning. He didn't give his name because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Huang said the rioters left the complex at 6 am, but he feared they "might be going for a rest and could come back." Anti-Chinese sentiment is never far from the surface in Vietnam, but it has surged since Beijing deployed an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea on May 1.
The government protested the move as a violation of the country's sovereignty and sent a flotilla of boats to the area, which continue to bump and collide with Chinese ones guarding the rig, raising the risk of conflict.
In the last two days, mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in southern Vietnam near Ho Chi Minh City, believing they were Chinese-run, but many were actually Taiwanese or South Korean. Authorities said they had detained more than 400 people.