The Cham: Descendants of Ancient Rulers of South China Sea Watch Maritime Dispute From Sidelines
The ancestors of Vietnam's Cham people built one of the great empires of Southeast Asia.
Tensions in the South China Sea reignited last month, when China deployed a government-owned oil drilling rig in an area also claimed by Vietnam just south of the Paracel Islands.
Anti-China protesters broke into and torched Chinese, Taiwanese, and South Korean factories in southern Vietnam. According to media reports, as many as 21 people died in the chaos, and more than a hundred were injured. Thousands of Chinese workers fled the country.
Under dispute are the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos, which are mostly uninhabited, and a central region of the South China Sea, which is home to overlapping claims by China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines.
But the dispute between Vietnam and China is grabbing the most attention. Both have
