What Would a US-Vietnam Strategic Partnership Really Mean?, Prashanth Parameswaran, The Diplomat, September 12, 2019: “Given the historical legacy of U.S.-Vietnam relations and lingering contemporary differences on areas from regime type to human rights, an elevation of this sort would reinforce the growing strategic convergence between the two countries to each other as well as to their bureaucracies, publics, and other regional states. The designation could also have wider implications beyond bilateral ties itself in an environment of growing U.S.-China competition in the Asia-Pacific and Vietnam’s role in regional issues such as the South China Sea, where the trend of growing Chinese assertiveness and control has far from abated and Hanoi has come under increasing pressure.”

Why Australia and Vietnam can’t quite get together, Helen Clark, Asia Times, September 9, 2019: “Unlike the United States (US) and European Union (EU), both of which regularly and openly condemn Hanoi’s harsh treatment of activists, Australia takes a more closed door approach. Morrison did not bring up [Chau Van] Kham’s predicament, at least not in public, during his visit. Professor Carlyle Thayer at the Australian Defense Force Academy suggests Morrison’s high-level visit overshadowed the Australian citizen’s detainment, given it was the first bilateral visit for an Australian leader to Vietnam since 1994. (Successive prime ministers have attended multilateral events hosted by Vietnam).”

Chinese Ships Must Leave Vietnamese Waters, Hanoi Again Demands, Richard Finney, Radio Free Asia, September 12, 2019: “This is the third time that Vietnam has demanded China withdraw from Vietnamese waters since the ships’ Aug. 13 return, VN Express noted in its report. China’s Haiyang Dizhi 8 survey ship first entered Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in early July to conduct seismic surveys, triggering a tense standoff between military and coast guard vessels from Vietnam and China.”

Oscar Wilde in Hanoi: Book Hunter’s Literary Community in Vietnam, Karín Aguilar-San Juan, Diacritics, September 11, 2019: “Hà Thủy Nguyên turned to activism after the government censored her work. As a TV screen writer, she wrote a show called “Vòng Nguyệt Quế,” which aired on the nation’s prime channel VTV1 at peak hour in 2008. After the show aired, her second novel, Cầm Thư quán, another work of historical fiction, was banned and withdrawn by the government. It was re-issued in 2018 by Book Hunter. Hà Thủy Nguyên hypothesizes that her humanistic portrayals of kings and other important historical figures are considered too “realistic,” in contrast to their treatment as flawless deities. According to Hà Thủy Nguyên and Lê Duy Nam, every regime in Vietnamese history has burned the traces of the prior regime, so it is nearly impossible to verify what actually happened in the past. Here and there, I was told, the only documents that remain from Vietnam’s ancient history have been stashed away by traveling monks. That gap creates an opening for government-sponsored narratives of history that are invested in serving a political purpose.”

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