Hanoi can’t rely on favor of others in handling ties with Beijing

After the recent clash played out, China and Vietnam decided to patch up their ties. Top Chinese diplomat, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, on Monday paid his second visit since June to Hanoi, where both sides agreed to appropriately handle the maritime problem.

The long-running row, which erupted in May due to China's deployment of an oil rig in the Xisha Islands, whose sovereignty belongs to China but is also claimed by Vietnam, plunged the bilateral relationship to the lowest point in years.

But Monday saw an interesting coincidence. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung set off to India the same day, carrying hopes that New Delhi, which is trying every means to not only "Look East" but also to "Act East," will serve as a lever favorable to Vietnam in the already complicated South China Sea.

Besides furthering economic engagements, Vietnam reportedly has invited India to dip a finger into the oil-rich pie in the South China Sea. It has also sought deeper maritime security cooperation with India, which is expected to offer advanced patrol vessels soon to boost Hanoi's confidence in those waters.

It is apparent that India is not the only major power that has been courted in this way.

Since the oil rig dispute began, Vietnam has stepped up its efforts to carry out multilateralism in the South China Sea. Hanoi has moved much closer to Japan and US through several high-level exchange visits.

Since the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 2011, Vietnam has fine-tuned its foreign policy from pursuing economic integration with the international community to all-out integration including political and cultural involvements.

This strategic calibration is the root cause of why Vietnam keeps multilateralizing its external relations in recent years, a process which the South China Sea disputes have accelerated.

Since Hanoi is fully aware that it has no chance to win in a face-to-face confrontation with China, it has to rely on the strength of other major powers such as the US, by reinforcing their status quo as stakeholders in this region.

Meanwhile, the US is eager to cultivate new partners to carry forward its "pivot to Asia" strategy along with its traditional allies. Thus, Vietnam and the US, with their complementary regional strategies, are growing much closer.

Although Vietnam seems to have learned how to deal with China in the South China Sea and gained some big players' favor, its strategy requires deft diplomacy to play on the interests of each party.

Considering the fact that it is extremely hard for Vietnam to be detached from China's growing influence in economic issues, and its continuing vigilance toward the US, which has never given up hope of a "color revolution" in Vietnam, Hanoi will hardly get real benefits by playing this angle.

It is time that Vietnam should consider a sound solution instead of walking on the knife's edge.

At the August ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Myanmar, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi underlined a "dual-track" approach for resolving South China Sea issues. By integrating bilateral mechanisms to solve territorial disputes with multilateral mechanisms to preserve the common interests of all stakeholders in this region, China has offered a more detailed and reliable framework which would be beneficial to all.