Photo/Illutration Vietnamese President To Lam meets with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, not pictured, at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam, on July 27, 2024. (Pool Photo via AP)

BEIJING--Vietnam’s new leader To Lam is making China the destination for his first overseas visit, signaling the continuing importance the Southeast Asian country places on its giant neighbor even as it strengthens ties with the United States and others.

Lam stepped off a Vietnam Airlines plane on an overcast Sunday morning in Guangzhou, a major manufacturing and export hub near Hong Kong, China’s state media reported.

He later flew to Beijing, where he will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping. His three-day visit comes about two weeks after Lam was confirmed as general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, the country’s top political position. He succeeded Nguyen Phu Trong, who died last month after 13 years as leader.

Lam also has held the largely ceremonial title of the nation’s president since May.

The new leader is expected to continue his predecessor’s strategy of balancing ties with China, the United States, Russia and others, Yu Xiangdong, the director of the Institute for Vietnam Studies at China’s Zhengzhou University, wrote Saturday in the state-run Global Times newspaper.

“The fact that Lam chose China as his first overseas visit destination since taking office is a sign that Vietnam attaches great importance to its relations with China,” Yu said in an opinion piece. “But at the same time, judging from experience, the country is not by any means going to give the U.S. the cold shoulder.”

Vietnam upgraded its ties with the United States and Japan last year to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the country’s highest designation for a diplomatic relationship. Relations with China and India also have been given the same designation.

The United States and its ally Japan have been developing closer ties with Vietnam’s communist government — America’s former foe in the Vietnam War — as they seek partners in a growing economic and strategic rivalry with China.

When Xi visited Vietnam in December, the two countries announced they would build ”a shared future that carries strategic significance.” The agreement, which Chinese state media has described as an elevation of ties, was seen as a concession by Vietnam, which had resisted using that wording in the past.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Lam in Vietnam in June after visiting North Korea on a rare overseas trip for the Russian leader, who has been ostracized by many countries because of the 2022 invasion and still-ongoing war in Ukraine.

Lam’s agenda in Guangzhou included visiting sites in the southern China city where Vietnam’s former communist leader Ho Chi Minh spent time, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said.

Ho, the founder and first president of communist Vietnam, was in southern China in the 1920s and again in the 1930s as part of the Soviet Union’s efforts to expand communism globally.

Though they have long ties as one-party communist states, Vietnam and China have sparred repeatedly over territory that both claim in the South China Sea. China also briefly invaded parts of northern Vietnam in 1979.

A Vietnamese coast guard ship recently took part in joint drills in the Philippines, which has had a series of violent encounters with China over contested territory in the South China Sea.

Still, Vietnam has benefited economically from investment by Chinese manufacturers, which have moved production to the Southeast Asian country in part to skirt U.S. restrictions on solar panels and other exports from China.

During Xi’s December visit, the two countries signed an agreement to cooperate on railway projects, which could improve trade connections between the two. China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner.

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