Beijing: Chairman of the National Assembly (NA) Vuong Dinh Hue and a high-ranking delegation of Vietnam arrived in Beijing on April 7 afternoon, beginning a six-day official visit to China.
The visit is made at the invitation of Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China Zhao Leji.
The Vietnamese top legislator and his entourage were greeted at Beijing Capital International Airport by Vice Chairman of the NPC’s Standing Committee of Wang Dongming, Deputy Secretary General of the NPC Standing Committee Hu Xiaoli, head of the NPC’s Foreign Affairs Committee Wang Wen, and other NPC officials, along with Ambassador Pham Sao Mai and representatives of the Vietnamese Embassy in China, and the Vietnamese community in the country.
This is the first visit to China by Hue in his capacity is NA Chairman, and also the first by a top Vietnamese legislator in five years. It is expected to create a strong motivation and momentum for the development of the relations between Vietnam
and China.
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.
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.
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%. /.
Source: Vietnam News Agency