Beijing’s Media Say Vietnam Won’t Join Any Resistance Against China. Is It True?

TAIPEI - An official Chinese news report saying Vietnam will resist outside interference in its relations with Beijing represents an expression of China's hope for resolving troubled relations but probably does not augur any softening of Hanoi's political stance toward China, analysts in the region said Thursday.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency said April 26 that “Vietnam opposes any forces' interference in China's internal affairs” and would “firmly resist any schemes to undermine the Vietnam-China relations.” Vietnam will never “follow other countries in opposing China,” the report added, quoting Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Phuc and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party’s Central Committee, had met that day with visiting Chinese National Defense Minister Wei Fenghe in Hanoi. The two sides, despite sharing a border and being ruled by communist parties, dispute sovereignty over parts of the South China Sea and fought a border war in the 1970s – following centuries of other territorial disputes. China still sends vessels to check Vietnamese oil exploration in the contested sea. Vietnam regularly, and vocally, protests.