To Lam Affirms Vietnam's Alignment With China in State Visit
To Lam, the recently elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and president of the country, arrived in Guangzhou, China, on August 18 to begin his first overseas trip as the country’s de facto leader following the death of Nguyen Phu Trong in July.
The trip, beginning in Guangzhou before Lam arrived in Beijing, was organized to reflect the journey of Ho Chi Minh, who traveled to Guangzhou in 1924 and began recruitment for the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth Association. Many of the association’s alumni would go on to form the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam which was formed in 1930.
Significantly, 2024 marks the 100-year anniversary of Ho’s arrival in China, and Lam’s time in Guangzhou included a “review [of Ho’s] revolutionary activities in China” before heading to Beijing for meetings with China’s senior leadership.
While in Beijing, Lam met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Zhao Leji, and Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Wang Huning. Phan Van Giang, Vietnam’s Minister of Defense, also met with China’s Minister of National Security, Dong Jun, on Tuesday.
The visit saw 14 agreements signed between the two countries, ranging from transportation infrastructure to closing trade imbalances. While China is Vietnam's largest trading partner, Chinese imports to Vietnam significantly outweigh Vietnamese exports to China.
Vietnam recently underwent political reshuffling against the backdrop of a widespread anti-corruption campaign. Lam's visit to China carries significant implications for the previously stable, even mundane, political ecosystem of Vietnam. Namely, the sentiment expressed and agreements signed between the two countries during the visit demonstrate that hopes of the evolving relationship between Vietnam and the U.S. pulling the Southeast Asian country away from China remain mistaken.
Diplomatic Balancing
While Lam’s trip was likely organized months in advance and does not necessarily reflect a hard break from Vietnam’s pursuit of closer ties to the U.S., it is, nonetheless, one-half of a reflection of the careful nature of the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” agenda. Vietnam is one of a handful of countries seeking to improve ties with both China and the United States in tandem rather than choosing sides in an increasingly polarized international climate. Bamboo diplomacy posits that a country should adopt a firm but flexible approach to international affairs, fostering ties across ideological and practical differences, and the rapid and vast deepening of ties between the U.S. and Vietnam in recent years reflects this philosophy.
To be sure, Vietnam was the only country in the world to be visited by both Xi and American President Joe Biden in 2023, and Vietnam’s relations with both countries are classified as comprehensive strategic partnerships, the highest level of ties in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy.
Vietnam has a vested interest in maintaining healthy ties with the U.S., which receives more Vietnamese exports than even China. However, China outpaces the U.S. significantly in goods exported to Vietnam. China and Vietnam also share ideological frameworks.
Likewise, Vietnam has participated in multiple multilateral military exercises led by the U.S., including the ASEAN-U.S. Maritime Exercise (2019) and the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (2018). Further, Vietnam received over $215 million in defense articles and security assistance from the U.S. between 2016 and 2023. Likewise, the U.S. Department of State currently maintains upward of $118 million in active military sales to the country.
Outside of its direct engagement with the U.S. in security matters, Vietnam has broken with other ASEAN states, such as Laos and Cambodia, regarding ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. While communist Laos and formerly communist Cambodia have taken up views sympathetic to Beijing regarding competing claims in the region, Vietnam has sought to maintain friendly terms with China while remaining steadfast with its territorial claims.
To be sure, Vietnam has maintained a high-level cooperative security relationship with the Philippines even as the latter’s overlapping claims with China in the South China Sea have spilled over into hostile exchanges on multiple occasions. Vietnamese and Philippine Coast Guard forces held joint exercises earlier in August to simulate search-and-rescue operations. In June, the foreign ministries of both countries expressed their willingness to cooperate through diplomatic channels to settle their disputes in the region, a move made in stark contrast to China’s increasingly assertive posturing in the area.
To Lam’s ascent to the highest position of leadership throws Vietnam’s strategic alignment into question. International stakeholders and observers will question whether his government will shift focus away from the U.S. in favor of China.
Doubling Down
Key to many commentators’ views on Lam’s future governance is his background in public security. He served in the national police force, the Vietnam People’s Public Security, for four decades after receiving an education from the country’s Central Police School and then the Vietnam People’s Security Academy. He then climbed the ladder through the Ministry of Public Security and CPV ranks before becoming Deputy Minister of Public Security in 2010 and then Minister of Public Security, Member of the Politburo, and Secretary of the Central Police Party Committee in 2016.
In his capacity as Minister of Public Security, Lam has been intimately involved in the rollout of the country’s anti-corruption campaign, which was described by the late General Secretary Trong as a “blazing furnace.” The campaign has been simultaneously described as both a method of stomping out Vietnam’s infamously widespread practice of bribery and embezzlement and an avenue for shifting the balance and distribution of political power.
The similarities between Vietnam and China in this regard are difficult to put aside. Like Xi, who made combatting corruption a key component of his platform at the beginning of his tenure as China’s paramount leader, Trong made his own anti-corruption campaign the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda. In 2013, Trong established the Central Steering Committee on Anti-Corruption and appointed himself chairman of the committee.
Regardless of intent, the impact of the campaign on the composition of Vietnam’s leadership has proven impossible to ignore. Most recently, then-President Vo Van Thuong resigned in May after what has been assumed to be his implication in the anti-corruption campaign. The CPV Central Committee stated that Thuong had committed “violations” that left a “bad mark on the reputation of the Communist Party.”
Thuong’s predecessor, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, likewise resigned in January of 2023, amid allegations of corruption. Further, several members of the CPV’s Central Committee have been implicated and removed from office.
Early into his tenure, Lam has made clear his intention to continue the campaign begun by his predecessor, vowing to leave “no stone unturned” in his efforts to eradicate corruption. Lam’s background in public security has earned him the reputation of a hardliner who is concerned with maintaining the leadership of the party over all else, not unlike that of his predecessor. He is said to have personally overseen the identification and arrest of many party members implicated in the anti-corruption campaign. During his tenure as Minister of Public Security from 2016 to 2024, Human Rights Watch reported 269 arrests of “people who had peacefully exercised their basic civil and political rights.” Specifically discussing “human rights activists and dissidents,” The 88 Project has documented at least 330 arrests between 2018 and 2023.
The respect and protection of these basic civil and political rights are a weighted matter for the U.S. when it comes to foreign policy; multiple times, the U.S. has condemned Vietnam’s human rights record, particularly on issues of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In April of 2023, a statement from the U.S. State Department said: “Vietnam is an important partner in the Indo-Pacific, and that partnership can only reach its full potential if the government of Vietnam takes concerted steps to meet its obligations and commitments under international law and improve its human rights record.”
No such pressure will come from Beijing.
Enhancing Cooperation
Lam and Xi witnessed the signing of agreements across a range of domains during the former’s visit. Among the documents signed were Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) on cooperation in various areas such as healthcare, banking, and education. Three protocols involving produce and livestock exports from Vietnam to China, one official letter between Vietnam’s Ministry of Transport and the China International Development Cooperation Agency, a certificate relating to railway cooperation to improve connectivity between the two countries and an agreement on cooperating between the stated-owned Vietnam News Agency and China’s Xinhua News Agency comprised the remaining documents.
Notably, MOUs are generally low-commitment documents that serve as expressions of intent for future cooperation rather than being legally enforceable agreements such as treaties or contracts. The decision to sign such memorandums may indicate hesitance on either party’s side to engage in legally binding agreements with the other or may simply reflect a plan for cooperation with pre-planned steps not made in haste.
A New Direction?
Though many observers expect Lam to maintain the course charted by his predecessor, anxiety remains as to how a leader who built his career in public security and policing will approach domestic policy, particularly if the anti-corruption campaign's effects on the economy continue to make themselves pronounced. A decisive turn toward repressive management of internal affairs may strain relations between Vietnam and the U.S., but the notion that Vietnam could ever be made into a proper, reliable member of any anti-China coalition has never been realistic.
It goes without saying that Vietnam and China share an ideological commonality in being two of only five communist states in the world. During meetings with Lam during the August visit, Xi repeatedly emphasized the importance of the two countries working to advance the “world socialist cause,” and a joint statement issued during the visit was heavily focused on the building of a “Vietnam-China community with a shared future.”
This is further emphasized when the statement affirms outright that the two countries will work to “jointly protect political security and regime security.” The statement continues to include “countering interference, combating separatism, preventing ‘colour revolution.’”
Though Vietnam stands to gain from engagement with Washington in terms of economic growth and low-level defense cooperation, its ties to China, despite multiple points of conflict, run too deeply to be discounted. These ties date back to the colonial era and have been maintained by CPV leadership for decades, despite strong anti-Chinese sentiment in Vietnam and continued testing of the relationship by Chinese maneuvers in the South China Sea.
Even as Vietnam has worked to establish productive relations with the U.S. and has drawn the ire of China on regional issues on multiple occasions, its top diplomatic priority remains and will continue to be China.
Red Ties
In China, Vietnam finds, first and foremost, a partner whose respect for the legitimacy of the Vietnamese regime is understood. Lam's visit to China underscored the enduring strength of Vietnam-China relations. Despite recent developments in U.S.-Vietnam relations, Lam's meetings with China's top leadership and the agreements signed during his visit highlight that Vietnam's strategic position remains closely aligned with Beijing.
While Vietnam continues to engage with the U.S. and other nations to diversify its diplomatic and economic ties, the historical, ideological, and geopolitical connections between Vietnam and China ensure that the relationship between these two communist states will remain a cornerstone of Vietnam's foreign policy.
Lam's leadership may bring new dynamics to this relationship, but the notion that Vietnam might pivot away from China in favor of the U.S. is, as his visit demonstrates, largely misguided.
Editorial contributions by Rachael Rhine Milliard.