Anti-China riots at a steel plant in Vietnam left one Chinese worker dead and 100 injured as unrest triggered by an escalating territorial dispute spreads across the communist country.
Beijing's deployment of a deep-water drilling rig in contested waters has sparked the worst anti-China backlash in Vietnam in decades, with protests in major cities and angry mobs torching foreign-owned factories.
Worker protests have spread to 22 of Vietnam's 63 provinces, Vietnam's minister of planning and investment said Thursday, calling for "tough measures" to bring the situation under control before alarmed foreign investors pull out of the country.
The latest riots broke out Wednesday at a steel mill owned by Taiwanese industrial conglomerate Formosa in Vietnam's central Ha Tinh province, around 500 kilometres from Hanoi.
"One Chinese male worker was killed in the chaos," Dang Quoc Khanh, a Ha Tinh local official, said, adding that three houses at the Formosa plant for Chinese workers had been destroyed.
Local police said they were working to identify the body of the victim.
A Taiwanese diplomat said that 100 Chinese workers had been injured.
"The rioters have gone but we are all still concerned they might come back," Ambassador Huang Chih-peng said, adding that no Taiwanese nationals were hurt.
A doctor at the emergency department of Ha Tinh provincial hospital said medical staff were treating several Chinese patients for injuries.
China and Vietnam are embroiled in long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea over the Paracel and Spratly islands, which both claim.
Tensions have risen sharply since Beijing moved a deep-water drilling rig into waters that Hanoi claims - a move Vietnam has denounced as "illegal".
The widespread unrest has broken out since Vietnam's communist rulers - who usually tightly control dissent - allowed rallies against Beijing at the weekend.
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