/Pogled.info/ A notable event in the Southeast Asian region was the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Vietnam on December 12-13 and his meetings with the top leaders of Vietnam – with the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPC) Nguyen Phu Trong, President of Vietnam Vo Van Tuong, Prime Minister Pham Minh Trinh and Speaker of the National Assembly of Vietnam Vuong Dinh Hue.
The result of the visit was the transition of good-neighborly relations between the countries to a new quality – the construction of a Vietnamese-Chinese community with a common future was announced.
Judging by the agreements, this is the next, more significant stage of rapprochement after the overall strategic partnership. Vietnam reiterated that it views its relations with China as a strategic choice and top priority in its foreign policy, and China also views its relations with Vietnam as a priority in neighborhood diplomacy.
An indicative external expression of the new quality of relations was the agreement on the construction by the countries of their national cultural centers in China and Vietnam, respectively. Vietnam will also open a consulate general in Chongqing (PRC).
The strengthening of trust in Sino-Vietnamese relations creates a reliable basis for bridging the differences between the countries over the status of the South China Sea and a number of islands in it.
All this reduces the risk that the West will take advantage of the existing contradictions between China and Vietnam to restore its hegemony in the region.
The visit of the President of the People’s Republic of China to Vietnam was a further development of close bilateral and inter-party ties.
Since the visit of General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong to China in October 2022, China and Vietnam have held close and frequent meetings at various levels and strengthened security cooperation.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Trinh visited China in June 2023 at the invitation of Chinese Premier Li Qiang. Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and Vietnamese Prime Minister met at the end of November 2023 in Ho Chi Minh City, where they discussed payments in national currencies and prospects for rail communication.
The navies of China and Vietnam recently completed their 35th joint patrol in Beibu Bay, after which they conducted joint exercises in search and rescue, communications and other fields.
Bilateral agreements resulting from Xi’s visit to Hanoi include a significant expansion of economic cooperation between the countries.
Judging by the proposals of the head of the Vietnamese government to the Chinese side, China will increase imports of Vietnamese agricultural and fishery products, increase investment in the Vietnamese economy, with an emphasis on large-scale projects in high-tech fields in general and related to the green transition in particular.
The countries will also expand cooperation in the financial and monetary spheres, increase tourism exchanges and strengthen public diplomacy.
Special emphasis is placed on China-Vietnam road transport and port infrastructure expansion projects for the upcoming increase in bilateral trade turnover, which has already reached huge volumes in physical and monetary terms.
Statistics provided by the Chinese customs authorities showed that trade between the two countries increased to $230.2 billion in 2021 and reached $234.9 billion in 2022. In the first 10 months of this year, the volume of bilateral trade reached $185.1 billion
China is the largest market for Vietnamese agricultural products. According to Vietnamese statistics, in the first 10 months of this year, Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable exports to China reached $3.18 billion, an annual increase of 165%.
Recently, the share of high-quality highly processed agricultural products and foodstuffs such as rice, tropical fruits and seafood has been increasing in Vietnam’s exports to China. This is largely due to the investment of Chinese capital in these industries.
Chinese investment in Vietnam is growing. In the first half of 2023, China invested nearly $1.3 billion in 233 projects in Vietnam, becoming the country’s third-largest source of foreign direct investment after Singapore and Japan.
Vietnam continues to hold its position as China’s largest trading partner in ASEAN and China’s 4th largest trading partner (after the US, Japan and South Korea). China is currently the sixth largest investor in Vietnam with 3,949 active projects worth approximately $26 billion.
The intensive tourist exchange is an indicator of very close and friendly relations between the countries. China has been the leader in the number of visitors from Vietnam for many years.
In 2019, their number exceeded 5.8 million people, accounting for 1/3 of the total number of tourists from Vietnam. Since February 2020, due to the outbreak of Covid-19, tourism cooperation between the two countries has been temporarily suspended, but it is now being actively restored. The total number of Chinese tourists in Vietnam in the first 8 months of 2023 reached almost 950 thousand.
China and Vietnam objectively unite the main common conditions of their historical development in general and the modern stage in particular.
Both countries belong to the same Confucian-Daoist civilization, are neighbors, develop on a socialist path, have a common Soviet political model, are led by communist parties that maintain close inter-party ties, use the model of state capitalism in economic management, and support the close political, economic and cultural exchange.
Because of their fundamental and immutable nature, these conditions provide a long-term basis for managing disputes over territorial issues.
There is a dispute between the countries about the regime of use of the waters of the South China Sea and the ownership of a number of islands in it. The decision is complicated by the parties’ special interest in hydrocarbon production near the disputed islands.
Against this background, the strengthening of Vietnam’s relations with the United States during US President Biden’s visit to Hanoi in September this year should not be misleading.
The leading and, apparently, the only motive of Hanoi was the desire to make the most of the vast American markets, finance (in the form of promising investments in the Vietnamese economy) and technology to accelerate the industrial, scientific and technological development of Vietnam. Hanoi has wisely sought to take advantage of American efforts to diversify supply chains outside of China.
If this required agreeing to the official designation of US-Vietnamese relations as a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, then Hanoi verbally did so, taking advantage of Washington’s interest and its illusions of bringing Vietnam into the anti-China camp.
But it is now obvious that the formally identical status of “comprehensive strategic partnership” to denote Vietnam’s relations with the US and China actually has a different content.
Washington’s calculations are clear. After all, the US apparently seriously hopes for the participation of Vietnam in the anti-Chinese regional coalition in the event of an armed confrontation with the PRC over Taiwan.
But the results of the visit of the President of the People’s Republic of China to Hanoi confirmed the initial utopianism of these American hopes.
Xi Jinping said in Hanoi that China and Vietnam must be vigilant and oppose any attempts to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region, and Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Trinh stressed that “Vietnam-China relations have stood the test of time and history and will not be affected by any interference provoked by outside forces.’
Attempts to internationalize the South China Sea issue may complicate Sino-Vietnamese relations, but as seen, Vietnam has effectively given up on this.
The countries agreed to counter the West in its attempts to provoke contradictions among the countries of the region and to impose its interests in Southeast Asia.
At the same time, Chinese experts reasonably recognize that Vietnam needs to maintain diverse relations with large and influential countries, especially against the background of the complexity and uncertainty of modern geopolitics, and do not see any threat to China in this.
Translation: SM
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