It seems that the People's Republic of Vietnam has pulled the Dreamworks production Abominable from theaters across the long green country.

The film featured a map that showed the South China Sea encompassed by the "Nine Dash Line," an imaginary border that China utilizes to lay claim to the entire South China Sea and all that lies within it.  This is in blatant defiance of the nations — including Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam — who actually, by international law, control the area.

The Vietnamese in particular have suffered the effects of Chinese piracy.  In the late '70s, an entire military contingent sent to exercise sovereignty over an island in the area was machine-gunned to the last man by Chinese warships, and two Vietnamese patrol boats were later sunk.  Since 2013, when China began creating artificial islands on which to construct military bases in the region, the Chinese have turned to attacking all Vietnamese fishing vessels that venture into the area.  Several have been sunk by ramming by ostensibly "civilian" Chinese ships.

So it's easy to grasp why this is a sore spot for the Vietnamese.  But it's not just a matter of pride — China is also hijacking all the resources in the area, which include oil and natural gas.  It may well develop into a matter of survival for the Vietnamese.

It's unlikely that it was deliberate, and it was very probably a product of ignorance involving those countries that are full of little brown people of whom nobody has ever heard.  (I can just see some bright little Millennial Dreamworks staffer rearing back in shock and saying, "You're telling me people have heard of Vietnam?")

But it's not a good sign.  Our Honest Media™ have gone out of their way to low-key the entire South China Sea story, keeping it as dark as possible.  (It's not likely that many have heard of the Chinese atrocities listed above.)  Pundits and academics, for their part, compete in insisting that the South China Sea crisis is "over."

This incident is a clear indication that this is not the case.  The South China Sea is a running sore and will remain one until justice is done for the nations of the region, "though the heavens fall," as the saying goes.  Until that time, we have an obligation to remain informed and knowledgeable about what is happening there, and that goes for Dreamworks, too.