China plans to build 4 carriers, including nuclear: report

China plans to build four aircraft carriers in total to boost its naval power and exert its maritime claims, according to a Russian media report.

Official reports in January said that the PLA plans to have at least two aircraft carriers by 2015 or 2016 and said the country's second aircraft carrier is indeed under construction as previous unofficial reports had claimed. The country plans to build four aircraft carriers in total, the state newswire Xinhua citing a Russian weekly newspaper as reporting.

China commissioned the Liaoning, a refitted Soviet-era carrier purchased from Ukraine, in 2012. Future carriers are expected to be built domestically and take the Liaoning as their blueprint, at least initially.

The report further said construction appears to be behind schedule, but Beijing has mapped out a clear plan for its development. China's aircraft carrier program is set to be implemented in two phases, the report said, the aim being to build two carriers to establish carrier battle fleets to operate while two more advanced carriers are developed.

The report said the first two planned conventionally powered aircraft carriers may have a displacement of between 50,000 to 55,000 tonnes. The second phase may see the construction of two nuclear-powered carriers with an electromagnetic catapult system and displacement of 65,000 tonnes. These could possibly enter service by the late 2020s.

In order to carry out the second phase, the government approved a plan in February to build vessels that use nuclear power, the report said.

However, the Ministry of National Defense denied claims that it has plans to build more aircraft carriers at present.

The Communist Party secretary of Liaoning province, Wang Min, had said in January that an aircraft carrier was being built in Dalian, the port city where the Liaoning carrier was refitted. But reports related to Wang's remarks were promptly deleted from the internet for unknown reasons.

Want China Times

Vietnam anti-China activists mark 1979 war

China invaded Vietnam's northernmost provinces in February 1979, angered by Vietnam's ousting of the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

Protesters in Hanoi shout anti-China slogans in Vietnamese that means "The people has never forgotten, 1979 - 2014" during a rally marking the anniversary of the border war with China on February 16, 2014 (AFP, Hoang Dinh Nam)

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Vietnamese activists have marked the 35th anniversary of a bloody border war with China, chanting slogans, singing patriotic songs and laying flowers at a temple in central Hanoi.

The two communist countries are locked in long-standing territorial disputes over the Paracel and Spratly islands in the South China Sea, and often trade diplomatic barbs over oil exploration and fishing rights in the contested waters.

Beijing's increasingly assertive stance in the South China Sea has triggered public anger and rare protests in authoritarian Vietnam where the demonstrations are sometimes allowed to go ahead and on other occasions forcefully broken up.

China invaded Vietnam's northernmost provinces in February 1979, angered by Vietnam's ousing of the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

The short but bloody conflict claimed tens of thousands of lives on both sides and ended with Chinese forces withdrawing and both Hanoi and Beijing claiming victory.

Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia until 1989.

Although Vietnam fetes its military victories over the French and American armies, it has not arranged any official events to mark the China border war - much to the chagrin of veterans and activists.

"Vietnamese leaders may have received pressure from China, so they don't want to talk about that war. They seem to want to deny the past," Nguyen Trong Vinh, a former Vietnamese ambassador to China, told AFP.

China has long been one of Vietnam's largest trading partners, state media has said, with bilateral trade at more than $US40 billion ($A45 billion) in 2012.

On Sunday, around 100 activists tried to lay flowers at a statue of Ly Thai To - the founder of Hanoi and a nationalist figurehead - in the centre of the capital.

But dozens of people had been at the monument since early morning, playing loud music and dancing, which prevented the protesters from holding their planned ceremony - in what activists said was a counter protest.

"It was deliberate... they (authorities) hired many people," economist Nguyen Quang told AFP at the protest.

Protesters, wearing red headbands and carrying white roses with black ribbons saying "the people will never forget", then walked around the central Hoan Kiem lake.

They laid their flowers and made brief speeches at the Ngoc Son Temple - a popular tourist destination - before peacefully dispersing.

Plain clothed and uniformed police closely monitored the event but did not make any arrests.

Source AAP

Video: Vietnam's steel forces to protect its northern border with China

With a total length of border land is 4.639km, which borders China is 1.281km, complex terrain, has been through many historical events and tasks firmly safeguard national sovereignty located in the northern frontier on the role of the armed forces is extremely Vietnam glorious but also very heavy.

To accomplish that task, the Vietnam People's Army has built strong shield, elite training, modern equipment, always uphold the spirit of vigilance, ready to overcome all difficulties, hardships, ready to use all the blood and bone minds, youth and enthusiasm to fight and win all enemies.

Vietnam and China: A Dangerous Incident

A new Chinese documentary offers startling revelations from a 2007 confrontation in the South China Sea.

In early January 2014, video of a recent CCTV4 documentary “Blue Frontiers Guard” appeared online, providing a detailed history of the China Marine Surveillance (CMS) spanning from roughly 2007 up until the present. The documentary, in Chinese with English subtitles, begins with footage of an incident that occurred on June 30, 2007 between various government vessels from Vietnam and China in the disputed waters off the Paracel islands in the South China Sea. The incident, having previously gone largely unreported, is covered in tremendous detail, providing a new frame of reference for analyzing wider debates over Chinese assertiveness and the U.S. “rebalance” to the region. In addition, the video also provides a number of new insights into organizations such as CMS and its parent organization, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), including the tactics and command and control arrangements of their vessels when out at sea.

The 2007 incident apparently resulted from an attempt by a China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) survey vessel to conduct what the documentary termed “normal operations” in the waters off the Western Paracel islands beginning on June 26 of that year. Such operations are seen as anything but normal by the Vietnamese, who continue to claim the islands despite China having forcefully occupied them since 1974. Hanoi dispatched a fleet consisting largely of naval auxiliary vessels to prevent the Chinese from surveying the waters. A tense standoff ensued, culminating in reckless maneuvers by Chinese CMS vessels that led to a number of serious collisions, threatening the safety of all crews.

The Vietnamese vessels initially expelled the CNPC survey vessel from the area, and the China State Oceanic Administration (SOA) responded by promptly organizing a “rights safeguarding and law enforcement” campaign, dubbed Enforcement Action Code 626. According to the documentary, such operations exist outside the scope of regular enforcement patrols, and in addition to CMS ships already in the vicinity, SOA dispatched CMS vessels numbered 83 and 51 to the area as part of the campaign. They arrived on June 29 and formed up in “alert order,” with two ships both fore and aft on either side of the CNPC vessel, attempting to escort it back into the area for the second time.

After failing to verbally persuade the Vietnamese vessels to leave the area and allow the survey to commence, the CMS vessels first initiated a protective cordon around the CNPC ship, then began to initiate a number of offensive naval maneuvers. These maneuvers began at the lower end of the spectrum with shouldering, but subsequently escalated to direct bow to bridge ramming after the Vietnamese naval auxiliary vessel DN 29 broke through the cordon. The offensive actions were undertaken on direct orders from the CMS higher command at SOA, who commanded the captains of the vessels to intentionally initiate collisions with the Vietnamese ships. According to the Deputy Director General of SOA’s South China Sea Bureau, he and other commanding officials were “stressed” over the risk to their own crews’ safety, but nevertheless “asked them to hit other vessels.” Such offensive maneuvers are considered by senior leadership at SOA to be more effective as they preempt possible aggressive maneuvers by the other side. The same SOA official is quoted in the video as stating that “based on our years long operational experience, it is much easier to attack than to defend.” These comments serve as a strong indication that at least some ranking SOA officials have a preference for preemptive action, and that the organization itself, now in charge of the restructured China Coast Guard, could be promoting an offensive operational doctrine.

Rather than rogue or overzealous captains misinterpreting vague guidance, this incident provides conclusive evidence that the impetus for the collisions originated with very specific orders from the upper levels of the organization’s central leadership back on the Chinese mainland. The captains of the CMS vessels view such tactics as tools accessible to them, but only use them following orders from their higher command. As the captain of CMS vessel number 84 states in the video: “as long as the commander gives an order, be it hitting, ramming, or crashing, we will perform our duty resolutely.”

The tactics used in this incident are reminiscent of encounters that took place at sea between the U.S. and USSR in the early years of the Cold War. Recent encounters between the American and Chinese navies elsewhere in the South China Sea, such as that involving the USS Cowpens in December, bring such parallels into stark contrast. While some commentators stressed the role of the activities undertaken by the Cowpens in causing the incident, the 2007 incident off the Paracels begs the question of whether or not the Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) shares the same operational doctrine as its ostensibly civilian counterpart. The Cowpens incident reportedly involved the use of similar tactics, with a Chinese amphibious ship shouldering the U.S. destroyer after it was asked but failed to leave the area, eventually leading to a near collision between the two vessels. That there would be doctrinal overlap between the PLAN and SOA is a distinct possibility, with the two organizations continuing to strengthen already close ties as part of plans outlined at a recent annual meeting held between their senior officials.

The CCTV4 documentary is remarkable not only for the level of detail it provides on collisions that occurred in 2007 as a result of Cold War-era tactics, but also because it provides this information in a tone that seemingly condones and even endorses such actions. In addition to comments from SOA officials discussing the “glorious end” to the confrontation, the narrator in the documentary describes it as a “grand battle,” of which the outcome is apparently regarded as successful. The Chinese leadership has reportedly viewed similar incidents as having been settled in China’s favor, including the 2012 standoff at Scarborough Shoal, and may even have begun reformulating a maritime strategy based on the “Scarborough Model.” Yet the CCTV documentary suggests that the “Scarborough Model” is by no means new, and that the operational concept of using civilian maritime law enforcement vessels to conduct maritime “rights safeguarding” or “rights protection” campaigns has quite possibly been in the works for some time, since at least 2007.

These insights also illuminate an important point in the wider debate over what has been referred to as a more assertive or even aggressive Chinese foreign policy, and its relationship to the “pivot” or “rebalancing” policy undertaken by the Obama administration. Despite the initial signs of this newly assertive foreign policy often being traced to the 2009-2010 period, China had already begun as early as 2007 to undertake a series of provocative actions that seemed designed to assert greater authority and jurisdiction over its claims in the South China Sea. The resulting confrontation described above indicates that Chinese assertiveness not only predated the rebalance, but the Obama administration itself.

Scott Bentley is a PHD candidate at the Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA), researching maritime security strategies in Southeast Asia.

Brahmos M displayed at Defexpo 14

A model of Brahmos M was displayed at Defexpo 14. As the next generation of the current Brahmos, the missile will have reduced dimmensions, lower weight and higher speed, compared to the current BrahMos. It will be three meter shorter, with a diameter 190mm smaller, compared to the Brahmos. Its weight will be 1500kg, about 500 less than Brahmos. Optimized for airborne and tube-launched submarine applications, Brahmos M will have a range of 300 km (290 for Brahmos) and its speed will be increased to 3.5 Mach (2.8 max in Brahmos). The missile will have stealth features to reduce radar signature and will also have improved electronic counter-countermeasures. The new missile could be operational by 2017, on Indian Su-30MKI, MiG-29 and MiG-29K of the Indian Army and Naval Aviation arm.

More about DefExpo 2014: http://defense-update.com/20140207_defexpo-2014-photo-report-part-ii.html

Document: Vietnam declared victory over China's invasion in 1979

The document of The National Library of Vietnam:

The People newspaper (Nhan Dan newspaper) published on Febrary 18, 1979

- Declaration of the Government of The Socialist Republic of Vietnam about Chinese invasion of Vietnam.

- Editorial: Determined to return the barbaric invaders, firmly safeguard the independence and sovereignty of the sacred fatherland!

- Vietnamese Foreign Ministers emergency sent fax to the Chairman of the UN Security Council and the General secretary of The UN

- To protect every inch of the sacred soil of the Fatherland. Vietnamese army and Vietnamese people severely punished Chinese invaders across the border from Phong Tho to Mong Cai...

The People newspaper published on March 20, 1979:

The newspaper with the article in Vietnamese that means "The resounding and comprehensive victory - 600,000 Chinese invading soldiers defeated"

- On Febrary 17, 1979 to March 18, 1979: 62,500 Chinese soldiers have been killed, destroyed 280 Chinese tanks, 270 military trucks, 115 artillery and mortars, confiscating a lot of vehicles and arrested many war prisoners....

Chinese Marine Corps

Lessons from the Battle of the Paracel Islands

Forty years on, the battle has enduring lessons for Vietnam’s naval modernization.

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By Ngo Minh Tri and Koh Swee Lean Collin
January 23, 2014

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On January 16, 1974, the Republic of Vietnam Navy (RVN) discovered the presence of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Crescent Group in the western Paracel Islands, which was held by South Vietnam. This was an unexpected development, because notwithstanding the reduced U.S. military assistance to Saigon after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, and subsequent reduction of South Vietnamese garrisons on the islands, the Chinese had not taken unilateral actions to subvert the status quo – by which the Amphitrite Group in the eastern Paracels and the Crescent Group were respectively under Chinese and South Vietnamese control.

Over the next two days, the opposing naval forces jostled with one another in close-proximity maneuvers off the islands, before a firefight erupted as the South Vietnamese troops attempted to recapture Duncan Island. The skirmish subsequently escalated with overwhelming Chinese reinforcements deployed to the clash zone, including close air support staged from nearby Hainan Island and missile-armed Hainan-class patrol vessels. Shorn of American naval support, given that the U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet was then scaling down its presence in the South China Sea following the peace accords of 1973, the RVN was utterly defeated. Beijing swiftly exploited the naval victory with an amphibious landing in force to complete its control of all the Paracel Islands.

The Battle of the Paracel Islands has since gone down history as the first Sino-Vietnamese naval skirmish in the quest for control over the South China Sea isles. The Sino-Vietnamese naval skirmish in the nearby Spratly Islands in 1988 was the second and final such instance. Since then, tensions have eased. There have been continued exchanges at the ruling party level and between the countries’ militaries (including the hosting of a PLA Navy South Sea Fleet delegation to a Vietnamese naval base). Beijing and Hanoi have also recently inaugurated mutual consultations on joint marine resource development in the South China Sea.

However, the Battle of Paracel Islands in 1974 yields some useful and enduring lessons for Hanoi and its ongoing naval modernization in the South China Sea, particularly in the face of geopolitical developments.

Enduring Lesson #1: Diplomacy is the First Recourse… But Not the Sole Recourse

No international and regional treaties constitute perfect safeguards against unilateral action, including threat or use of force. The landmark Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea inked in 2002 between China and the Southeast Asian claimants has not been entirely successful. In fact, unilateral actions aimed at subverting the status quo in the South China Sea by threat or use of force has continued to dominate. Recent video footage revealed by China’s CCTV in January 2014 showed a standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese law enforcement ships off the Paracel Islands back in 2007. More recent, recurring incidents included the harassment of Vietnamese survey ships by Chinese vessels, the Sino-Philippine maritime standoff in the Scarborough Shoal in April 2012 and, later, the show of force by Chinese surveillance ships and naval frigates off the Philippine-held Second Thomas Shoal. These episodes bear an eerie resemblance to the sort of naval jostling that led to the skirmish back in 1974.

Even as the South China Sea claimants engaged in consultations on a Code of Conduct, upon unilaterally declaring an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea in December 2013, Beijing declared indisputable rights to create ADIZs in other areas if it so desired. An ADIZ over the South China Sea, if ever established, would undoubtedly strengthen Beijing’s hand over the disputed waters, augmenting regular unilateral fishing bans, an earlier expanded maritime law enforcement authority for the Hainan authorities as well as the latest Chinese fisheries law requiring foreign fishing vessels to seek permission from Beijing to operate in much of the South China Sea. These developments, if they continue unabated, will only heighten the risk of accidental or premeditated clashes in the disputed waters.

Enduring Lesson #2: Extra-regional Powers Neither Always Stay… Nor Always Help

There has been growing interest among extra-regional powers in the South China Sea. Besides the U.S. Asia-Pacific rebalancing, Japan under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has intensified its Southeast Asian diplomatic offensive, one of the objectives being to promote Tokyo’s territorial stance in the East China Sea. Vietnam has become one of the major beneficiaries of this development. During the 4th U.S.-Vietnam Defense Policy Dialogue held in Washington in late October 2013, an agreement was reached to enhance maritime security cooperation. In the same month, Tokyo was reportedly keen to supply patrol vessels as part of a plan to bolster Vietnam’s maritime security capacity-building efforts. Also notable, Hanoi is enjoying budding defense ties with New Delhi, having hosted regular Indian Navy port visits in the past decade.

Still, none of the extra-regional powers has taken any side on the South China Sea disputes, preferring to focus only on freedom of navigation. This means that even though Washington or Tokyo have legitimate reasons to intervene if vital sea lines of communications through the South China Sea are threatened by the specter of armed conflict, any extra-regional help is far from certain. For instance, even if the U.S. Pacific Command is able to detect tell-tale signs of unusual Chinese military movements in the South China Sea, it may not be able to react in time. The U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet, as part of the rebalancing strategy, has intensified maritime surveillance in the area: the new Littoral Combat Ship U.S.S. Freedom is said to be conducting more than mere training missions in the area while the U.S. Navy was reported to have stepped up maritime aerial surveillance since July 2012.

However, during the skirmish in 1974 Saigon sought assistance from the U.S. Seventh Fleet, but it was under orders not to intervene in the disputes and no help arrived for the RVN off the Paracels. Washington is likely to adopt the same stance today, even if a renewed Sino-Vietnamese naval clash were to erupt, especially in localized contexts that do not necessarily impinge upon freedom of navigation by other users. Moreover, the present and future PLA Navy South Sea Fleet is no longer the same run-down, coastal-oriented force operating Soviet-era small patrol and attack forces it used to be. With its steady accumulation of force projection capabilities, including amphibious assault, the PLA Navy is in a better position than back in 1974 to deploy sizeable forces over sustained durations at greater distances to assert sovereignty, and its overall combat power will be far more potent if ever unleashed in the South China Sea.

Enduring Lesson #3: The Need for At Least Limited Sea Control Capabilities

There is no way for Vietnam to quantitatively match the PLA naval capabilities in the South China Sea. Consistent with Hanoi’s policy pronunciations, an arms race with China is not only impossible in the first place, but is considered potentially detrimental to Vietnam’s ongoing Renovation process. Vietnam’s post-Cold War naval modernization has been predicated on filling capacity shortfalls after previous decades of neglect. In recent years, the Vietnam People’s Navy had made notable strides in acquiring new hardware to replace the ageing Soviet-era equipment. However, the new, mostly Russian-supplied capabilities, such as Gepard-3.9 light frigates, Kilo-class submarines, Su-30MK2V Flanker multi-role fighters equipped for maritime strike and Yakhont/Bastion coastal defense missile batteries, Dutch-built SIGMA-class corvettes as well as locally-built coastal patrol and attack craft all point to a force modernization pathway based primarily on denying an adversary access to the disputed zone. They do not suggest an ability to secure Vietnam’s own access.

Yet, the Battle of the Paracel Islands in 1974 highlighted the need to not just deny an adversary from blockading the South China Sea features but also to secure Vietnam’s own access to those exposed and vulnerable garrisons. Only a shift from sea denial to sea control can hope to attain that. Given the durable peace along the land borders with her neighbors, Vietnam should logically emphasize air-sea warfighting capabilities. For status quo-oriented Vietnam, much akin to what Saigon was back in 1974, the foreseeable combat scenario in a renewed South China Sea clash will encompass the need for Vietnamese forces to recapture seized features, or at least reinforce existing garrisons in the face of hostile attack. Under this scenario, Vietnam’s defense predicament is perhaps no different from Japan’s with respect to the East China Sea dispute. Tokyo has outlined in its recent new defense strategy the need for robust, integrated mobile defense, which envisaged the need for the Self-Defense Force to recapture the East China Sea isles in times of hostilities. Certainly Vietnam cannot hope to muster the same range of capabilities as Japan could, given economic constraints. To build at least limited sea control capabilities, Hanoi ought to focus on improving early warning and expanding amphibious sealift capacity.

Existing Vietnamese early warning capabilities are vested in a static electronic surveillance network arrayed along the Vietnamese mainland coast and in occupied South China Sea features, augmented only in recent years by maritime patrol aircraft of the Vietnamese navy and coastguard. These planes are mainly designed for surface surveillance, yet are handicapped in endurance and lack adequate anti-submarine warfare capabilities especially in view of the increasing PLA submarine challenge. A high-endurance maritime patrol aircraft fitted with longer-range sensors will be appropriate, and arguably more survivable than static installations. The Vietnam Naval Infantry, which specializes in amphibious assault and has been streamlined over the decades, has become a leaner yet meaner force with the acquisition of better equipment. Still, it remains short on amphibious sealift capacity, given that the Soviet and ex-U.S. vintage landing ships were too old and mostly no longer operational. Hanoi’s fledgling naval shipbuilders have so far produced a small handful of new assault transports ostensibly to fill this gap. However, more such vessels are required to enable the Vietnam Naval Infantry to project more substantial forces with greater rapidity in order to reinforce the South China Sea garrisons or to recapture them from an adversary.

Final Thoughts

The Battle of the Paracel Islands might have happened a long forty years ago. Still, even though the South China Sea has seen relative peace, it pays for Hanoi to remain vigilant by sustaining the pace of its naval modernization attempts. While diplomacy is the preferred recourse and extra-regional powers have become more heavily involved in the region, adequate military power in the form of defense self-help remains necessary, especially when the area continues to be fraught with uncertainty. Compared to the RVN, for now and in the foreseeable future the Vietnam People’s Navy and Air Force faces a challenge far greater than before in preserving the status quo in the South China Sea.

Ngo Minh Tri is Managing Editor of the Thanh Nien newspaper, based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Koh Swee Lean Collin is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University based in Singapore. This article reflects the personal viewpoints of the authors and not representative of their respective organizations.

The Diplomat

Vietnam dancing between US alliance and Chinese brotherhood

The last couple of years have witnessed growing animosity between China and the Philippines, while China's relations with Vietnam, another major claimant to the South China Sea islands, remain relatively peaceful. Tensions between China and Vietnam have not escalated, and Vietnam has not shown much eagerness to draw close to the US. However, Vietnam still plays a significant role in the game between China and the US.

In fact, considering the structure and complexity of the contradictions between China and Vietnam, the two might face an even graver situation than that between China and the Philippines.

Among all the claimants, Vietnam claims the widest territory, almost the entire South China Sea. But Vietnam has long been wary of its northern neighbor. Historically, Vietnam was a vassal state of China for a millennium. In addition to this, the 1979 war with China still sticks in Vietnam's craw.

After the rapprochement between Vietnam and the US in 1995, their relationship is on the rise. Although the Vietnam War was calamitous for the nation, it seems that Vietnam does not bear a grudge against its former opponent.

Geopolitical considerations prevail over the pain of war. Located relatively far from Vietnam,Washington neither has a territorial dispute nor poses an imminent threat to the country's interests.

Washington's Vietnam policy has almost gained bipartisan support. Since 1995, two US presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, have paid visits to Vietnam. And regardless of who is in the White House, Vietnamese leaders are welcomed as honored guests.

In 2010, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton declared in Hanoi that the US has a "national interest" in the South China Sea. And both countries signed an unprecedented US-Vietnam Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in October 2013. Their bilateral relationship, as these events show, is in a steady process of development.

But it seems Vietnam will not be tamed as the Philippines has been. Compared with the US, Vietnam is also more dependent on China in terms of economic development. Although the US has become Vietnam's biggest export market, China remains Vietnam's biggest import market. Without China, Vietnam's economy may suffer major blows.

And there is an unbreakable barrier between the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam and Washington - a divergence in political regime and ideology.

Although the US is always a realist whose actions are based on its national interests, it never loses its innate enthusiasm for promoting Western democracy and advocating Western values such as human rights and freedom. These actions would jeopardize the governance of Vietnam's ruling party.

This dilemma between Hanoi and Washington will probably turn into a long-standing issue.

Vietnam's ruling party will hold on to its ruling position because of its success in developing the national economy. But meanwhile, subjects such as democracy and human rights will not be wiped off Washington's diplomatic agenda. The game will last a long time.

It is this dilemma that will urge Vietnam to reexamine its relationship with China and see Beijing as a valuable friend. Both are now in a similar situation, where they face the same challenges imposed by the US-led West.

These elements will turn Vietnam into a "two-faced" nation. It embraces the US when it encounters territorial disputes and geopolitical games with its neighbors. But it will give Washington the cold shoulder when the issues of political regime and ideology gain the upper hand. Its attitude toward China will be the reverse.

In the long term, Vietnam's foreign policy will be made under the cover of this "two-faced" approach. It will neither pledge allegiance to Washington as an ally, nor will it constantly maintain a "brotherhood" with China.

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The author is an associate research fellow at the Institute of International Relations, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn