Opps soldier, the guy that swam to Xiamen in recent days.
That's basically a defection, isn't?
Pretty much. His dad apparently said publicly if his son comes back he will break his leg. Over in ROC were already discussing how many years the guy is facing in jail if he returns to Taiwan so dad might very well be hinting to his son that if he knew what's good for him he shouldn't come back.
One would almost think that replastering a still decent wall is the whole reason that the wall is still decent.
Vietnam suffered decades of struggle in the last century to become a free country. Comparing them to China is not fair. The new China started to be built in 1949. Vietnam only reunified in 1976 and then started the next war in Cambodia. Between the Japanese invasion in 1940 and the Paris peace accords of 1991 the country has only known violence. Of course they're poorer than China