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Vietnam pulls dolls over South China Sea map
The Straits Times
|March 21, 2025
Seething international tensions over the South China Sea have struck an unlikely victim in Vietnam: children's dolls.
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HANOI - Seething international tensions over the South China Sea have struck an unlikely victim in Vietnam: children's dolls. These popular playthings have been pulled from shops over a facial mark supposedly resembling Beijing's claims in the flashpoint waterway.
Small and fluffy, with large eyes and rabbit ears, Chinese-made "Baby Three dolls" became a must-have among Vietnamese kids and Generation Z earlier in 2025, and had been flying off shelves across the country.
That was until an online backlash began over the "Town rabbit V2" model of the doll and a marking on its cheek that was said to resemble China's so-called "nine-dash line".
Beijing has long used the line to justify its claims over most of the resource-rich South China Sea, often to the displeasure of Vietnam, which also claims parts of the waterway.
This story is from the March 21, 2025 edition of The Straits Times.
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