China and Vietnam have been handling their recent South China Sea stand-off in an unusually restrained manner, leading observers to conclude both nations have learned from their deadly crisis of five years ago. When Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc visited the Vietnamese coastguard headquarters in Hanoi on July 11, at the height of the stand-off, his country’s state media also made no mention of the incident. Collin Koh, research fellow with the Maritime Security Programme at Singapore’s RSIS, said Hanoi was clearly muting public mention of the issue.