State visit to China underlines shared orientation direction

Bui Thanh Son, Minister of Foreign Affairs

Party General Secretary and State President Lam making this visit to China right assuming his new position demonstrates the top priority of both sides in consolidating and developing the Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership, building a community with a shared future between Vietnam and China, which has strategic significance.

After more than 30 years of normalisation, especially more than 15 years since the establishment of the Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership framework in 2008, Vietnam-China relations have witnessed rapid and increasingly profound progress in all fields.

In particular, after the historic visit to China by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in October 2022 and the third state visit to Vietnam by Party General Secretary and President of China Xi Jinping in December 2023, the two sides agreed to continue to deepen and further enhance the Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership, build the Vietnam-China community with a shared future which has strategic significance in the direction of six major orientations, opening up a new chapter for bilateral relations.

Since the beginning of 2024, the relationship between the two countries has been maintaining a positive development momentum. The atmosphere of cooperation has spread strongly to all levels, sectors, and people of both countries. The two sides assessed that the bilateral relationship is at its deepest, most comprehensive, and substantial level ever.

The results of cooperation between the two nations can be clearly seen in three aspects. Firstly, exchanges and contacts at high levels and at all other levels from the central to grassroots levels have been maintained regularly in many flexible forms, thereby contributing to the enhancement of political trust and creating new impetus for cooperation between all levels and sectors of the two sides.

Since the beginning of this year, Vietnam has had two delegations of top leaders, including the prime minister and the chairman of the National Assembly (NA), visit and work in China. In addition, a number of Politburo members, secretaries of the Party Central Committee, and leaders of many Vietnamese ministries, sectors, and localities have also visited China.

The two sides have also opened up new areas of cooperation, establishing additional mechanisms for annual high-level exchanges between the NA and the National People’s Congress of China.

Recently, the Chinese Party and state have expressed their special affection and honour for Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent condolences, while General Secretary and President Xi Jinping visited the Vietnamese Embassy in Beijing and also assigned a special representative – Wang Huning, Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – to lead a delegation of the Communist Party of China to attend the respect-paying ceremony for Party General Secretary Trong.

Secondly, the two countries’ bilateral economic, trade, and investment cooperation has continued to grow. We are impressed by figures such as import-export turnover in the first six months alone rising by 24.1 per cent over the same period in 2023, reaching $94.5 billion. Also in the first half of this year, the number of newly licensed Chinese-invested projects continued to rank first, reaching 447 registered at nearly $1.3 billion.

The tourism sector has recovered positively, welcoming 2.1 million Chinese tourist arrivals to Vietnam in the first seven months of the year, higher than the figure recorded in the whole of 2023. Agricultural cooperation between Vietnam and China has also made new progress, with the two sides almost completing the procedures for official export of a number of Vietnamese products to China, such as frozen durian, fresh coconut, fresh chilli, and passion fruit.

Meanwhile, people-to-people exchanges between the two sides have also been strengthened, with the number of Vietnamese students studying in China having reached more than 23,000, doubling the number before the pandemic.

Thirdly, the overall land border situation remains stable, and the situation in the East Sea is basically well controlled. The mechanisms for exchange and negotiation between the two sides on maritime issues are being maintained regularly. The two sides are aiming to organise activities to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the land border treaty and the 15th anniversary of the signing of three legal documents on the Vietnam-China land border.

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