A community with a shared future
China, Vietnam work together for steady progress in cooperation
The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading all over the world, posing a great threat to people’s lives, bringing a severe challenge to global public health security, and creating a severe impact on the global economy.
While fighting the pandemic, the international community should also make every effort to prevent the world economy from slipping into recession.
In order to deal with the pandemic impact, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for international efforts on its prevention and control at the G20 leaders’ summit recently, and stressed that it is necessary to strengthen international macroeconomic policy coordination, jointly maintain stability of the global industrial supply chain, and boost global economic recovery morale.
A few days ago, at a special meeting for leaders of ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea (10+3), Chinese Premier Li Keqiang proposed that relevant departments in the 10+3 countries strengthen coordination, curb the spread of the virus, strengthen financial policy coordination and jointly maintain the stability of industrial and supply chains. The Chinese leaders’ initiatives have received positive responses from the countries concerned.
The pandemic has caused some interference in the global supply chain. However, it is a short-term impact and the trend of globalization has not been fundamentally reversed. According to Chinese Customs, China’s foreign trade was better than expected in the first quarter of 2020, and the trade growth rate between China and BRI countries was higher than between China and other countries.
ASEAN overtook the EU to become China’s largest trading partner, with total trade volume growing 6.1 by percent compared with the same period last year, and with China’s imports from ASEAN increasing by 10.9 percent.
The complex and grim pandemic situation precisely highlights the necessity and urgency of multilateral cooperation advocated by the BRI.
As Chinese enterprises’ operations continue to resume, the resilience of BRI cooperation has been further demonstrated.
The concepts of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation advocated by the BRI and the proposal of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation will provide solid foundation for all countries to carry out sound virus prevention and control and continue with economic and social development.
However, we need to be wary of those who advocate a “decoupling” from China for political purposes and look to move supply chains out of China. In an era where the interests of all countries are deeply integrated, interdependence is unprecedentedly close and BRI cooperation is deepening day by day, calls for a “decoupling” and the transfer of supply chains violate objective laws and are not in accordance with the interests of the peoples of all countries. Vietnam is an important country along the BRI route. As China’s neighbor and its largest trading partner in ASEAN, Vietnam has played a leading role in making ASEAN China’s largest trading partner. China’s trade with Vietnam accounted for 25.8 percent of its overall trade with ASEAN in the first quarter of this year, driving the latter up by 5.6 percentage points. China-Vietnam trade growth rate is as high as 18 percent, 11.9 percentage points higher than the growth rate of China’s overall trade with ASEAN.
In order to overcome the impact of the virus, China and Vietnam have maintained close communication at different levels. In a recent phone call, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc reached an important consensus on strengthening cooperation on virus prevention and control and stabilizing the industrial chain.
As the situation in China eases, work and production resume, the order of economic and social activities recovers at a faster pace, and as China’s economic growth engine fully restarts, this will provide favorable conditions for countries around the world, including Vietnam, to recover economically after the pandemic.
China is willing to work closely with Vietnam on specific measures to foster strategic synergy between the BRI and Two Corridors, One Economic Belt. China is also willing to foster new cooperation growth areas such as high-tech agriculture and e-commerce, and continually expand economic and trade cooperation between the two countries so as to lay a solid foundation for long-term, healthy and stable economic development.
The author is the Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam.