Vietnam and the limits of Communist friend-shoring
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/15/vietnam-limits-communist-friend-shoring-near-shoring-china/
AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Vietnam in its various forms has been part of China’s Confucian sphere for two millennia, it is more “sinicised” than other parts of Southeast Asia. It has quarrelled incessantly with its regional master/protector, but has always returned to the fold. …
There is a school of thought that Xi finally realises that he blundered badly over the last five years with his iron-fist methods of coercive diplomacy – just as he blundered with his Maoist assault on China’s most dynamic companies – and is now trying to repair the damage with a charm offensive.
If so, this new subtler Xi could prove to be the real threat to the US strategic system in the Far East. America may wake up one day to find that it has diversified its technology supply lines to a manufacturing hub in Vietnam that is in reality a tributary province of the Chinese economic empire.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/15/vietnam-limits-communist-friend-shoring-near-shoring-china/
AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Vietnam in its various forms has been part of China’s Confucian sphere for two millennia, it is more “sinicised” than other parts of Southeast Asia. It has quarrelled incessantly with its regional master/protector, but has always returned to the fold. …
There is a school of thought that Xi finally realises that he blundered badly over the last five years with his iron-fist methods of coercive diplomacy – just as he blundered with his Maoist assault on China’s most dynamic companies – and is now trying to repair the damage with a charm offensive.
If so, this new subtler Xi could prove to be the real threat to the US strategic system in the Far East. America may wake up one day to find that it has diversified its technology supply lines to a manufacturing hub in Vietnam that is in reality a tributary province of the Chinese economic empire.