China’s deployment of the $1-billion Haiyang 981 oil rig in waters near the disputed Paracels on May 2, 2014 has sparked the most serious confrontation in the South China Sea since that country’s seizure of Johnson South Reef in the Spratlys in 1988, in which over 70 Vietnamese sailors were killed.

The current confrontation has been going on for three weeks without any sign of ending soon, with China’s Coast Guard vessels ramming Vietnam’s Marine Police and Fishery Control vessels, wounding several Vietnamese personnel. China’s flotilla vastly outnumbers the Vietnamese one, and its ships are faster and bigger, but the Vietnamese are persisting tenaciously. On land, anti-China demonstrations in Vietnam have spilled over into arson against factories, causing injuries and the death of at least three Chinese — although the situation has been brought under control.