Vietnam, explained.
To Lam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President of Vietnam, speaks at the former site of Nanning Yucai School, in Guangxi University in Nanning, China, 17 April 2026 (Dai Tianfang/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Vietnam cooperates with its giant neighbour and resists it simultaneously – that calculated ambiguity is getting harder to sustain.
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Vietnam’s cooperation and struggle bind with ChinaVietnam’s cooperation and struggle bind with China
Three Chinese maritime militia vessels under the People’s Armed Forces reportedly conducted an intrusive patrol (Opens in new window) earlier this month within 60–65 nautical miles of Ly Son Island, off the central coast of Vietnam. This incident came barely three months after a state visit (Opens in new window) by Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary and President To Lam to Beijing, which was billed as consolidating bilateral ties and contributing to regional stability.
At first glance, it is difficult to reconcile the two episodes. However, they are examples of Vietnam’s strategy of cooperation and struggle (Opens in new window) at its finest – an approach that dates back to 2003, when the Party formally revised its threat assessment to acknowledge that relations with other states, including China, could contain both cooperative and competitive elements simultaneously.
But Vietnam’s challenge is becoming more acute.
This may leave Vietnam’s leadership with little choice but to respond more assertively.
Vietnam’s approach has worked for more than two decades. The 2003 revision marked a decisive shift away from an ideological framework towards a more pragmatic, interest-driven calculus. Around the same time, Beijing’s preference (Opens in new window) was to set aside South China Sea disputes in favour of deeper economic engagement.
In 2011, Hanoi and Beijing signed the Agreement on Basic Principles Guiding the Settlement of Sea-Related Issues (Opens in new window), which placed the health of the overall relationship above specific disagreements, including those in the South China Sea. The agreement enshrined a sequencing logic of tackling easier problems first while deferring the most intractable sovereignty disputes to a slower-moving track. This effectively quarantined the thorniest issues and allowed both sides to build robust political and economic ties.
The cooperative dimension of the relationship is most visible in the highest-level exchanges. In April 2025, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary and President Xi Jinping visited Hanoi for the fourth time during his tenure, which coincided with the 75th anniversary of China–Vietnam diplomatic relations. The visit produced 45 agreements (Opens in new window), including on rail links, supply chain resilience, and digital economy initiatives.
In return, To Lam’s state visit to China in April 2026 was his first since being elected president, with another batch of 32 agreements (Opens in new window). Ministries of Public Security established a ministerial-level hotline. This followed the first ministerial-level "3+3" strategic dialogue (Opens in new window) held in Hanoi, bringing together the foreign affairs, defence, and public security ministers of both countries.
Economic ties reinforce this cooperative architecture. Two-way trade (Opens in new window) reached a record US$256 billion in 2025, and Chinese investment has grown in tandem. By the end of 2024 (Opens in new window), China had 5,111 registered projects in Vietnam worth US$31 billion, making it Vietnam’s sixth-largest source of foreign direct investment. This reflects the structural interdependence now binding the two economies, regardless of maritime frictions.
Beyond the South China Sea, defence cooperation has also reached new heights. In March 2026, the annual Vietnam–China Border Defence Friendship Exchange (Opens in new window) marked its 10th anniversary. That same month, the two navies conducted their 40th joint patrol (Opens in new window) and training mission in the Gulf of Tonkin, which included live-fire elements during anti-piracy drills. In July 2025, the two sides held their first joint army training exercise (Opens in new window). Vietnamese state media have often praised these exchanges as a sign of solidarity and a contribution to building the China–Vietnam community with a shared future.
The island of Southwest Cay in the South China Sea, controlled by Vietnam, where it is known as Dao Song Tu Tay (Ted Aljibe/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet the struggle dimension has sharpened across the same period. The clearest example is China’s dredging and construction (Opens in new window) at Antelope Reef in the Paracels. Beijing began the work in October 2025, and satellite imagery shows (Opens in new window) dozens of dredgers and new structures. These suggest Antelope Reef could become China’s largest artificial island feature in the Paracels and potentially in the entire South China Sea.
Hanoi has protested (Opens in new window) formally, the Foreign Ministry asserting that any foreign activity in the Hoang Sa archipelago, including at Antelope Reef, conducted without Vietnam’s permission, is entirely illegal and invalid. However, Vietnam’s first protest did not come until March 2026, months after dredging began, illustrating Hanoi’s habitual restraint so as not to derail the wider relationship.
For its part, Vietnam has continued its own reclamation activity in the Spratlys. Since early 2025, it has reclaimed land on all 21 features it occupies, with satellite imagery (Opens in new window) showing new infrastructure on several reefs and a total of 216 hectares added. Vietnam appears not to view this as contradicting the 2002 ASEAN–China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (Opens in new window), since its reclamation is confined to features it already occupies rather than settling presently uninhabited ones.
The dense web of high-level dialogues, economic interdependence, and defence-to-defence channels gives Vietnam and China strong incentives to keep disputes contained and prevent any single flashpoint from derailing the broader partnership. But the Vietnamese public now has far greater access to information than at any point in the past two decades, making it difficult for Hanoi to manage the narrative around Chinese assertiveness – or to under-react without domestic cost. This may leave Vietnam’s leadership with little choice but to respond more assertively.
Whether Hanoi can manage this shift without triggering a broader deterioration in ties will be a test of the durability of its long-standing approach of cooperation and struggle in managing relations with China.
About the author
Bich Tran
Dr Bich Tran (pronounced “Bik Trahn“) is a Research Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS).
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