China’s leader Xi Jinping started a week of diplomacy in Southeast Asia with a visit to Vietnam on Monday, signaling China’s commitment to global trade, just after US President Donald Trump upended the global economy with his latest tariffs moves. Although Trump has paused some tariffs, China was the outlier, as he has kept in place 145 per cent tariffs on the world’s second-largest economy.

Xi’s visit this week lets China show Southeast Asia it is a “responsible superpower in the way that contrasts with the way the US under President Donald Trump presents to the whole world,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS — Yusof Ishak Institute.

China also can work to shore up its alliances and find solutions for the high trade barrier that the US has on Chinese exports. “There are no winners in a trade war, or a tariff war,” Xi wrote in an editorial jointly published in Vietnamese and Chinese official media. “Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and open and cooperative international environment.”

While Xi’s trip likely was planned earlier, it has become significant because of the tariff fight between China and the US, the world’s two largest economies. In Vietnam, Xi will meet with Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary to Lam, as well as the Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

 “The trip to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia is all about how China can really insulate itself against the Trump,” said Nguyen, pointing out that since Xi became the president of China in 2013, he has only visited Vietnam twice. This is his third visit and comes just a year after he last visited in December 2023. The timing of the visit sends a “strong political message that Southeast Asia is important to China,” said Huong Le-Thu at the International Crisis Group. She said that given the severity of Trump’s tariffs and despite the 90-day pause, Southeast Asian nations were anxious that the tariffs, if implemented, could complicate their development. “Xi’s trip is to showcase how China is the opposite to the coercive and self-interested US There will be a lot of expectations about what type of leadership and initiatives China is going to come up with at this time of

crisis,” she said.

Vietnam is experienced at balancing its relations with the US and China. It is run under a Communist, one-party system like China but has had a strong relationship with the US

In 2023, it was the only country that received both US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping. That year it also upgraded the US to its highest diplomatic level, the same as China and Russia.

Vietnam was one of the biggest beneficiaries of countries trying to decouple their supply chains from China, as businesses moved here. China is its biggest trading partner, and China-Vietnam trade surged 14.6 per cent year-on-year in 2024, according to Chinese state media.

But the intensification of the trade war has put Vietnam in a “very precarious situation” given the impression in the US that Vietnam is serving as a backdoor for Chinese goods, said Giang, the analyst at Singapore’s ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. Vietnam had been hit with 46 per cent tariffs under Trump’s order before the 90-day pause. China and Vietnam have real long-term differences. They have disputes over territory in the South China Sea, and Vietnam has faced off with China’s

coast guard but does not often publicise the confrontations.