3 thousand Chinese leave Vietnam

Beijing/Hanoi: China on Sunday said that it has evacuated over 3,000 of its nationals from Vietnam after a wave of anti-China riots ensnared the country, targeting Chinese businesses against Beijing's deployment of an oil rig in disputed South China Sea waters.

“They returned to China with the assistance of (the) Chinese Embassy to Vietnam,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The staff members, from the China 19th Metallurgical Corporation (MCC19), arrived at the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Those evacuated early today included 16 critically hurt Chinese nationals, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.

The Chinese government is arranging for chartered plane and vessel to take back others wanting to leave following the violence that spread to 22 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces in the last week. Beijing has also advised its nationals against travelling to Vietnam.

China says two of its nationals were killed in the violence and more than 100 others injured while the official death toll has been put at 21.

An iron and steel complex in Ha Tinh Province of Vietnam, invested by Taipei-based Formosa Plastics Group, was badly hit in the riots.

China and Vietnam are locked in a duel after Beijing deployed an oil rig off the disputed waters in South China Sea on May 1.

The dispute is part of a wider row between China and a number of south-east Asian countries including Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

But Vietnamese authorities have said it will prevent further outbursts that stemmed from the controversial deployment.

Hanoi hard on protesters

Vietnamese authorities forcibly broke up small protests against China in two cities on Sunday, after deadly anti-China rampages over a flaring territorial dispute risked damaging the economy and spooked a state used to keeping a tight grip on its people.

In southern Ho Chi Minh City, police dragged away several demonstrators from a park in the city centre.

In Hanoi, authorities closed off streets and a park close to the Chinese Embassy and pushed journalists and protesters away. Police was posted outside well-known dissidents houses, preventing them from leaving.

China, meanwhile, said it had dispatched the first of five ships  to speed up the evacuation.