The BBC reports that just hours before the deadline expired, negotiating teams from Vietnam and China announced a consensus on their border demarcation negoiations. However, it appears that nothing has been signed yet.
Speaking to BBC from Hanoi, Dr Nguyen Hong Thao from the State Border Committee, who was also a member of the Vietnamese negotiating team, insisted that “everything was agreed” at the final round of talks.
He said there remained only small technical details to be worked out.
Not everyone is especially happy with the negotiations it seems, and the event is getting almost no play in Vietnam.
“It seems they (Vietnam and China) were under huge time constraints to finalise the deal, even when not all was agreed and done,” [Bui Tin, a former army colonel and newspaper editor now in exile] said.
“The question is: who pressures whom?” added Mr Tin.
Many in Vietnam believe that their government has been pushed by Beijing into finalising agreements that are only beneficial to China.
Some also fear that Hanoi has conceded too much land, their concerns fuelled by the fact that no detailed map of the agreed boundaries has been made available to the public.