China and Vietnam strengthen ties with the first trip by the Vietnamese president and the signing of 14 agreements

Brasil de Fato

The People’s Republic of China is the first country that Tô Lâm has visited after being elected as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam at the beginning of August. Lam, who made a state visit to China from August 18 to 20, took office as Vietnam’s president in May this year.   

Among the agreements signed is the progress on Chinese support for the reconstruction and modernization of the 392 kilometers Lao Cai-Hanoi-Haiphong railroad line. The railroad will have 73 bridges connecting Lao Cai (on the border with the Chinese province of Yunnan) to Haiphong, Vietnam’s third-largest city and the most important port in the country’s northern region.  

In all, 14 documents included agreements between the two countries central banks and media, as well as areas such as health and phytosanitary protocols. One of the memorandums was to deepen cooperation between the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China, which have been linked for over 30 years, and exchange delegations and research groups.  

As well as meeting with Xi Jinping, Lâm held talks with Zhao Leji, chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress (the highest legislative body), Premier Li Qiang of the State Council, and Wang Huning, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.  

During his visit, the president stated that his country has always prioritized relations with China in its foreign policy.  

Last year, the United States sought to strengthen ties with Vietnam, a move happening with other countries neighboring China. US President Joe Biden visited Vietnam in September 2023, and the countries created a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The first agreement of this level that the Southeast Asian country signed was with China in 2008 followed by Russia, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia.   

In Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, Biden said he didn’t want to contain China. “I just want to make sure that we have an honest relationship with China, that everyone knows what it’s about.” Following the statement, he stated, “China is starting to change some of the rules of the game regarding trade and other issues.” 

A few months later, in December of last year, Xi Jinping and the two Asian countries announced a deepening of the partnership under the name “China-Vietnam Community with a Shared Future that Carries Strategic Significance.”   

Charles Liu, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute, considered the visit positive and discussed the differences between the US and Chinese diplomacies.   

“Every time the US visits a country, they say: ‘You have to be in our camp, you have to join us in containing China, repressing China,’ but every time there are visits by Chinese leaders or visits by other leaders from the Global South to China, the focus is on how we collaborate to solve the world’s problems, how we improve trade, how we facilitate finance and investment between our two countries, how we accelerate the development of our two countries’ economies to improve the lives of our people,” Liu told Wave Media.    

“Red genes”  

This week, at his meeting with Xi, Tô Lâm said, “We have always seen China as a strategic choice and the top priority of Vietnam’s foreign policy. (…) As comrades and brothers, we are always interested in and attentive to every step of China’s development.”  

Tô Lâm began his trip in the capital of Guangdong province, Guangzhou, where Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh passed through a century ago.  

In November 1924, Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth Comrades Association there, the first revolutionary organization in Vietnam based on Marxist-Leninist theory.  

Chinese President Xi Jinping recalled the event. “One hundred years ago, President Ho Chi Minh carried out revolutionary activities in Guangzhou, and his revolutionary footprints have spread to many parts of China.”  

“Those fiery and exciting years have become an indelible red memory in the history of exchanges between the two parties of China and Vietnam. Common ideals have become the ‘red gene’ passed down from generation to generation in the veins of both parties, forging the traditional friendship as deep as comrades and brothers,” concluded the Chinese president.   

Economic and military cooperation  

In 2023, Chinese companies invested more than US$ 4.41 billion in Vietnam, an annual increase of almost 80%. Last year, trade amounted to US$ 171.85 billion, of which Vietnam exported US$ 61.21 billion, a rise of 5.6% from the previous year, according to the Vietnam General Statistics Office.   

In the first seven months of this year, trade between the two countries expanded by more than 24% compared to last year, reaching 1.03 trillion yuan (around US$ 144.51 billion).  

Vietnam has remained China’s largest trading partner among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations since 2016, with bilateral trade accounting for 25% of China’s total trade with this bloc in the first 11 months of 2023.  

Since 2016, Vietnam has been China’s largest trading partner within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In the first 11 months of 2023, bilateral trade between the countries accounted for 25% of China’s total trade. 

In addition to the Vietnamese president’s meetings with several top Chinese leaders, China’s Minister of National Defense, Dong Jun, received his Vietnamese counterpart, Phan Van Giang, discussing the need to increase the quality and efficiency of military cooperation between the two countries. China and Vietnam frequently conduct joint drills. 

*With information from VTV, Lao Dong, Wave Media, and CGTN.