Nguyen Minh Triet was obviously being diplomatic when he was asked if China's growth was attracting foreign investments that could have gone to Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.
'We see with great pleasure the development of China,' said the secretary of the municipal party committee of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon and Vietnam's premier commercial centre.
'We have to tell ourselves that we should not be envious. We should try harder [to improve our business environment] so that we could be on par with others, including China,' said Mr Triet, also a politburo member of the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). 'Vietnam and China are close neighbours. There are good relations between our two countries, our two ruling parties, our two governments and our two peoples.'
Mr Triet's remarks, at a briefing for about 100 foreign journalists invited to report on the 30th anniversary of the country's reunification in 1975, contained no references to the old tension between the two countries.
During the VCP's struggle for independence from French colonial rule, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was its staunch supporter.
After Hanoi reunified the country in 1975, the friendly ties between the two communist regimes ceased because of their differences towards the former Soviet Union and Cambodia. China and Vietnam fought a brief but brutal war in 1979, which led to an exodus of Vietnamese-Chinese. Relations between the two countries were normalised in 1991, but they still maintain rival territorial claims to the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea.
