HANOI, Vietnam (NV) – General Secretary and President of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam will attend the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, USA, this coming September.
Two foreign sources said so, adding that Mr. To Lam will meet US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the UN session, a sign of the continued foreign policy of the Hanoi regime toying between the two leading centers of power in the world.
The US is the largest importer of goods from Vietnam, while China is both a source of raw materials for production and a buyer of Vietnamese agricultural products. Any partner’s anger will lead to negative consequences in many aspects, especially the economy, for a country struggling to overcome the middle-income trap.
According to the UN website, the global body will hold a high-level meeting from September 23 to 27 with the theme of “emphasizing the urgent need for increased international cooperation in the face of pressing challenges such as climate change, poverty and inequality.” In addition to the above-mentioned issues, ongoing armed conflicts and health and disease crises are causing a lot of confusion.
Up to now, people still do not see any propaganda in Vietnam as usual. But the British newspaper Ecoonomist revealed on August 21 that the leader of the Hanoi regime, who has just seized power, will come to the US to complain about the long-standing refusal to be recognized as a “market economy” with the head of the White House.
Killing two birds with one stone, talking about economics but having political significance as it is synonymous with “bamboo diplomacy”, avoiding the Americans interpreting the dialogue in Beijing or the 14-point joint statement at the end of the visit, as only half of Vietnam’s current foreign policy equation.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong on Saturday, August 24, also said that Mr. To Lam’s intention when meeting President Biden was an effort to strengthen relations with both Washington and Beijing, thanks to which Vietnam’s economy still grows despite geopolitical tensions in the region.
SCMP quoted Mr. Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asia expert at the National War College in Washington, saying that Hanoi’s neutral policy of “bamboo diplomacy” will continue despite the change in leadership.
The Vietnamese Communist Party still sees its commitment to taking relations with China “to a new level” every time the two countries’ leaders meet, despite the thorny issue of sovereignty disputes over islands in the East Sea. According to political analysts, both Hanoi and Beijing want to separate the East Sea issue from other relations.
Chinese President Xi Jinping was said by the Vietnamese Communist Party media to have “happily accepted” To Lam’s invitation to visit Vietnam, although a few days after To Lam was “trusted” to become General Secretary, he had flown a Wing Loong W-10 UAV along the Vietnamese coast, signaling a warning. The Vietnamese Communist Party has quietly dealt with Beijing’s outrageous claims of sovereignty over the islands and seas, instead of “slapping them in the face” like the Philippines.
The Economist newspaper said that To Lam, when he was Minister of Public Security, was Mr. Nguyen Phu Trong’s right-hand man in the “furnace” campaign against corruption. About 200,000 cadres and party members were “disciplined” from the time Mr. Trong took the position of General Secretary until his death at the end of July. From 2021 to 2023 alone, up to 60,000 party cadres and members, from high to low, lost their positions.
Because of their habit of eating dirty food, officials are afraid of jail time, so they are inactive, causing a series of public investment projects to remain on paper. In addition, the Economist cited a report by the human rights organization Project 88 saying that when To Lam was Minister of Public Security, more than 330 dissidents or people using “opposition” social networks were imprisoned in Vietnam.
(According to Nguoi Viet)