China seeks closer ties with Vietnam, Southeast Asian neighbours as tensions rise with US

Beijing has moved to mend fences with Vietnam and other Southeast Asian neighbours, seeking closer economic ties and offering coronavirus recovery aid, as tensions flare with Washington over the South China Sea.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi sought to placate an increasingly hostile Hanoi on Tuesday in a virtual meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart Pham Binh Minh. That was a day after Wang’s deputy, Luo Zhaohui, tried to reassure China’s neighbours that it wanted regional peace and stability.

Beijing also said it finalised talks on Monday for a free-trade pact with Cambodia, its closest ally in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and a counterweight to Vietnam, the most vocal regional challenger of its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea. While the pact is largely symbolic given their limited trade volume, analysts say it shows Beijing’s strategy of wooing countries away from the US with economic incentives.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared last week that Beijing’s claims to nearly 90 per cent of the South China Sea were “completely unlawful”, a move that has inflamed tensions between the superpowers.