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The Gulf of Tonkin is a gulf at the northwestern portion of the South China Sea, located off the coasts of Tonkin (northern Vietnam) and South China. It has a total surface area of Template:Cvt. It is defined in the west and northwest by the northern coastline of Vietnam down to the Cồn Cỏ district,<ref name=":0" /> in the north by China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and to the east by the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan Island.
English sources from the People's Republic of China refer to the Gulf of Tonkin as Beibu Wan.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Description and etymologyEdit
The name Tonkin, written "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" in chữ Hán characters and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in the Vietnamese alphabet, means "eastern capital", and is the former toponym for Hanoi, the present capital of Vietnam. It is not to be confused with Tokyo, which is also written "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" and also means "eastern capital". During the French colonial era, the northern region of today’s Vietnam was called Tonkin.
Bắc Bộ is the native Vietnamese name of Tonkin, which is the nowadays region of Northern Vietnam. The bay's Vietnamese and Chinese names – {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, respectively – both mean "Northern Bay".
The Gulf of Tonkin is a relatively shallow portion of the Pacific Ocean; the majority of the gulf's ocean floor is less than Template:Convert in depth, and no part of the gulf is submerged in more than Template:Convert of water.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
HistoryEdit
Gulf of Tonkin incidentEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} On 4 August 1964, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed that North Vietnamese forces had twice attacked American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web
}}</ref> Known today as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, this event spawned the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 7 August 1964, ultimately leading to open war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. It furthermore foreshadowed the major escalation of the Vietnam War in South Vietnam, which began with the landing of US regular combat troops at Da Nang in 1965.
Maritime border issue in the Gulf of TonkinEdit
On December 25, 2000, Vietnam and China signed an Agreement on the Delimitation of the Gulf of Tonkin. An Agreement took effect on June 30, 2004, officially defining the maritime border between the two countries in the Gulf of Tonkin.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
On March 1, 2024, China issued a “Declaration on the baselines of the territorial waters in the northern part of the Gulf of Tonkin”.<ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Vietnam calls on China to respect international law.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> One year later, in February 2025, Vietnam also announced baseline for determining its territorial waters width in the Gulf of Tonkin.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>