China’s leader, Xi Jinping, began a week of diplomacy in Southeast Asia with a visit to Vietnam on Monday, indicating China’s commitment to global trade, just after the president of the United States, Donald Trump, turns the global economy with its last movements.
Althegh Trump has stopped some rates, China was the atypical case, since it has kept 145% of tariffs in the second largest economy in the world.
XI’s visit this week allows China to show Southeast Asia is a “responsible superpower in the way that contrasts with the way in which the United States under President Donald Trump is presented to everyone,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visit to Singapow in Singapow.
China can also work to underpin their alliances and find solutions for the high commercial barrier that the United States has in Chinese exports.
“There are no winners in a commercial war, or a tariff war,” XI wrote in an editorial published in the official Vietnamese and Chinese media. “Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trade system, supply chains and industrial supply and stable supply, and the open and cooperative international environment.”
Although the XIS trip was probably planned before, it has become significantly due to the tariff fight between China and the United States, the two largest economies in the world. In Vietnam, XI will meet with the general secretary of the Vietnam Communist Party for Lamb, as well as with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
“The trip to Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia is about how China can really be isolated against Trump,” said Nguyen, noting that since Xi became the president of China in 2013, he has only visited Vietnam twice. This is his third visit and arrives only one year after he was last visited in December 2023.
The time of the visit sends a “strong political message that Southeast Asia is important for China,” said Huong Le-Tu in the International Crisis Group. She said that given the seriousness of Trump’s tariffs and, despite the 90 -day pause, the Southeast Asia nations were anxious that tariffs, if implemented, could complicate their development.
“XI’s trip is to show how China is the opposite of the coercive and selfish in the United States, there will be high expectations about what type of leadership and initiatives will come in this moment of crisis,” Shey said.
Vietnam has experience in balancing its relations with the United States and China. It is executed under a single -party communist system like China, but it has had a strong relationship with the United States in 2023, it was the only country that resorted to both US President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in China. That year also improved the United States at its highest diplomatic level, as well as China and Russia.
Vietnam was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the country who tried to decoupling their Chinese supply chains, as companies moved here. China is its largest commercial partner, and China-Vietnam’s trade increased 14.6% year-on-year in 2024, according to Chinese state media.
But the intensification of the commercial war has put Vietnam in a “very precarious situation” given the impression in the United States that Vietnam is serving a back door for Chinese products, said Giang, an analyst at the Iseas of Singapore – Yusof Ishak Institute. Vietnam had been with 46% of tariffs under the order of Trump before the 90 -day pause.
China and Vietnam have long -term real differences. They have disputes over territory at the South China Sea, and Vietnam has faced China’s coast guard, but often does not advertise the confrontations.
After Vietnam, XI is expected to go to Malaysia below and then to Cambodia.
Posted on April 14, 2025
