China-Vietnam
border
China and Vietnam settled their long disputed land border, only hours before a deadline. Beijing and Hanoi — who normalized relations in 1991 and are now major trade partners — have had teams working on both sides to plant border stones to mark their approximately 1,400 kilometer frontier in the remote and mountainous region.
On New Year’s Eve, hours before the midnight deadline, both sides issued a joint statement in Hanoi saying they had ‘finalized the demarcation and placement of markers along the entire land border between Vietnam and China.’
Today China and Vietnam say they plan to turn the land border zone into a region of ‘peace and prosperity’.
Under the plan, Vietnam’s poor far-north is set to be transformed with industrial projects and zones and new road and rail links that would connect China’s Yunnan and Guangxi provinces with Vietnam’s Haiphong seaport.
The economic corridors, part of a web of highways linking China with Southeast Asia, will help boost annual two-way trade to a targeted $25 billion by 2010 from $16 billion last year.
Source: The Seferm Post