Opinion | Golden era of China-Vietnam relations is at hand, never mind the West

“[Vietnam] supports Japan playing a more important and active role in the Indo-Pacific and Asia-Pacific,” Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong said during a historic speech before Japan’s parliament in late November. After a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the two countries upgraded their ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, vowing to enhance cooperation in all key dimensions, including maritime security and national defence.

Days earlier, Thuong was also on a charm offensive in the United States. During a widely covered speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, he praised the speed and breadth of transformation in Vietnam-US relations. It goes without saying that China was at the centre of discussions between the Vietnamese leader and his US and Japanese counterparts.

The once-impoverished and war-stricken nation has quickly transformed into the new darling of the West, which sees Vietnam as a potential geopolitical and economic counterbalance to China. On closer examination, however, it’s clear Vietnam is far from interested in joining any anti-China alliance.

If anything, it has gradually recognised the centrality of stable ties with Beijing to fulfil its national goals, including becoming a high-income nation by the middle of the century. This could explain the uptick in high-level Vietnam-China exchanges in the past year alone, which will culminate in a visit by President Xi Jinping to Hanoi this coming week.

Mainstream discussions of Vietnam’s foreign policy are replete with clichés. There is the narrative of Vietnam’s thousands of years of dealing with China, even if the nation as we know it today is a more recent political construct. The country’s bitter maritime disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea are often seen as a continuation of this seemingly eternal conflict.

The reality, however, is more nuanced. As scholars such as Cornell University’s Keith Weller Taylor have argued, Sino-Vietnamese relations were often marked by long periods of peaceful coexistence, with Vietnamese autonomy “dependent upon a successful practice of mimicry” of China.