By Nina Ying Sun | May 16, 2014 09:37 am ET

Keywords: China, Asia .

As of May 15, more than a dozen Chinese people have been killed in Vietnam's riots.

A Reuters story quoted a hospital doctor saying 16 people described as Chinese died on Wednesday night.

That doesn't include casualties outside of the hospital and those people who are still missing. Taiwan's United Daily News said a Chinese worker for a Taiwanese company was burned to death in his dorm as the mobs set the factory on fire.

Many more were injured.

It's a tragedy. For the Chinese victims and their families, for the Taiwanese owners of the damaged and destructed businesses, for the Singaporean, Japanese and South Korean businesses that were mistaken as Chinese and therefore attacked.

Some would relate this to the 2012 anti-Japan riots in China, also rooted from diplomatic disputes. The differences are the 2012 incident caused no death, injuries only occurred within the Chinese, and much if not most of the damage and destruction took place at the premises of Chinese businesses. One more big distinction: the 2012 demonstrations in China didn't have looting and stealing, which is rampant in the ongoing Vietnamese rioting, according to news reports.

It's a tragedy for the five Vietnamese workers who have also lost their lives and their families. It's unclear how their deaths occurred, whether it was by self-defense by the Chinese, or just happened in a chaos.

It's a tragedy for the Vietnamese economy, as foreign investors are reminded that peaceful workers can turn violent and deadly, if the government turns a blind eye to it. According to news reports and company statements, police was present at many of the riot scenes.

It's a tragedy for international investments and globalization. The world is dangerous. Under the peaceful and prosperous surface, tensions build and erupt.

Prayers for a better world tomorrow.

Nina Ying Sun is managing editor of Plastics News China, where this blog post originally appeared.

Sources: http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20140516/BLOG01/140519938/vietnams-riots-a-tragedy-for-the-world