Vietnamese top leader To Lam to visit China, at invitation of Chinese leader Xi Jinping

To Lam, Vietnam's Party General Secretary and State President, along with his spouse, will pay a state visit to China from August 18-20.

The visit is made at the invitation of China's Party General Secretary and State President Xi Jinping, and his spouse, according to a Thursday statement from the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This will mark To Lam's first overseas trip since he was elected Vietnam's Party chief early this month.

Following the highly successful official visit to China by the late Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (October 2022) and the state visit to Vietnam by Party General Secretary and President of China Xi Jinping and his spouse (December 2023), the two sides issued a joint statement on "continuing deepening and elevating the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries and building a Vietnam-China community with a shared future that carries strategic significance" and signed 36 cooperation agreements across various fields.

In terms of substantive cooperation in areas such as trade, investment and tourism, Vietnam maintains its position as China's largest trading partner within ASEAN and its fifth-largest trading partner globally by country. Bilateral trade volume in 2023 reached $171.9 billion.

In the first six months of 2024, bilateral import-export turnover amounted to $94.5 billion, an increase of 24.1% year-on-year), with Vietnam exporting $27.8 billion to China, up 5.3% and importing $66.7 billion from China, up 34.1%. The Southeast Asian country's trade deficit with China stood at $38.9 billion, a 66.7% rise.

In 2023, China's investment in Vietnam reached $4.47 billion across 707 projects, making it the fourth-largest investor in Vietnam by registered capital and the largest in terms of the number of projects.

In the first six months of 2024, China ranked fifth with registered capital of $1.299 billion but led in the number of newly licensed projects with 447 projects.

As of end-June 2024, cumulative Chinese investment in Vietnam reached $28.23 billion, ranking it seventh out of 148 countries and territories with investments in Vietnam, with 4,667 valid projects.

The Chinese have invested in 19 out of 21 sectors open to foreign investment and across 55 out of 63 provinces in Vietnam.

In terms of tourism, after three years of interruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnam welcomed 1.75 million Chinese visitors in 2023, making China the second-largest source of tourists to the country. In the first seven months of 2024, Vietnam received 2.14 million Chinese visitors, accounting for 27.1% of total international arrivals to Vietnam, second only to South Korea.