China’s Foreign Minister Makes Vietnam Visit
Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen arrived in Hanoi on Wednesday in the first high-level visit from Beijing since China launched a punitive border war against Vietnam in 1979.
Qian was greeted by Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam, who made a ground-breaking trip to Beijing last September. Qian planned to meet Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet today, sign an agreement on economic cooperation and discuss the U.N.-backed peace plan for Cambodia and a territorial dispute over islands in the South China Sea.
Cam said Qian’s visit heralded a new phase in Vietnam’s peaceful relations with its neighbors, “which will lead to development around the region.”
But he said Vietnam is unlikely to return to the kind of close ties it had with China decades ago, when Beijing backed Hanoi in its independence struggles against the French in the 1950s and the United States in the 1960s.
Vietnam and China fell apart in the 1970s as Hanoi moved closer into the Soviet orbit. When Vietnam launched an invasion of Cambodia to oust the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge in late 1978, China retaliated by launching a brief border war against Vietnam.
Qian’s 22-member delegation will leave Vietnam on Saturday.
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