( WNAM MONITORING): National Assembly (NA) Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue’s upcoming visit to China is expected to create a spillover effect, creating a strong motivation and momentum for the development of the relations between Vietnam and China.
This will be the first visit to China by Hue as the NA Chairman, and also the first direct meeting between the heads of the two countries’ legislatures after the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC)
The visit is taking place in the context that the two countries celebrated the 73rd anniversary of their diplomatic relations and 15 years of bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in 2023.
Vietnam and China are close neighbors sharing many cultural and social similarities. Over the past 74 years, experiencing ups and downs, the Vietnam-China relations have developed steadily with the main flow being friendship and cooperation.
The friendship nurtured by generations of leaders of the two countries has become a shared asset of the two peoples, contributing to maintaining a stable and healthy trend of cooperation, bringing practical benefits to both countries.
Particularly, since Vietnam and China normalized their relations in 1991, they have enjoyed thriving partnership across all fields of politics, economy, culture, and defense and security.
In 2008, the two sides decided to establish a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, the highest partnership framework with the widest and deepest contents in Vietnam’s relations with other countries. China is the first country to share this partnership with Vietnam.
Over the past 15 years, the two Parties and countries have maintained healthily and stably growing ties with high political trust.
Commenting on the relations between Vietnam and China recently, Vietnamese Ambassador to China Pham Sao Mai said that with the joint efforts of both sides, the relationship between the two Parties and the two countries has developed positively and reaped many important achievements in all fields.
Leaders of the two Parties, States, Governments, parliaments, and fronts have regularly maintained meetings and exchanges, contributing to strengthening political trust and reinforcing the political foundation for the ties between the two Parties and countries, he said.
Especially, the historical visits by CPV General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong to China in October 2022 and CPC General Secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping to Vietnam in December 2023 created strong momentum for the two Parties and countries to continuously reinforce and promote their neighborliness and comprehensive cooperation.
The outstanding feature of meetings between high-ranking leaders of the two countries is that they affirm that they take each other as the priority in their external relations.
At multilateral forums, especially ASEAN and the UN, Vietnam and China have actively coordinated with each other, promoting peace, stability, and cooperation in the region and the world.
Meanwhile, economic, trade and investment cooperation has been deepened and made more substantive, becoming a bright spot in the two countries’ relations recently.
China continuously remains Vietnam’s largest trade partner and second largest export market, while Vietnam is China’s largest trade partner among the ASEAN member countries, and China’s fifth largest trade partner in the world after the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Russia.
Two-way trade reached USD 133.09 billion in 2020, USD 165.9 billion in 2021, USD 175 billion in 2022, and USD 171.9 billion in 2023, according to Vietnam customs data. In the first two months of 2024, the figure hit USD 27.3 billion.
Vietnam and China shared many bilateral cooperation agreements as well as multilateral deals such as the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). China is promoting the process to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
