By Kaveesha Fernando
NEW DELHI, India (CWBN)_ As India scrambles to find Asian allies in the battle for supremacy between India and China, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to hold a virtual summit with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
“During the Summit, the two leaders will exchange views on wide-ranging bilateral, regional and global issues and provide guidance for the future development of India-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” an official media release stated. The release also added that “both countries continued to maintain high-level exchanges” in 2020, detailing a list of interactions between leaders of the two nations.
Vice-President of Vietnam Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh made an official visit to India this February, while both Prime Ministers had a telephone conversation this April to discuss the situation arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 17th edition of the Joint Commission Meeting (which was held virtually) was co-chaired by the two Foreign Ministers in August, and Indian Defence Minister Raksha Mantri held an online meeting with his counterpart in November, according to the release.
Following years of successful diplomatic relations between the two countries, “Relations between the two countries were elevated to the level of ‘Strategic Partnership’ during the visit of Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to India in July 2007. In 2016, during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Vietnam, bilateral relations were further elevated to a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”,” according to the website of the Indian embassy in Vietnam.
The summit comes in a year where troubling developments have taken place in the battle between India and China for regional supremacy. Tensions between the two nations in the region of Ladakh have been fierce this year, but observers hope that the replacement of the Chinese military leader who escalated the conflict will help stabilize the issue. This may help deescalate the trade war between the two nations as well; if India is happy with China’s cooperation at the border between the two nations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), it is hoped that India will lift the ban on 220 apps, most of which are Chinese.
