‘Not afraid of punishment from China,’ says Vietnam deputy foreign minister

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Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi Friday, the Vietnamese minister said, “We upgraded relations with the US [last September] to a strategic partnership, which is the highest level of partnership that we have with any other nation. We have that with India as well. There were of course concerns that China may react in a negative way.” He argued that this was evident when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Vietnam a month after US President Joe Biden travelled to the country in September, and had remarked that relations between Washington and Hanoi — previously involved in a brutal...