Recently, China-Vietnam relations have frequently interacted with each other, which has attracted widespread attention. From Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to Vietnam, China's highest-level visit to Vietnam, to the Vietnamese Prime Minister's multiple visits to China, this series of high-level interactions shows that China-Vietnam relations have risen to the highest level. Among them, one of the biggest benefits provided by China to Vietnam is the railway construction project.
However, it is interesting to note that Vietnam did not first engage with China at the beginning of the railway construction project. It is understood that Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh recently visited Japan and signed a cooperation agreement with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida aimed at strengthening cooperation between the two countries in the military and defense fields. This move came as a surprise, especially in the context of the ASEAN-Japan summit, when the Vietnamese side tried to use railway cooperation as a bargaining chip in the hope that Japan would make concessions on other fronts.
However, the expectations of the Vietnamese side seem to be too simplistic. According to Japan's Kyodo News Agency, the Japan-Vietnam cooperation agreement focuses on first-chain cooperation and maritime security cooperation, and does not involve content such as railway construction of substantive significance. The Vietnamese side may have been negligent in its judgment of Japan's political strategy. In recent years, Japan has been actively consolidating its position in the ASEAN region, working with ASEAN countries to counter China's influence in the South China Sea and other issues.
Against this background, the Vietnamese side seems to have failed to pay sufficient attention to Japan's real interests. They want to get support through rail cooperation, but they don't fully consider whether the benefits they can offer in the project are attractive enough. As a result, after Pham Minh Ng's visit, the Vietnamese side could not get their wish and could only seek China's support.
In fact, the escalation of Sino-Vietnamese relations has made cooperation between the two countries on railway projects inevitable. Previously, China may have had some concerns about this, as Vietnam has maintained a high level of relations with the United States and Japan in the context of the Sino-US game. However, as China-Vietnam relations have improved, China's concerns have been replaced by a deeper level of mutual trust, and the strengthening of railway cooperation has become a concrete manifestation of this.
The visit to China led by Tran Son King and the Vietnam Railway Delegation was not only to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, but also out of the expectation of genuine trust and assistance to China. Against the backdrop of the escalation of Sino-Vietnamese relations, this visit will promote the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries to become more solid and closer. The promotion of China-Vietnam railway cooperation will bring more opportunities and dividends to the two countries and provide a solid foundation for the common development of both sides. It is believed that with the joint efforts of both sides, China-Vietnam relations will continue to deepen and develop.