Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s two-day visit to Vietnam, which began on Dec. 12, pushed for warmer ties between the two communist countries. However, Vietnam’s state media failed to respond enthusiastically to China’s gesture, indicating its reluctance to align itself with China fully.
Amid China’s escalation of territorial disputes with the Philippines in the South China Sea, Mr. Xi is seeking to court Vietnam to avoid a simultaneous confrontation with multiple nations in the region. During his visit, China offered to increase financial support for cross-border railroad construction.
The two countries once cherished their shared communist ties. China supported the Communist North Vietnam during the Vietnam war, but after the communists took over the entire Vietnam, relations soured for several reasons, including Beijing’s support of Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime that took control of Cambodia in 1975.
Beijing, which in the 1970s was normalizing relations with Washington, was also wary of Vietnam’s ties with the Soviet Union, which it viewed as a competitor during what is known as the Sino-Soviet split.
Not long after Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in late 1978 to oust the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge, the Chinese launched an offensive attack against Vietnam, resulting in the month-long Sino-Vietnamese War in early 1979.
From the 1990s on, relations between the two nations have improved following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Vietnamese forces leaving Cambodia the year before.
But anti-China sentiment remains prevalent in Vietnam, especially due to maritime tensions.
Xi Pushes ‘Common Destiny’
In an op-ed published in Vietnam’s Nhan Dan newspaper on Dec. 12, Mr. Xi said that the two countries and the two communist parties should build a “community of common destiny.”In China, state mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency also published an article with the same tone and rhetoric.
The concept of “common destiny” was proposed by Mr. Xi in 2013, and Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand all have recognized such a relationship with China. This is widely viewed as a tool by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to unite neighboring countries in its power struggle against the United States.
However, Vietnam has rejected Mr. Xi’s proposal of a “community of common destiny.” At a press conference on Dec. 14, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pham Thu Hang has repeatedly emphasized that China’s term “common destiny” should be “shared future” instead.
Vietnam has long had reservations about a “common destiny”.
During Vietnamese President Vu Van Huong’s visit to Beijing in October and during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Hanoi on Dec. 1, the Xinhua News Agency repeatedly said that the Chinese leader had pushed for Vietnam to work with China to build a “community of common destiny,” but the Vietnamese state media did not mention this idea at all in their reports.
U.S.-based Chinese scholar Wu Zuolai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 17 that Mr. Xi’s visit to Vietnam failed on this important issue.
He said Mr. Xi was trying to build a spiritual alliance in Southeast Asia, but the Vietnamese leadership is refusing China’s proposal to avoid being subsumed into China’s geopolitical plot as this is a role that Vietnam is unwilling to accept.
“Vietnam is not convinced by the CCP’s proposals, and therefore the CCP has completely failed in this regard,” said Mr. Wu. “Vietnam is only accepting increased business ties and infrastructure investments from China.”
During Mr. Xi’s visit, the two countries signed 37 agreements, including one that will increase China’s financial support for cross-border railroad construction.
Xiong Bo, Chinese ambassador to Vietnam, told Vietnamese state media in a Dec. 10 interview that the railroad investment would be “non-reimbursable financial aid” and that Vietnam has accepted China’s proposal.
So essentially, China is offering to build a railroad for free.
“For Vietnam, it’s only accepting deals that benefit Vietnam. It just so happens that the infrastructure project is good for Vietnam, so why not accept it?” Mr. Wu said.
“However, for Xi Jinping, Vietnam and the United States’ strategic partnership poses a huge threat to the CCP. With Hong Kong gone, many of China’s products can no longer be shipped through any of China’s ports, and Vietnam has the most important ports in the region.
“To ensure the smooth export of Chinese goods, a railroad must be built to link Vietnam to China. The CCP is highly dependent on Vietnam’s export-oriented economy, so it is compelled to build a railroad, even if it has to do so with no compensation.”
Biden Visits Vietnam
In September, President Joe Biden visited Vietnam and upgraded the relationship between the two countries to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”The United States and Vietnam have also signed a number of deals, including on semiconductors and minerals.
President Joe Biden and Vietnam's Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (3R) meet at the Communist Party of Vietnam Headquarters in Hanoi on Sept. 10, 2023. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Immediately after Mr. Biden’s visit, Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong traveled to Beijing in October to meet with Mr. Xi.
At the time, Mr. Xi told Mr. Vo that China and Vietnam had established a deep friendship as “comrades and brothers” and that the two countries should prioritize strengthening bilateral relations in their respective foreign policies.
The move was interpreted to be a warning to Hanoi that relations between China and Vietnam must remain stable, regardless of gestures from the United States.
In November, Japan followed in the footsteps of the United States in deepening relations with Vietnam. During his visit to Japan, Mr. Vo and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Nov. 27 the establishment of a “comprehensive strategic partnership” between Vietnam and Japan
Vietnam Benefits From China’s Geopolitical Confrontations
“Vietnam is friendly to the CCP on the surface, but in reality, since the Ho Chi Minh era, Vietnam has kept a distance from the CCP and treated it as an adversary,” said Mr. Wu.“On the surface, they are ‘comrades and brothers’ because they [Vietnam] are facing a very powerful ‘empire,’ and they would not dare to offend China easily,” he said and mentioned the past war with China.
“So Vietnam does not want to go against the CCP directly. On the surface, Vietnam appears to be neutral, but in reality, it does not wish to mingle with the CCP and only maintains a low-level economic relationship.
“Its broader strategy and policy direction is to develop better relations with Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. Its strategy is to cooperate with the civilized [Western] world and minimize collusion with the CCP.
“Vietnam is worried about the repercussions of the CCP’s military actions in the South China Sea, so it is now close to Japan as a response to the possibility of a sudden war in the region with China,” Mr. Wu said.
“All the countries in the Indo-Pacific region are worried that the CCP will start a war, so they are actively responding to it. China’s current domestic economic crisis is so severe that the CCP may resort to divert attention through a war.
“Vietnam is now benefiting from China’s confrontation with the United States and the West,” said Mr. Wu.
“During the Korean War, Japan’s economy expanded rapidly. After the COVID pandemic, there is a global sense that there are huge risks in doing business and building supply chains in China. So to avoid these risks, a lot of the industrial supply chains moved to Vietnam, India, and other regions in Southeast Asia. Many of the goods we buy in the United States today are made in Vietnam and India, and fewer and fewer are made in China.”
Xin Ning contributed to this report.
