Vietnam and Japan lift bilateral ties to comprehensive strategic partnership
Vietnam and Japan have agreed to lift their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership for peace and prosperity in Asia and the world.
The agreement was reached during talks in Tokyo on November 27 between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong who is in Tokyo on an official visit at the invitation of the Japanese state.
The two leaders noted with satisfaction the strong, comprehensive, and substantive development of Vietnam-Japan relationship with high political trust and close cohesion in the fields of economy, human resources, and local cooperation.
They agreed to increase high-level exchanges every year, effectively deploy existing cooperation mechanisms, and develop new cooperation mechanisms, alongside strengthening defense cooperation based on the Vietnam-Japan Joint Vision Statement on defense cooperation.
They also agreed to further strengthen economic links between the two countries, promote cooperation to ensure economic security and expand cooperation in new fields such as innovation, technology transfer, digital transformation, and green transformation.
Kishida affirmed that Japan would continue to support Vietnam in national industrialization and modernization, and in building an independent, self-reliant economy, and deep international integration, towards the goal of becoming a developed country by 2045.
Emphasizing that Japanese businesses consider Vietnam an important base to ensure supply chains and the most promising investment destination among ASEAN countries, Kishida proposed that the two sides work closely to improve efficiency and remove obstacles to speed up the implementation of cooperation projects using Japanese ODA and FDI in Vietnam.
Thuong for his part highly appreciated Japanese ODA for Vietnam and suggested that Japan consider providing Vietnam with new generation ODA loans for large-scale strategic infrastructure development projects, such as those on roads, railways, energy, digital transformation, climate change response, and health care.
He also suggested that Japan encourage its businesses to invest on a large scale in Vietnam, transfer technology, increase high-quality agricultural cooperation, and create conditions for Vietnamese seafood and fruits to enter its market, including soon opening the market for Vietnamese pomelo and passion fruit.
The two leaders agreed to strengthen human resource connections, local cooperation, tourism, cultural exchanges, and people-to-people exchanges.
In line with this, Thuong proposed considering organizing an annual local cooperation forum in localities of the two countries. He expected that Japan would continue to support Vietnam in training high-quality human resources, ease entry procedures, and soon issue electronic visas and multiple-entry visas for Vietnamese citizens entering Japan for personal purposes and towards visa exemption for Vietnamese citizens.
Amidst regional and global complications, the two sides vowed to closely coordinate and support each other at multilateral forums such as the United Nations, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Regional Comprehensive and Economic partnership (RCEP), and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Kishida affirmed his support for Vietnam to host APEC Year 2027, and support Vietnam and other Asian countries to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
Thuong assured his host that Vietnam would actively cooperate and contribute to the success of a summit commemorating 50 years of ASEAN-Japan relations to be held in Japan in December 2023.
After the talks, the two leaders issued a joint declaration on upgrading Vietnam-Japan relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership for peace and prosperity in Asia and the world. They also witnessed the signing of a number of cooperation documents between ministries and agencies of the two countries in the field of energy transition, cultural heritage preservation and restoration, post-pandemic health recovery, equqipment supply for the Coast Guard force, and support to the operation of the Vietnam National Space Center and effective exploitation of the LOTUSat-1 satellite in the 2024-2029 period.
