Vietnam border official allegedly scribbles the F-bomb on Chinese woman's passport
A Chinese woman visiting Vietnam over the weekend realised the border official letting her through had scribbled "f**k you" on two pages of her passport, Chinese papers are reporting.
He wrote it right across a controversial map printed on the two pages. The map, which China started printing on three pages in each passport since 2012, is a source of much anger against China in Southeast Asia, because it outlines a large chunk of the South China Sea that China says belongs to it.
That territory, however, has already been claimed by various Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam, which don't recognise China's stance.
You May Also Like
According to the Beijing News, the Chinese embassy in Ho Chi Minh City said it's aware of the matter. The woman's passport is also now invalid because it's been defaced, and she will have to get it replaced once she's back home, Chinese authorities said.
On Wednesday, China's consulate general in Vietnam called the alleged act "shameless and cowardly," and urged Vietnam authorities to investigate.
China said the matter "stained the dignity of both China and its nationals."
The incident is the latest in a sustained pushback by Vietnamese border officials disgruntled with the larger Asian nation over its bold territorial claims in the South China Sea.
In addition to Vietnam, China's been tussling with a host of countries in the region including the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan over a group of islands and the waters around them. While the territories have been parcelled out and claimed by the various Asian nations, China says most of the sea belongs to it.
To support its claims, it's been pointing at a 1947 Chinese map which outlines most of the sea with a U-shaped string of nine dashes that run through the coastlines of the other countries.
Vietnam refuses to stamp Chinese passports that have the map.
The nine-dash line has angered Vietnam so much that back in 2012 when China rolled out new passports featuring the map, Vietnam made a formal complaint to Beijing.
Virtually nothing has come of negotiations between both sides, because the passports are still in use, and border officials in Vietnam escalated their show of dissatisfaction recently by refusing to stamp the passports altogether. Instead, it's issuing a separate visa for Chinese citizens, to indicate it is not recognising any documents with the nine-dash line.
Last month, the Philippines celebrated its victory in the Hague over Beijing, when an international tribunal ruled in the Philippines' favour, validating its claims over its portion of the South China Sea.
Despite the international ruling, there's little to indicate that Vietnam or any of the other nations might be able to silence China's claims for now. China reacted to the Hague decision by outright rejecting it, and its state media released a series of harsh commentaries reiterating its maritime claims.
UPDATE: July 28, 2016, 11:07 a.m. SGT Updated with statement from China consulate general.
Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
