And China smells the weakness

John Hinderaker at Power Line says that the younger generation of Vietnamese are enthusiastic about Americans but are pretty uniformly disdainful of the Chinese.  (Ironically, modern-day Vietnam sounds a lot like modern-day China - a nominally Communist oligarchy keenly interested in foreign investment - with the difference being that it lacks the regional-hegemony aims of its large neighbor to the north.)  This disdain is so strong that it's led to riots at Chinese-owned factories.

David Archibald at The American Thinker explains why China is focusing its efforts to challenge its neighbors territorially on Vietnam first:

Zhongye Island is the Chinese name for Thitu Island.  The Philippines has a mutual defense treaty with the United States; Vietnam does not.  That is the advantage for China in starting with Vietnam first.  If the United States, and perhaps Japan, does not assist Vietnam in its coming war with China, then China is likely to decide that it can scrape the Filipino bases off their islands with impunity.

Vietnam understands what is at stake in the South China Sea.  China claims 90% of the South China Sea as part of its city of Sansha.  Once enforcement is established, ships and aircraft wanting to cross the South China Sea would have to ask China’s permission first.  Vietnamese ships sailing from Haiphong would have to hug the Vietnamese coast almost all the way down to the equator before heading east to avoid the zone.  It would add 3,500 km to the shipping distance between Haiphong and Japan, for instance.  What was open ocean to their east will become a Chinese lake.  It will be a great insult and impediment to the Vietnamese people.  That is the precise intention.

After Vietnam will most likely come Japan.  Rig HD-981, China’s “mobile national territory,” will be moved to a site in Japan’s EEZ north of the Senkakus, equidistant between the Chinese Shuimen airbase and the Japanese and US airbases on Okinawa.  This will be an intolerable insult to the Japanese, but a certain US president might decide that, as no land area is involved, the United States-Japan mutual defense treaty does not apply.   China will wear down the Japanese forces and then invade the Senakaku and Yaeyama Islands.  If successful in taking them, China will then extend its ADIZ to at least 300 km east of the Yaeyama Islands, isolating Japan from the rest of Asia. 

All the countries of East Asia know that once Vietnam is defeated, their turn will come.  They will effectively become vassal states under the Chinese jackboot. 

And this is all underway because the Most Equal Comrade's big "pivot to Asia" is as much smoke-blowing as his policies regarding  Iran, Sunni jihadism, or Russia.