A Vietnamese fruit seller sells durian in Dongxing, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region on May 18. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

By Staff Reporters

In the first 11 months of this year, the total import and export value of Sino-Vietnam trade in goods was 1.45 trillion RMB, an increase of 3.6 percent. Among them, the import and export value in November was 162 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 12.5 percent, according to data released by China's General Administration of Customs on December 12.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Sino-Vietnamese comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, and the bilateral trade continues to maintain a positive trend.

Bilateral Trade Soars

For many years, China has been Vietnam's largest trading partner and import market. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is now China's largest trading partner and Vietnam is China's largest trading partner in ASEAN.

Specifically, the cooperation between China and Vietnam in the industrial chain and supply chain has become increasingly close. In the first 11 months of this year, imports and exports of intermediate goods between China and Vietnam reached 1.01 trillion RMB, accounting for 69.8 percent of China-Vietnam trade. Among them, flat panel display modules, audio and video equipment, and lithium battery products increased by 12.3 percent, 17.1 percent and 10.8 percent respectively.

Complementary Partnership

Cooperation between China and Vietnam in agriculture is continuously expanding. In the first 11 months of this year, China imported 44.6 billion RMB worth of Vietnamese agricultural products, up 20.3 percent. And in turn, Chinese vegetables and temperate fruits are also welcomed by the Vietnamese market. In the first 11 months, the total value of China's agricultural exports to Vietnam was 34.3 billion RMB, up 3.1 percent.

"Cooperation in traditional areas including agricultural products, infrastructure construction and raw materials reflects the highly complementary nature of economic and trade cooperation between China and Vietnam," Xu Liping, director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the Global Times.

Cultural Exchange

Cultural exchange between the two countries has also flourished. Vietnam's Ministry of Education will include Chinese as a compulsory course in the third and fourth grades of primary schools from 2024, becoming the fifth country in the world to include Chinese as a compulsory course in schools. Last year, China announced that it would provide Vietnam with no less than 1,000 Chinese government scholarships and no less than 1,000 scholarships for international Chinese language teachers in the next five years. This will help Vietnam train talented personnel and international Chinese language teachers, which will further promote China-Vietnam education cooperation, according to China Youth Daily.

In addition, more and more popular Chinese movies and TV dramas are being introduced into the Vietnam cultural market, being well received by Vietnamese people and promoting cultural exchanges between the two countries.