Bamboo diplomacy no more? Vietnam’s growing comfort with China

China-Vietnam ties are getting ever tighter, strengthening a trend that started in 2024. Vietnam Communist Party chief To Lam made a visit to China on 14 April in his first trip abroad after assuming — for the second time, but now more permanently — the post of state president on 7 April.

Vietnam sways like bamboo in shifting winds — Lam’s first foreign destinations after securing a second term as party chief in January were Laos and Cambodia, and he also attended the inaugural meeting of US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace in February. But Hanoi is removing some of the guardrails it built to protect its “bamboo diplomacy”, especially in relations with Beijing. This “fenceless bamboo” approach will negatively affect Vietnam’s security and autonomy going forward.

At the core of China-Vietnam relations is a clash between the fundamental interests of a great power and those of a frontline state in great power competition. A win-win relationship is possible only if both countries are committed to Vietnam’s neutrality between China and a rival great power.

Learning from its war with China in the 1970s and 1980s, Vietnam has vowed not to take sides in great power competition. To balance its recent rapprochement with the US, and in pursuit of its economic dream, Vietnam has further accommodated China in ways that increase its vulnerabilities to Beijing. As China seeks to draw Vietnam closer to its orbit, the situation is likely to tilt towards Chinese dominance rather than a genuine win-win outcome.

Vietnam and China boast one of the longest standing relationships in the world. If the millennia-long history of their relations has any constant, it is the double fact that China has always been a great power and Vietnam has always lain at China’s southern frontier. These historical constants define China’s central interest in relations with Vietnam: keeping the southern frontier within the Chinese orbit.

For centuries, the fate of nations inhabiting what is now Vietnam has hinged on their ability to leverage their position on the frontier of a pulsating Chinese empire. However, the advent of other great powers — the European, Japanese and American — since the 16th century has brought a transforming element into the equation. Vietnam has become a prize in great power competition, offering the Vietnamese more choices and strong incentives to play the great powers off against each other, to swing between them or to side with the most supportive among them.

Hanoi mastered the art of navigating the Sino-Soviet split to gain the support of both China and the Soviet Union against the US during the Vietnam War. After the war however, its efforts to resist Beijing and Moscow’s pressure to take their respective sides resulted in the alienation of both.

Unable to stay neutral between China, the Soviet Union and the US — while facing deadly attacks from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and a looming economic crisis at home — Vietnam officially joined the Soviet bloc in 1978. In 1979, China invaded Vietnam to “teach Hanoi a lesson” after the latter invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge regime. Ironically, the parties ruling these countries shared the same name, “Communist Party”, and the same ideology, Marxism-Leninism.

If the Chinese invasion of 1979 did not teach Vietnam a lesson, the ensuing decade did. After the Cold War, Vietnam enshrined the three “nos” in its foreign policy doctrine, which were extended to four in the late 2010s. According to this doctrine, Vietnam will not join any military alliances, not side with one country against another, not allow foreign military bases on its soil, and not use force or threaten to use force in international relations. After the outbreak of the Ukraine war, these “four nos” were elevated to “guiding maxims” of Vietnam’s national security strategy.

While clinging to the four nos, Vietnam pursues closer ties with all great powers. The idea is captured in the metaphor of “bamboo diplomacy”, popularised by the late General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong. Under Trong’s leadership, Vietnam and the US raised their ties to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in September 2023.

“Bamboo diplomacy” required a balancing act in relations with the great powers.

Thus, three months after the double upgrade of US-Vietnam ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, Vietnam ended its years-long resistance to Beijing’s request to join China’s “community with a shared future”, becoming the eighth country in ASEAN to do so. This agreement did not remain just lip service. Soon, the inclination it set in motion broke a pattern that had emerged after the 2014 oil rig crisis, which was triggered by China’s unilateral deployment of the giant drilling platform HYSY-981 inside what Vietnam considered its legitimate exclusive economic zone.

Between 2014 and 2023, Vietnam pursued an anti-corruption campaign in domestic politics and a cautious approach to China in foreign policy. Due to the anti-graft drive and a prevailing mistrust of China, Vietnam only paid lip service to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and stopped short of approving major Chinese-financed projects, which were suspected of deepening not only Vietnam’s reliance on China but also corruption.

But Vietnam’s grand strategy underwent a turning point in 2024. Succeeding Trong as Communist Party chief, To Lam proclaimed a “new era” in which the economy was expected to grow at double-digit rates annually. Replacing the “fighting corruption first” mindset of the previous decade, this “economic growth first” attitude had tremendous implications for Vietnam’s China policy. 

During Lam’s trip to China in August 2024, Vietnam pledged to accelerate the construction of major railroads connecting the Chinese border with the Vietnamese port of Haiphong — projects that the Vietnam-China Joint Statement issued during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vietnam in December 2023 put in the “study” stage. In February 2025, Hanoi approved US$8.3 billion of Chinese loans for one of these rail links. Also in 2025, Vietnam ceased to be one of the four Asian countries — the other three being India, Japan and Taiwan — that excluded Chinese equipment from their 5G networks as its major telecom operators signed, or were in talks of signing, 5G supply contracts with China’s Huawei and ZTE.

Security concerns had motivated Vietnam’s resistance to such rail links and 5G deals. Now, the need to balance relationships between rivalling great powers and to supercharge the economy appeared to trump worries about national security.

But Vietnam has “overlearned” its historical lesson and overcompensated for its independent foreign policy. While committed to a middle position between competing great powers, Vietnam can still seriously prepare for the possibility of an armed conflict with China to defend its independence and autonomy. Such preparation must include, among other measures, minimising Vietnam’s exposure to possible Chinese exploitation, so as to demonstrate to China that its efforts to keep Vietnam under its shadow would be futile.

Yet Hanoi’s recent accommodation to Beijing has undermined such preparation. The railways are likely to widen both China’s lead in Vietnam’s foreign trade and Vietnam’s trade deficit with China. They would also raise the stakes for Beijing to keep Hanoi within the Chinese orbit. The 5G equipment would give China more control of Vietnam’s cyber networks.

All these connections would make Vietnam more vulnerable to China and become Vietnam’s liabilities in dealing with China. While they give Vietnam more reasons to avoid a conflict with China, they encourage China to maximise its demands. As China is keen on getting Vietnam closer to its side, this situation will deepen Vietnam’s dependence on China. If not reversed, this propensity will neutralise Vietnam’s efforts to maintain its “strategic autonomy” and ensure Beijing’s overwhelming influence over Hanoi.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of DKI APCSS, the US Department of War, or the US Government.

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