VIETNAM-CHINA: FROM CROSS-BORDER TRADE TO MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL DEVELOPMENT OF BORDER REGIONS
Despite all the difficulties in the development of relations between Vietnam and China in the past, XX century, especially in the period from the second half of the 1970s and up to 1990, when, for political reasons, tensions persisted, reaching military clashes, in the XXI century, these countries show extraordinary growth in all areas of mutual trade and economic activity. activities.
Trade deals between the two countries have been growing at an unprecedented rate - about 40% per year over the past 5 - 6 years1 .
While Vietnam exports a large amount of crude oil, coal, coffee, seafood, vegetables, and footwear, China has seen an increase in exports of pharmaceutical products, machinery, equipment, refined products, fertilizers, and motorcycle and automobile spare parts.
In 2004, the bilateral trade turnover between the two countries reached 7.91 billion US dollars. In the first 6 months of 2005, Vietnam's exports to China totaled $ 1.26 billion (ranked 4th among Vietnam's trading partners after the United States, Japan, and Australia), while imports from China totaled $ 2.7 billion (ranked 1st).2 . It should be borne in mind that due to the huge difference in the scale of the economies of these two countries, their mutual trade is much more significant for Vietnam (more than 12% of the total volume of foreign trade) than for China (about 0.6%).
As actual growth has consistently outstripped policy targets in recent years, Vietnam and China have decided to increase their planned trade volumes from $ 10 billion to $ 15 billion by 2010. And the target of $ 10 billion is now expected to be reached by the end of 2007 (Figure 1). Regardless of the attitude to the planned economy, such adjustments show an enviable optimism, and the growth rate of economies allows us to hope for the fulfillment of these indicators.
Such impressive results were achieved, among other things, thanks to ...
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