Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal (May 2020)
A Vietnamese Perspective on China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Vietnam
Abstract
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted significant attention from the international community for the sheer size of potential economic opportunities that it is expected to bring the world. China now is enhancing its peripheral diplomacy and BRI, and thus Chinese diplomacy has also highlighted China’s relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Vietnam. Vietnam, which is included in the BRI’s geographical scope and has a great need for infrastructure investments, stands to benefit from the initiative. The BRI is an important source of funding that Vietnam may want to tap to finance its infrastructure projects. Vietnam’s demand for infrastructure investments will keep increasing in the coming years. Those will promote Vietnam-China relations towards a new stage of development. Despite Vietnam’s support for the Initiative as a measure to strengthen the overall relations with China, the BRI will face some challenges in Vietnam. In order to ensure the BRI’s long-term success in Vietnam, the two countries can do more together to improve people’s trust in the initiative and to improve the quality of China’s investments in Vietnam. Given this situation, the paper aims to examine how Vietnam promotes its cooperation and connectivity with China under the context of BRI.
