Four dead, 23 severely injured in Vietnam riots: MCC

Four people have been confirmed dead and 23 severely injured during the recent riots in Vietnam, the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) said on Tuesday night.

MCC reported that the lives of its 3,565 employees were under threat due to the riots and a total of 130 people were injured or dead.

The company is still waiting for DNA reports to identify two of the deceased.

On May 14, rioters broke into the construction site of a steel plant MCC was responsible for in Ha Tinh Province. The mob beat the Chinese workers, looted goods, smashed appliances and set the site on fire.

MCC said it has successfully coordinated the evacuation of its Chinese employees from Vietnam. The first group of 307 people arrived at Chengdu, Sichuan province via flights on Sunday. The second group of 3,565 people left Vietnam on four ships and is expected to arrive at Haikou, Hainan province soon.

Escalated tensions spurred by the protest also affected trade.

In Dongxing, a China-Vietnam border city in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, local businesspeople told the Global Times reporter that exports from Vietnam to China stalled after the Chinese businessmen fled.

Dongxing no longer has long queues of Vietnamese imports like seafood and agricultural products, they said.

A Vietnamese man nicknamed Ajing told the Global Times that he used to sell 80,000 China-made flip-flops every month with some substandard goods imported from Guangdong Province. But the recent anti-China riots in Vietnam have disrupted business for the past six days.

"Things started to get tough since October when the Vietnam government increased the tax on Chinese goods and Vietnamese started to boycott Chinese products," Ajing said.

Individual business goes on relatively unchanged. Bridges on the Beilun River in Dongxing on Tuesday are still crowded with Vietnamese vendors selling fruits, perfume, cigarettes and traditional clothing, trying to make a living.

"Conflict between the two countries [China and Vietnam] is the last thing we want to see, as it will destroy our hard-earned living," a Vietnamese vendor said in stuttering Putonghua.