ASEAN Beat | Diplomacy | Southeast Asia

The Myth of Vietnam’s Tilt Toward China

Analyzing Hanoi’s foreign policy from the perspective of its relationship with a single major power misses the forest for the trees.

China’s President Xi Jinping (left) walks with To Lam, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, in Hanoi, Vietnam, Apr. 14, 2025.

Vietnamese President and Communist Party chief To Lam’s recent visit to China marked his first overseas trip since the 14th National Party Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the consolidation of Vietnam’s top two positions in the hands of a single individual. The visit bears political significance as it confirms that despite the domestic political restructuring, Vietnam is continuing its non-aligned foreign policy and wants to maintain an amicable bilateral relationship in the face of the rogue use of force by the United States elsewhere.

Analysts have been quick to argue that Lam’s visit signaled a change in Vietnam’s balanced foreign policy between Washington and Beijing, as Vietnam signed major infrastructure, technology, and supply chains agreements with China. Hanoi also affirmed its support for China’s Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, Global Civilization Initiative, and Global Governance Initiative, as well as the “Community of Common Destiny” that it joined in 2023. The newly inaugurated China-Vietnam “3 3” strategic dialogue between their respective ministries of foreign affairs, defense, and public security seems to drive home the point that Vietnam is moving closer to China.

However, this conclusion is premature. These analysts have committed a reductionist error in understanding Vietnam’s foreign policy. Vietnam’s relationship with China is rarely only about the two countries, because Hanoi’s dense web of partnerships requires constant calibration and adjustment to ensure that its relations with other great powers are not hampered. In short, Vietnam will balance its moves with one power against another to neutralize their political significance and maintain Hanoi’s overall neutrality. To fully comprehend Vietnam’s foreign policy, we should not focus on Vietnam’s bilateral relations with a specific country but on how Vietnam, as a hub, calibrates among its spokes. Analyzing Vietnam’s foreign policy from the perspective of a single spoke misses the forest for the trees.

There are many examples of such contradictory interpretations of Hanoi’s improvement of relations with a great power, which situate those improvements in a bilateral rather than a wider, multilateral context. For instance, when Vietnam leapfrogged its relationship with the United States to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) in September 2023, some analysts concluded that Hanoi was “tilting toward” the United States. Just three months later, Vietnam joined China’s “Community of Common Destiny” during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Hanoi. This time, some watchers considered the move as Hanoi’s endorsement of Beijing’s vision in the great-power competition.

Both takes were reductive. When taking into account Hanoi’s moves with the United States and China, Vietnam apparently wanted to neutralize the political significance of the upgrade with Washington by participating in China’s initiative. Hanoi’s intent to manage its various “spokes” is evident, as it swiftly upgraded ties with Japan, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and the United Kingdom to the CSP level after September 2023. Before 2023, Hanoi had only four CSPs–with China, Russia, India, and South Korea.

Another example is Lam’s visit to the United States to attend President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace meeting in February, shortly after his confirmation as CPV general secretary for the 2026-2031 term. The timing of the visit, his first overseas trip after the Party Congress in January, once again raised the question of Vietnam’s alignment, since aside from Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam’s top leaders typically picked China as the destination of their first trip to a major power after being appointed. However, the political significance of Lam’s U.S. visit was easily countered by his August 2024 visit to China, after succeeding former General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who died in office in July. And by visiting China last month, shortly after acquiring the top two posts of Vietnam’s political system, Lam elevated the symbolic significance of the tradition.

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