Experten: Kinas ambitioner farliga för hela världen

The bilateral relations between the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Chinese: 中越关系, Vietnamese: Quan hệ Trung Quốc–Việt Nam) have been turbulent, despite their common Sinospheric and socialist background. Centuries of conquest by modern China's imperial predecessor have given Vietnam an entrenched suspicion of Chinese attempts to dominate it. Though the PRC assisted North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, relations between the two nations soured following Vietnam's reunification in 1975. China and Vietnam fought a prolonged border war from 1979 to 1990, but have since worked to improve their diplomatic and economic ties. However, the two countries remain in dispute over territorial issues in the South China Sea. A 2014 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed 84% of Vietnamese were concerned that territorial disputes between China and neighbouring countries could lead to a military conflict. Once, Vietnam had a territorial control even to the territory of modern-day Guangxi, Guangdong to Zhejiang, due to historical wars with China, the border between China and Vietnam has been defined like today.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), is a trade agreement between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States (until 23 January 2017) and Vietnam. A final agreement was drafted on 5 October 2015, made public on 5 November 2015, and signed on 4 February 2016 in Auckland, New Zealand, concluding seven years of negotiations. It is the largest regional trade agreement in history. The TPP began as an expansion of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPSEP or P4) signed by Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore in 2005. Beginning in 2008, additional countries joined the discussion for a broader agreement: Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Vietnam, bringing the total number of countries participating in the negotiations to twelve. Current trade agreements between participating countries, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, will be reduced to those provisions that do not conflict with the TPP or provide greater trade liberalization than the TPP. The Obama administration considered the TPP a companion agreement to the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a broadly similar agreement between the U.S. and the European Union. According to the Obama Administration, the agreement aimed to "promote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in the signatories' countries; and promote transparency, good governance, and enhanced labor and environmental protections." The TPP contains measures to lower both non-tariff and tariff barriers to trade, and establish an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. On 21 November 2016, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump announced that he planned to withdraw the United States from the TPP after he took office; on 23 January 2017, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum to withdraw. The other 11 TPP countries agreed in May 2017 to revive the deal without US participation. The U.S. International Trade Commission, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the World Bank and the Office of the Chief Economist at Global Affairs Canada found that the final agreement would, if ratified, lead to net positive economic outcomes for all signatories, while a heterodox analysis by two Tufts University economists found that the agreement would adversely affect the signatories. Many observers have argued that the trade deal would have served a geopolitical purpose, namely to reduce the signatories' dependence on Chinese trade and bring the signatories closer to the United States.