China, Vietnam pledge renewed diplomacy over South China Sea disputes
- The two nations issue a joint declaration pledging ‘friendly consultations’ as Vietnamese leader To Lam ends his official visit to Beijing
China and Vietnam issued a joint declaration on Tuesday vowing to better manage and resolve their disputes over the South China Sea through friendly consultations.
The declaration came at the end of Vietnamese Communist Party chief To Lam’s official visit to China. In the document, both sides renewed a pledge made by Lam’s predecessor, Nguyen Phu Trong, and Chinese President Xi Jinping in November to build a “China-Vietnam community of shared destiny with strategic significance”.
Lam succeeded Trong as the general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party after the long-serving leader died last month. Lam’s three-day visit to China was his first foreign visit since becoming the general secretary, and he met Xi in Beijing on Monday.
The joint declaration issued after Lam and Xi’s meeting reiterated the “high-level consensus” to jointly maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, and mostly repeated the lines of the agreement made last year.
“[The two sides] will continue to actively seek a fundamental and sustainable solution that is acceptable to both sides through friendly consultations,” the declaration said.
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The solution must be consistent with the existing basic principle agreement on maritime issues between Chinese and Vietnamese governments, as well as international laws, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it said.
