BEIJING: Vietnamese leader To Lam started a three-day visit to China on Sunday in his first overseas trip since assuming his country’s top post about two weeks ago.
Lam arrived in the morning in Guangzhou. an industrial and export hub near Hong Kong, Chinese state media reported. His agenda included visiting sites in the southern China city where former Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh spent time, the state-owned Global Times newspaper said in a social media post.
He is to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other senior officials during his trip.
Lam was confirmed as general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, the top leadership position, on Aug. 3. He also has held the largely ceremonial title of the nation’s president since May. Lam succeeded Nguyen Phu Trong, who died on July 19 after 13 years as general secretary.
The new leader is expected to continue his predecessor’s strategy of balancing ties with China, the United States and Russia, Yu Xiangdong, the director of the Institute for Vietnam Studies at China’s Zhengzhou University, wrote Saturday in the Global Times.
“The fact that Lam chose China as his first overseas visit destination since taking office is a sign that Vietnam attaches great importance to its relations with China,” Yu said in an opinion piece. “But at the same time, judging from experience, the country is not by any means going to give the US the cold shoulder.”
Though they have long ties as one-party communist states, Vietnam and China have sparred repeatedly over territory that both claim in the South China Sea. A Vietnamese coast guard ship recently took part in joint drills in the Philippines, which has had a series of violent encounters with China over disputed territory in the same waters.
China also briefly invaded parts of northern Vietnam in 1979.
Still, Vietnam has benefited economically from investment by Chinese manufacturers, which have moved production to the Southeast Asian country in part to skirt US restrictions on solar panels and other exports from China.
Vietnam’s new leader arrives in China on his first overseas trip
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Vietnam’s new leader arrives in China on his first overseas trip
- His agenda included visiting sites in the southern China city where former Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh spent time
- He is to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other senior officials during his trip
Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of arming rebels in escalating war of words
- The charge by Ethiopia’s federal police escalates a feud between Ethiopia and Eritrea
- The two countries fought a three-year border war that broke out in 1998
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopian police said they had seized thousands of rounds of ammunition sent by Eritrea to rebels in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, an allegation Eritrea dismissed as a falsehood intended to justify starting a war.
The charge by Ethiopia’s federal police escalates a feud between Ethiopia and Eritrea, longstanding foes who reached a peace deal in 2018 that has since given way to renewed threats and acrimony.
The police said in a statement late on Wednesday they had seized 56,000 rounds of ammunition and arrested two suspects this week in the Amhara region, where Fano rebels have waged an insurgency since 2023.
“The preliminary investigation conducted on the two suspects who were caught red-handed has confirmed that the ammunition was sent by the Shabiya government,” the statement said, using a term for Eritrea’s ruling party.
Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel told Reuters that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party (PP) was looking for a pretext to attack.
“The PP regime is floating false flags to justify the war that it has been itching to unleash for two long years,” he said.
In an interview earlier this week with state-run media, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said the Prosperity Party had declared war on his country. He said Eritrea did not want war, but added: “We know how to defend our nation.”
The two countries fought a three-year border war that broke out in 1998, five years after Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia. They signed a historic agreement to normalize relations in 2018 that won Ethiopia’s Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. Eritrean troops then fought in support of Ethiopia’s army during a 2020-22 civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
But relations soured after Asmara was frozen out of the peace deal that ended that conflict. Since then, Eritrea has bristled at repeated public declarations by Abiy that landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access — comments many in Eritrea, which lies on the Red Sea, view as an implicit threat of military action.
Abiy has said Ethiopia does not seek conflict with Eritrea and wants to address the issue of sea access through dialogue.
