HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — 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 U.S. 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% tariffs on the world’s second-largest economy.
China’s exports jumped 12.4% in March from a year earlier as companies rushed to beat increases in U.S. tariffs imposed by Trump, the government said Monday.
Imports fell 4.3% to $211.3 billion in March, the customs administration reported, far exceeded by exports worth $313.9 billion, leaving a trade surplus of $102.6 billion.
China’s trade surplus surged to a record $992.2 billion in 2024 and its exports climbed 5.4%, helping to make up for sluggish growth at home as the country slowly recovers from a crisis in its property market and lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Athit Perawongmetha/Pool Photo via AP)
After taking office, Trump first ordered a 10% increase in tariffs on imports from China. He later raised that to 20%. Now, China is facing 145% tariffs on most of its exports to the United States, based on the most recent revisions in Trump’s trade policies.
China’s trade surplus with the United States was $27.6 billion in March as its exports rose 4.5%. It logged a surplus of $76.6 billion with the U.S. in January-March even though exports were up only 2.3% the first two months of the year.
Xi’s visit this week lets China show Southeast Asia it is a “responsible superpower in the way that contrasts with the way the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.”
He arrived in Hanoi on Monday and will be in Vietnam for two days as part of the state visit.
While Xi’s trip likely was planned earlier, it has become significant because of the tariff fight between China and the U.S., 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 from 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 U.S. 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 U.S and China. It is run under a Communist, one-party system like China but has had a strong relationship with the U.S.
In 2023, it was the only country that received both U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping. That year it also upgraded the U.S. 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% 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 U.S. 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% 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 publicize the confrontations.
After Vietnam, Xi is expected to go to Malaysia next and then Cambodia.
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