VietNamNet Bridge – In May the East Sea was unusually busy with trips back and forth, speeches of government leaders in and outside the region, and comments of experts and concerns of the public about China’s illegal construction activities.

The reefs where China conducts illegal construction activities.

It is also the time that the online world saw the trailer of the Chinese series “The Lost Tomb”. This film is based on an Internet novel of the same name by Kennedy Xu. The Lost Tomb will have eight seasons filmed over a period of eight years. The filming of the first season took place from August to November 30 2014. The first season is slated to be broadcast in summer 2015. The series is expected to be influential.

The two actions and two events happen in the same period, which seem to have no connection but in fact they aim for the same goal: strengthening China’s vague sovereignty claims in the East Sea, with different methods.

They are two sides of the three-side war strategy (san zhong zhanfa), which was approved by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the Chinese Central Military Commission in 2013. This is a war supporting military operations of China to have the upper hand in future disputes. The "three-side war" includes public opinion war, psychological and legal wars.

There would be nothing worth mentioning if the context of one seas in this series is not related to the Hoang Sa Archipelago of Vietnam that is called Xisha by China. It depicts the excavations of an ancient tomb of an engineer in the Ming Dynasty in Xisha (Hoang Sa of Vietnam) Island. Many islands of Vietnam are also assumed falsely as belonging to China.

The Lost Tomb series, with fictional content on the search of ancient tombs on the islands of Vietnam in the East Sea, assumes that from the Ming and Song Dynasties, Chinese people had many activities in this area, and even built large works on Xinsha (Hoang Sa of Vietnam).

Fiction is part of the literary and artistic life and enhances the literary arts. But fiction is not absolute freedom when it touches legal, emotional, cultural issues and national spirit.

The legal war has also been applied by China. The 9-dot line has been drawn on the map but also added to the e-passport of China.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS) and other international conventions are used to justify the actions of China such as the annual fishing ban, pulling HD-981 drilling rig into the exclusive economic zone of Vietnam, illegal construction of artificial islands, dispelling fishermen of other countries, and preparing to set up the Air Defence Identification Zone in the East Sea. China’s domestic law is also used to expand China’s authority and exercise of power in the East Sea, such as the law on the territorial waters, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf, and the regulations to establish Sansha city.

The “war of public opinion", or information war, is used to influence  awareness and attitude. This war emphasizes all communications tools as movies, TV, books, internet and global communication networks.

The four pillars of the information war are: 1/going from the top to the bottom, meaning that the efforts of this war must go from top leaders to all sectors in both content and timetable; 2/taking quick action to lead the debate and to paralyze the will to fight of the enemy; 3/ taking action that must be flexible and reacting quickly to adapt to the political and military situation; 4/ taking advantage of  available resources, i.e., the combination of peacetime and wartime activities to influence domestic and international opinion. False information is given through movies, games, etc. to shape public confidence, and change the perception of opponents over time.

Many Vietnamese users may still remember WeChat software, a world-class product of China with rapid growth of users, reaching 300 million in January 2013.

On 14/12/2012, shortly after being elected as General Secretary, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tencent, which created software WeChat. Xi delivered a 40-minute speech, which stressed the important role of the internet and insisted that the Chinese party and government would invest in and support IT companies like Tencent. At the same time, Xi asked these units to exert efforts to disseminate propaganda about China’s sovereignty and policies through products that have become global like WeChat.

More than 1 million users in Vietnam eagerly welcomed this software without paying attention to the term "agree that all the information on WeChat is true". The "truth" here is the "nine dash line" map which noted Hoang Sa (Paracels) and Truong Sa (Spratlys) under Chinese sovereignty.

Chinese scientists sought to add the "nine dash line" map into scientific publications which are neutral in terms of politics and territorial disputes. The journal Nature in 2011 had to withdraw this map following the efforts of 57 overseas Vietnamese scientists, led by Prof. Pham Quang Tuan (Australia), to require return of honesty to science.

The "nine dash line" map was also incorporated in computer games of China, such as Nanhai complex action, which was once imported by some local firms.

The responsibility to learn about history and to protect the truth now belongs to all Vietnamese people.

TN