China incompetent? The tale of the oil rig

 

 

 

 

 

 

What has China achieved by sending its oil rig to drill off the Paracel Islands? It has managed to rupture relations with its brother communists in Vietnam, incensed Vietnamese popular opinion, generated gigabytes of critical international media coverage, revived the “China Threat” discourse in Southeast Asia and unified ASEAN behind a statement critical of its actions. This article argues that the stand-off suggests the process of foreign policy-making in Beijing is very poor. The original article is available at Asia Sentinel here.