Antony Blinken Tries to Draw Vietnam Closer, With an Eye on China

“We’re advancing together a free, open, connected, prosperous, secure and resilient Indo-Pacific region,” Mr. Blinken said before picking up a shovel for the ceremonial groundbreaking of an expected six years of construction. 

Vietnam has become a more prominent destination for Western companies looking to move some of their manufacturing out of China. U.S. heavyweights such as Inc. and Corp. have expanded operations in the country in recent years. Others like Inc. have increased purchases from factories in Vietnam, attracted by the country’s cheap labor and business-friendly government.

As a result, although the U.S. in 2017 pulled out of a regional trade agreement meant to tie the American and Vietnamese business communities together more closely, commerce has still blossomed between the two countries. Trade between them reached around $140 billion in 2022, up from $60 billion in 2018, according to U.S. government figures. 

China remains Vietnam’s largest trade partner and is the dominant source of raw materials for its factories. In October, Nguyen Phu Trong, the powerful general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, visited President Xi Jinping in China, where the two pledged to deepen their partnership and promote the “unceasing development of socialism.”

Political analysts say Hanoi is wary of alienating Beijing, but that it is also concerned about its giant neighbor’s growing military might. Vietnam faces pressure from China in the South China Sea, where the countries have overlapping territorial and maritime claims.  

“Vietnam is trying to do many things at the same time,” to balance against threats posed by China, said Bich Tran, a post-doctoral fellow at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. That includes modernizing its military and deepening defense cooperation with the U.S., Japan and India, she said. 

In December, Vietnam held an arms expo that it said was aimed at diversifying where it sourced weapons. Before 2014, almost all of Vietnam’s arms imports came from Russia. Since then, Vietnam has for the first time in decades bought some U.S. equipment, including reconnaissance drones and electronics.

In 2016, Washington lifted a ban on lethal weapons sales to the country and has since twice transferred coast guard cutters to Vietnam.

Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region and a former ambassador in Hanoi, said in a briefing ahead of Mr. Blinken’s visit that it would “obviously be in Vietnam’s interests and also would conform to U.S. law…to see partners like Vietnam diversify their defense purchases away from Russia.”

Washington normalized relations with Vietnam in 1995 and officials have spent decades negotiating with Hanoi over the new eight-acre embassy compound, which is expected to cost $1.2 billion, with terraced landscaping inspired by the country’s rice paddy fields, the State Department said. 

“I’ve been instructing relevant authorities to make every effort in expediting these endeavors,” Vietnam Prime Minister

Mr. Blinken is visiting Vietnam on his way to a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, a club that doesn’t include China and expelled Russia after it seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Mr. Blinken is set to travel on Sunday to Japan’s mountain resort town of Karuizawa where the ministers will discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, food and energy trade issues, efforts to counter China’s assertive stance toward the Pacific region and nuclear nonproliferation, which is a focus of this year’s G7 leader, Japan.

Write to William Mauldin at [email protected] and Jon Emont at [email protected]