National Assembly (NA) Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue's upcoming visit to China is expected to create a spillover effect, creating a strong motivation and momentum for the development of the relations between Vietnam and China.

This will be the first visit to China by Hue as the NA Chairman, and also the first direct meeting between the heads of the two countries' legislatures after the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC)

The visit is taking place in the context that the two countries celebrated the 73rd anniversary of their diplomatic relations and 15 years of bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in 2023.

Vietnam and China are close neighbours sharing many cultural and social similarities. Over the past 74 years, experiencing ups and downs, the Vietnam-China relations have developed steadily with the main flow being friendship and cooperation.

The friendship nurtured by generations of leaders of the two countries has become a shared asset of the two peoples, contributing to maintaining a stable and healthy trend of cooperation, bringing practical benefits to both countries.

Particularly, since Vietnam and China normalised their relations in 1991, they have enjoyed thriving partnership across all fields of politics, economy, culture, and defence and security.

In 2008, the two sides decided to establish a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, the highest partnership framework with the widest and deepest contents in Vietnam's relations with other countries. China is the first country to share this partnership with Vietnam.

Over the past 15 years, the two Parties and countries have maintained healthily and stably growing ties with high political trust.

Commenting on the relations between Vietnam and China recently, Vietnamese Ambassador to China Pham Sao Mai said that with the joint efforts of both sides, the relationship between the two Parties and the two countries has developed positively and reaped many important achievements in all fields.

Leaders of the two Parties, States, Governments, parliaments, and fronts have regularly maintained meetings and exchanges, contributing to strengthening political trust and reinforcing the political foundation for the ties between the two Parties and countries, he said.

Especially, the historical visits by CPV General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong to China in October 2022 and CPC General Secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping to Vietnam in December 2023 created strong momentum for the two Parties and countries to continuously reinforce and promote their neighbourliness and comprehensive cooperation.

The outstanding feature of meetings between high-ranking leaders of the two countries is that they affirm that they take each other as the priority in their external relations.

At multilateral forums, especially ASEAN and the UN, Vietnam and China have actively coordinated with each other, promoting peace, stability, and cooperation in the region and the world.

Meanwhile, economic, trade and investment cooperation has been deepened and made more substantive, becoming a bright spot in the two countries' relations recently.

China continuously remains Vietnam's largest trade partner and second largest export market, while Vietnam is China's largest trade partner among the ASEAN member countries, and China's fifth largest trade partner in the world after the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Russia.

Two-way trade reached 133.09 billion USD in 2020, 165.9 billion USD in 2021, 175 billion USD in 2022, and 171.9 billion USD in 2023, according to Vietnam customs data. In the first two months of 2024, the figure hit 27.3 billion USD.

Vietnam and China shared many bilateral cooperation agreements as well as multilateral deals such as the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). China is promoting the process to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

Since the two sides implemented commitments of the ACFTA, China has reduced tax rates for more than 8,000 products imported from Vietnam, including farm produce and fresh fruits.

Regarding investment, as of March 2024, China had invested 27.64 billion USD in Vietnam with 4,418 valid projects, ranking sixth among the 145 countries and territories investing in Vietnam. In 2023 alone, China invested 4.47 billion USD in Vietnam, an increase of 77.5%, ranking 4th among the foreign investors, but leading in the number of new projects. In the first quarter of 2024, China led in the number of the new FDI projects in Vietnam, accounting for 27.8%. The two sides have also actively coordinated to settle major problems in a number of previous economic cooperation projects.

Cooperation in culture, education, tourism, and people-to-people exchange, especially contacts between the youth of the two countries, has been promoted, helping enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the two Parties, countries, and peoples. So far, nearly 60 cities and provinces across Vietnam have set up friendship relations with Chinese localities.

In terms of tourism, before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, China had led in the number of tourists to Vietnam for many years. On average, for every three foreign visitors to Vietnam, there was one Chinese. Currently, China has basically restored commercial flights with Vietnam with more than 200 two-way flights between the two countries each week. China has also reissued visas for Vietnamese students and workers returning to China. In 2023, there were more than 1.7 million Chinese visitors to Vietnam. In the first three months of 2024, the figure reached nearly 890,000, an increase of 634.5% over the same period last year.

According to Ambassador Mai, NA Chairman Hue’s visit to China from April 7-12 is crucial to maintaining high-level exchanges, upholding the strategic orientations for bilateral relations, and realising the common perceptions shared by the top leaders of the two Parties and countries, affirming that Vietnam considers developing ties with China as the top priority and a strategic choice in its external policy.

The visit also aimed to concretise six major directions of cooperation between the two countries, especially promoting "higher political trust" and consolidating a "stronger social foundation", contributing to raising the level of the bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between Vietnam and China for the benefit of the two peoples, for peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world.

In addition, in the context that the relationship between the National Assembly of Vietnam and the National People's Congress (NPC) of China has been constantly consolidated and developed well, the visit is expected to contribute to deepening and improving the effectiveness of cooperation between the two legislatures, affirming the important role of the Vietnamese National Assembly's foreign affairs in the country's development./.