HANOI: Vietnamese border guards said on Tuesday that they were refusing to stamp entry visas into controversial new Chinese passports, which feature a map of Beijing’s claim to almost all of the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea.)

Vietnam has said that the computer-chipped passports violate its sovereignty and has demanded Beijing withdraw the documents, which show the contested Paracel and Kalayaan (Spratly) Islands as Chinese territory.

“We do not stamp the new Chinese passports,” said an official at Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport, the country’s main international gateway.

“We issue them a separate visa,” said the official, who did not want to be named.

A border guard in northern Lang Son province said that they were also not stamping the new passports but issuing separate visas to Chinese arrivals.

Even with the new passports, however, “Chinese citizens can still travel normally through the border gate,” the guard added.

Beijing has long infuriated southern neighbors such as Vietnam with its claim to vast swathes of the West Philippine, with Chinese maps showing a “nine-dash line” that runs almost to the Philippine and Malaysian coasts.

Both the Philippines and India have also protested against the map in Beijing’s new biometric passports.

India has started stamping its own map onto visas issued to Chinese visitors as the map shows the disputed border areas of Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as part of Chinese territory.

Manila, which claims part of the Kalayaan, sent Beijing a formal protest letter last week, calling the maps “an excessive declaration of maritime space in violation of international law.”

The West Philippine Sea is strategically significant, home to some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and believed to be rich in resources.

Other claimants to parts of the West Philippine Sea are Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Beijing has attempted to down-play the diplomatic fallout from the recently introduced passports, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying that the maps were “not made to target any specific country.”