Final month, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh introduced plans to upgrade the railway line connecting Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan province to Vietnam’s port at Haiphong on the Gulf of Tonkin, as part of Beijing’s Belt and Highway Initiative (BRI). The assertion adopted the elevation of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship to a complete strategic partnership and coincided with plans for elevated funding, engagement, and cooperation with different U.S.-aligned states within the Indo-Pacific and preceded high-profile diplomatic engagements with China.
On the floor, the proposal seems to stem naturally from Vietnam’s hedging method to overseas coverage; essentially, the latest pleasant interactions with the U.S. and its allies have to be accompanied by overtures and deference to China. Given its implications, nonetheless, there are indicators that this specific venture is probably not a Vietnamese balancing initiative however somewhat a coerced response prompted by China.
The railway line in query begins in Kunming, crosses the border at Hekou-Lao Cai, and runs by way of Vietnam’s capital Hanoi earlier than terminating on the port metropolis of Haiphong. The railway, which was constructed by the French within the early twentieth century, intersects with the newly accomplished Fanchenggang-Dongxing railway, the primary high-speed railway hyperlink to Vietnam’s border, which runs from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Area to the present Vietnamese rail community. Taken on their very own, these initiatives merely characterize efforts to reinforce connectivity and commerce between the 2 nations. It’s notable, nonetheless, that the railway runs by way of Vietnam’s resource-rich heartland and connects to the one transportation strains main out of Vietnam’s extraordinarily worthwhile Nui Phao mine.
Regardless of being considerably smaller in land space than the highest producer China, Vietnam has the world’s second-largest reserves of rare-earth metals and the third-largest reserves of tungsten, each of that are very important to the manufacturing of know-how and armaments. Vietnam’s wealth of assets has attracted the eye of the U.S. and its allies, presenting a substitute for dependency on China. The USA imports as much as 74 percent of its uncommon earth metals and 40 percent of its tungsten from China, and the U.S., Europe, and Japan devour over half of the world’s provide of tungsten, however solely producing round 5 percent. It’s no shock that a lot of Vietnam’s latest engagements with the United States and its allies have concerned discussions of business funding.
The Nui Phao mine specifically, holds worth that can’t be understated. Along with being one of many world’s largest tungsten mines, with estimated reserves of 66 million metric tons, it’s a polymetallic deposit, succesful additionally of yielding vital portions of fluorspar, copper, and bismuth. Such a mine is uncommon, and guarantees income that would allow Vietnam to rival China’s dominance within the mining sector. Naturally, it will be in China’s favor to coordinate with Vietnam to make the most of this chance, and the proposed railway is a approach of China’s authorities to facilitate these plans.
Basically, financial cooperation between Vietnam and China has not yielded the progress that China needs, attributable to reservations that Vietnam holds in the direction of the BRI. Vietnam is extremely cautious of leverage traps and financial dependence on China, which explains its resistance to joining BRI initiatives up thus far. Its seeming acceptance of the Kunming-Haiphong railway venture as part of the BRI raises questions as to why Vietnam has departed from its conventional stance in the direction of the Chinese language initiative. Extra intriguing is the truth that when the proposal for this precise venture was first unveiled in 2019, Vietnam balked on the initiative, citing plenty of financial and safety considerations. Vietnam’s Cat Linh-Ha Dong elevated metro rail line in Hanoi is the only project to have acquired BRI loans and has not been labelled as part of BRI. Even when Vietnam has had a change of coronary heart, the timing of this announcement is peculiar, layered between essential high-level engagements with China, the U.S., and U.S. allies similar to Japan.
Whereas Vietnam’s cultivation of multinational partnerships will increase its freedom of motion, Vietnam’s true stage of company is in the end dictated by China. China stays the most important financial participant in Vietnam and stays able to punishing Vietnam if Vietnam is unable to reassure China that it isn’t overstepping the boundaries of autonomy set by China. It was for that reason that Vietnam introduced that it was pursuing complete strategic partnerships with Japan, Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore after it elevated the U.S. to that stage, looking for to allay China’s fears over Vietnam shifting too carefully into Washington’s orbit.
Visits to Vietnam by China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and Overseas Minister Wang Yi in latest months have emphasised the significance that China locations on growing the Kunming-Haiphong line. President Xi Jinping prioritized the venture and cooperation on uncommon earth steel extraction, even tabling the South China Sea disputes throughout his historic visit to Vietnam this week, his first to the nation since 2017. Whereas agreements on critical minerals and uncommon earths have been deferred, two memoranda of understanding have been signed on cross-border rail growth, together with help for such growth.
Beijing is prepared and prepared to supply grants for rail connections, however the quantity of help and phrases of any potential loans are nonetheless unclear. At present, Vietnam has restricted room to maneuver, having used up all of its autonomy reaching out to the U.S. and its allies. It’s now China’s flip to check the bounds of Vietnam’s deference.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal, and don’t mirror the official place of the US Army Academy, Division of the Military, or Division of Protection.
