Pham Ngoc Minh Trang : Vietnam’s New Approach to the South China Sea Disputes
Event Description
Vietnam has been wrangling with China and other neighbors for decades over rights to the islands, atolls and waters of the South China Sea and the valuable resources they contain. In the most recent confrontation, a Chinese coastguard ship collided with and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat last month. Trang Phạm Ngọc Minh, a recent Fulbright scholar in residence at USALI, explores the legal aspects of the conflict, including the impact of the 2016 ruling by an international tribunal in a claim brought by the Philippines against China. She will discuss how China’s recent actions have caused a shift in Vietnam’s diplomatic approach.
About the Speaker
Pham Ngoc Minh Trang is a lecturer at Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City, where she teaches international law and the Law of the Sea. Her research interests focus primarily on the South China Sea disputes. She was a research fellow at the International Tribunal for Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 2015. In 2019, Trang received a scholarship from the Fulbright US–ASEAN Visiting Scholar Program to conduct research at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute.