The identity of Vietnam as a nation has been defined by multiple struggles against China throughout the course of history. In the Vietnamese history textbooks, there have been ample references to heroic and patriotic resistance against the invaders of the north (China). Since the 2nd century B.C, Vietnam had been dominated by different Chinese feudal dynasties for more than a thousand years. Consequently, such a dark time under the Chinese yoke, or “a millennium of grievance,” created a deep sense of insecurity and served as an undying reminder of the danger from China.
As a land power bordering a body of water, Vietnam has many times prioritized addressing land threats before looking eastward. Even the Vietnamese term for “country” (dat nuoc) suggests so: it is no surprise that the word “land” (dat) comes before “water” (nuoc). Vietnam’s strategic thinking is conditioned by history and geography. The combination of the asymmetry of power and geographical proximity created a permanent concern among Vietnamese political elites about the Northern threat.
Party-to-party ties are rather unique to Vietnam-China relationship. Regular high-level party leaders’ meetings are ceremonious, but they served as venues for communicating strategic reassurance. Three decades after the Cold War, Vietnam and China diverged in their worldviews. Though the two ruling communist parties maintained a range of dialogues, ideology mattered less and less in the foreign affairs of both Vietnam and China, and in their relations.
Just a few days after police general Tô Lâm is confirmed as the Vietnamese Communist Party’s new General Secretary, he visited his Chinese counterpart in Beijing where, according to Chinese media, Xi Jinping confirmed the ‘strategic significance’ of the bilateral relationship. The elevation of Tô Lâm as Vietnam’s unchallenged party boss will go down well in Beijing for two reasons. First, it mirrors Xi Jinping’s obsession with “security” interests – in this case national security rather than the party power security in Vietnam. It mirrors the dominance of one individual with a hold on power strengthened by anti-corruption campaigns which enable the removal of rivals.
Likewise, rhetoric about economic growth and the role of the private sector is not matched by a reality where fear of falling victim to an anti-corruption campaign limits risk-taking and cooperation between public and private sectors. Second, Lam’s focus on ideological purity and solidarity between their respective Communist parties requires setting aside the South China Sea issues at a time when China is maintaining constant quasi-military pressure on the Philippines. Lâm’s cozying up to Beijing with the recent 19 Aug 2024 state visit, just after his elevation provided both parties with the opportunity to pretend that China’s claims on Vietnam are not as outrageous as those on the Philippines.
China does not do alliances in the traditional sense, preferring to conduct relations through a variety of partnerships. Beijing began articulating its policy of “partnership, not alliance (结伴不结盟)” before the end of the Cold War, but partnership diplomacy gathered speed in the 1990s. By eschewing alliances, China could reap the benefits of friendly economic cooperation with everyone while avoiding entanglements. This non-confrontational approach has been incorporated into the Chinese narrative of its “peaceful rise (和平掘起).”
In previous times, Vietnam put lives on the line to defend its islands and fishing fleets. For now, this is no longer necessary, with China seemingly turning a blind eye to Vietnam’s intensifying land reclamation in the Spratly Islands. It is a reversal of the days of Filipino President Gloria Arroyo-Macapagal when Vietnamese diplomats complained bitterly about the Philippines’ lack of willingness to challenge China’s incursions, a policy only reversed when Benigno S. Aquino III’s administration took the matter to international arbitration – and won decisively although his successor, Rodrigo S. Duterte, then declined to protest China’s aggressions into Philippine territory. China-Vietnam hostility has deep historical roots. It will not go away. However, keeping quiet about it will certainly benefit Beijing, and presumably also Mr Lâm for the time being.
Though some ideological conservatives in Hanoi still preferred some form of socialist solidarity, Vietnamese nationalist elites increasingly realized that China’s foreign policy is guided by its national interests, not by ideology. Though courting China ideologically, Vietnam did not acquiesce in its claims to sovereignty over the Paracels and Spratly islands and did not accommodate China’s demand to drop the Paracels from the agenda of the joint working group on “maritime-related issues”.
With China showing little tolerance for vessels violating their arbitrary fishing ban, many Vietnamese fishermen are being forced to abandon their traditional fishing grounds and sail further south. This is the root cause for increasing Chinese illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities in the region. With the increased harassment of China, Vietnam has had to cancel several oil and gas development projects, with the compensation for foreign companies totalling close to $1 billion.
In addition to the regular and normalised Chinese misconduct in the maritime domain, the recent epic drought that decimated the winter-spring rice crop, Mekong Delta farmers are helpless but to blame Chinese upstream water diversions and dams, rather than climate change, for an unprecedented bout of saline intrusion. Farmers are acutely aware that the customary rhythm of the seasons has been disrupted. These are nervous times in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Domestically, under the guise of paying high-paid data entry operator jobs, thousands of gullible Vietnamese have been entrapped in Chinese-run cybercrime operations operated in Cambodia’s coastal town: Sihanoukville. Scores of Vietnamese victims, who suffered under these brutal Chinese criminal syndicates, jumped into the water of the Binh Di River along the Cambodia-Vietnam border and swam for their lives, a moment that was captured on video and has since been shared widely online.
Vietnam-China relations has shown complexity that it cannot be explained by any single theory of international relations. In the post-Cold War, such relations have evolved from hostility to friendship, from economic estrangement to interconnectedness, and then from camaraderie to increased antagonism. Though China and Vietnam are having no interest in reverting to “teeth and lips” relations, Beijing does not want Vietnam to move far away from the Chinese orbit. Any military bases of other powers on Vietnamese soil would complicate China’s defence calculations. In the modern world, Vietnam’s security is not as dismay as in the past as it had choices to balance against the Chinese power.
Beijing’s manipulation of economic power for political ends exacerbated Hanoi’s concerns about its vulnerabilities and economic dependency at a time of economic openness. After all, neither ideology nor economic interdependence can constrain China’s geopolitical ambition. The desire to control the sea beyond the country’s coastline was strong, as the national history of Vietnam showed that, “ten out of fourteen invasions into the country were sea-borne inroads.”
Vietnam’s long-term goal is to recover what it views as lost territories in the Sea. It remains intriguing to many regional watchers how two ideologically similar and economically knotted neighbours had failed to find solutions to their disagreements over an array of remote, small, and barren features in the middle of the sea between them. Thus, warming of Sino-Vietnamese “bonhomie” will soon awake the new Vietnamese leader Tô Lâm that he is actually hugging a wolf masqueraded in cute panda’ attire.