Final month, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh introduced plans to improve the railway line connecting Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan province to Vietnam’s port at Haiphong on the Gulf of Tonkin, as part of Beijing’s Belt and Highway Initiative (BRI). The assertion adopted the elevation of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship to a complete strategic partnership and coincided with plans for elevated funding, engagement, and cooperation with different U.S.-aligned states within the Indo-Pacific and preceded high-profile diplomatic engagements with China.

On the floor, the proposal seems to stem naturally from Vietnam’s hedging strategy to overseas coverage; essentially, the current pleasant interactions with the U.S. and its allies should be accompanied by overtures and deference to China. Given its implications, nevertheless, there are indicators that this explicit mission will not be a Vietnamese balancing initiative however fairly a coerced response prompted by China.

The railway line in query begins in Kunming, crosses the border at Hekou-Lao Cai, and runs via Vietnam’s capital Hanoi earlier than terminating on the port metropolis of Haiphong. The railway, which was constructed by the French within the early twentieth century, intersects with the newly accomplished Fanchenggang-Dongxing railway, the primary high-speed railway hyperlink to Vietnam’s border, which runs from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Area to the prevailing Vietnamese rail community. Taken on their very own, these tasks merely characterize efforts to reinforce connectivity and commerce between the 2 international locations. It’s notable, nevertheless, that the railway runs via Vietnam’s resource-rich heartland and connects to the one transportation traces main out of Vietnam’s extraordinarily worthwhile Nui Phao mine.

Regardless of being considerably smaller in land space than the highest producer China, Vietnam has the world’s second-largest reserves of rare-earth metals and the third-largest reserves of tungsten, each of that are very important to the manufacturing of know-how and armaments. Vietnam’s wealth of assets has attracted the eye of the U.S. and its allies, presenting a substitute for dependency on China. America imports as much as 74 % of its uncommon earth metals and 40 % of its tungsten from China, and the U.S., Europe, and Japan eat over half of the world’s provide of tungsten, however solely producing round 5 %. It’s no shock that lots of Vietnam’s current engagements with the United States and its allies have concerned discussions of business funding.

The Nui Phao mine specifically, holds worth that can’t be understated. Along with being one of many world’s largest tungsten mines, with estimated reserves of 66 million metric tons, it’s a polymetallic deposit, succesful additionally of yielding important portions of fluorspar, copper, and bismuth. Such a mine is uncommon, and guarantees income that might allow Vietnam to rival China’s dominance within the mining sector. Naturally, it might be in China’s favor to coordinate with Vietnam to benefit from this chance, and the proposed railway is a means of China’s authorities to facilitate these plans.

On the whole, financial cooperation between Vietnam and China has not yielded the progress that China needs, as a consequence of reservations that Vietnam holds in the direction of the BRI. Vietnam is extremely cautious of leverage traps and financial dependence on China, which explains its resistance to becoming a member of BRI tasks up so far. Its seeming acceptance of the Kunming-Haiphong railway mission as part of the BRI raises questions as to why Vietnam has departed from its conventional stance in the direction of the Chinese language initiative. Extra intriguing is the truth that when the proposal for this precise mission was first unveiled in 2019, Vietnam balked on the initiative, citing plenty of financial and safety issues. Vietnam’s Cat Linh-Ha Dong elevated metro rail line in Hanoi is the solely mission to have acquired BRI loans and has not been labelled as part of BRI. Even when Vietnam has had a change of coronary heart, the timing of this announcement is peculiar, layered between essential high-level engagements with China, the U.S., and U.S. allies equivalent to Japan.

Whereas Vietnam’s cultivation of multinational partnerships will increase its freedom of motion, Vietnam’s true degree of company is in the end dictated by China. China stays the biggest financial participant in Vietnam and stays able to punishing Vietnam if Vietnam is unable to reassure China that it isn’t overstepping the boundaries of autonomy set by China. It was because of this that Vietnam introduced that it was pursuing complete strategic partnerships with Japan, Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore after it elevated the U.S. to that degree, looking for to allay China’s fears over Vietnam transferring too carefully into Washington’s orbit.

Visits to Vietnam by China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and Overseas Minister Wang Yi in current months have emphasised the significance that China locations on growing the Kunming-Haiphong line. President Xi Jinping prioritized the mission and cooperation on uncommon earth metallic extraction, even tabling the South China Sea disputes throughout his historic go to to Vietnam this week, his first to the nation since 2017. Whereas agreements on essential minerals and uncommon earths have been deferred, two memoranda of understanding have been signed on cross-border rail growth, together with assist for such growth.

Beijing is prepared and prepared to supply grants for rail connections, however the quantity of assist and phrases of any potential loans are nonetheless unclear. At the moment, Vietnam has restricted room to maneuver, having used up all of its autonomy reaching out to the U.S. and its allies. It’s now China’s flip to check the bounds of Vietnam’s deference.

The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal, and don’t replicate the official place of the USA Navy Academy, Division of the Military, or Division of Protection.