Some Vietnam moviegoers too sensitive about film: observers
Some Vietnamese people are being oversensitive by linking a naval movie to the South China Sea and media should not hype the issue, Chinese observers said Monday.
The Chinese movie Operation Red Sea was pulled from Vietnamese theaters as it “has been performing badly” with many showings drawing only one to two viewers, Vietnamese online newspaper VnExpress reported on Sunday.
The movie stirred controversy with a scene at the end which “supposedly takes place in the South China Sea” and shows a squadron of Chinese warships surrounding a foreign ship and ordering it to “leave what they claim to be Chinese territorial waters,” the report said.
Vietnamese moviegoers expressed anger on social media as the scene implied the waters belonged to China.
“Some people in Vietnam are too sensitive to link scenes in the movie with the South China Sea issue. China is legitimate to conduct operations within its territory,” Gu Xiaosong, an expert on Southeast Asian studies at the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday.
The incident also shows that disputes around the South China Sea still exist despite the current peaceful situation, Gu said, and since every party in the region is making efforts to contain disputes, media should not hype the issue.
It is not so strange or unusual for some Vietnamese people to dislike Operation Red Sea as many other made-in-China cultural products have experienced similar issues, Li Jiangang, assistant research fellow at the Institute of South Asian, Southeast Asian and Oceanian Studies in China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Monday.
“Vietnam has its own dream of building itself as a strong nation, especially a maritime power,” Li said.
Operation Red Sea, with investment from the Chinese navy, tells the story of Chinese marines evacuating Chinese people when a military coup breaks out in an African country.
The film is based on an evacuation during the 2015 Yemeni Civil War.