Government teams from both China and Vietnam have worked for years to plant border stones to mark their approximately 1,400-kilometre frontier in a remote and mountainous region to meet a 2008 deadline.
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The Associated Press
Published: January 1, 2009
HANOI: Vietnam and China have completed the demarcation of their long-disputed land border in what they hailed as an event of "great historic significance" 30 years after their brief but bloody border war, state media reported Thursday.
The two countries signed a land border agreement in 1999, but it took them nine years to demarcate the 1,350-kilometer, or 840-mile, frontier.
The Vietnam News Agency reported that the two countries issued a joint statement, at the conclusion of four days of meetings, in which the border demarcation was announced as "an event of great historic significance in Vietnam-China relations."
The two sides, represented by Vu Dung, the Vietnamese vice foreign minister, and Wu Dawei, his Chinese counterpart, pledged to build a border of "peace, friendship and long-term stability," it said.
China backed the Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War but sent troops to invade Vietnam in early 1979 for ousting the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge was backed by Beijing.
Vietnam and China normalized relations in 1991 and have since maintained annual high-level visits.
The two sides, however, did not resolve their dispute over the Spratly Islands, the largely uninhabited islands and surrounding waters that are believed to have large oil and natural gas reserves. They straddle busy sea lanes and are rich fishing grounds.
Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also claim sovereignty over all or some of the Spratlys. The dispute touched off a rare anti-China street protest in Vietnam late last year.
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