A bubble tea chain and a toy doll are the latest casualties of Beijing and Hanoi’s competing claims over the South China Sea

A man sitting at store promoting Child Three dolls and different toys on a road in Hanoi on March 18, 2025. Seething worldwide tensions over the South China Sea have struck an unlikely sufferer in Vietnam: fashionable kids’s dolls pulled from retailers over a facial mark supposedly resembling Beijing’s claims in the flashpoint waterway.

Nhac Nguyen—AFP through Getty Photos