To Lam made his first foreign trip as general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party to China, where President Xi Jinping gushed about the two countries’ “shared future.”
But the goals of the neighboring nations with similar political systems don’t always align, including on matters of sovereignty in the South China Sea, where China’s sweeping territorial claims have earned rebukes from Hanoi and sparked widespread public protests in Vietnam. While both leaders are pedaling forward, they appear to be headed in opposite directions.
