HANOI (AFP): French President Emmanuel Macron called Monday for the preservation of a world order “based on law”, as he started a tour of South-East Asia, a region caught up in the confrontation between the United States and China.
Macron said a rules-based order was necessary at “a time of both great imbalance and a return to power-driven rhetoric and intimidation”, as he met his Vietnamese counterpart Luong Cuong in Hanoi.
He presented France as a reliable alternative for Vietnam, caught between Washington, which is threatening to impose trade levies, and Beijing, an important trade partner with which it is also embroiled in territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
“With France, you have a familiar, safe, and reliable friend (…) and in the period we are living in, this alone has great value,” Macron said during a meeting with To Lam, the secretary general of the Communist Party and Vietnam’s top leader.
The two countries signed around a dozen agreements on Monday, including in the field of nuclear power, which Hanoi is keen to develop as it seeks to meet soaring energy demands while reducing carbon emissions.
Budget airline Vietjet also announced an order for 20 widebody Airbus A330-900 planes, doubling its purchases of the model from the aviation giant in a deal worth an estimated $8 billion.
“It is truly a new page being written between our two countries… a desire to write an even more ambitious page of the relationship between Vietnam and France, between Asean and the European Union,” Macron said.
– Call to raise rights issue –
Macron arrived in Hanoi late Sunday, the first stop of a six-day trip that will take in Indonesia and Singapore.
After paying tribute Monday at a Hanoi war memorial to those who fought against French colonial occupation, Macron had lunch with Lam at the capital’s Temple of Literature, where the two watched a traditional music and dance performance.
Lam is considered the most powerful leader in Vietnam, a one-party state which tolerates no dissent and moves quickly to suppress any criticism.
Ahead of Macron’s first official visit to the country, Human Rights Watch pressed him to voice concerns about “the Vietnamese government’s worsening rights record”.
Vietnam has more than 170 political prisoners who have been charged and convicted under “draconian laws” that criminalise free expression and peaceful activism for human rights and democracy, HRW said.
A public appeal would be out of character for the French president, who regularly says he prefers to raise sensitive issues behind closed doors.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte Macron (centre L) and Ngo Phuong Ly (centre R), the wife of Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary To Lam, look at an exhibit at the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi on Monday, May 26, 2025. — Photo by AFP
– Vietnam on ‘front line’ –
Macron hopes to sell Hanoi his offer of a “third way” between Washington and Beijing.
“Vietnam is really on the front line of all the tensions that are growing in the South China Sea,” a senior French diplomatic official told AFP.
Hanoi shares Washington’s concerns about Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in the contested waterway, but it has close economic ties with its giant neighbour.
Vietnam has also been threatened with a hefty 46 percent tariff by US President Donald Trump as part of his global trade blitz.
Macron’s “Indo-Pacific strategy” — which proposes a third way to the countries of the region — has gained new relevance due to Trump‘s trade war, according to the aide.
He said the president was “defending the idea of international trade rules, we don’t want a jungle where the law of the strongest prevails”.
Vietnam has been careful to follow its own balancing act between China and the United States.
It has adopted a “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers.
– No bust-up with wife –
Macron also denied Monday any “domestic dispute” with his wife Brigitte after a video appeared to show her shoving his face away as they arrived in Vietnam for a diplomatic visit.
They were “joking as we often do”, he told reporters in Hanoi, adding that other videos had been misinterpreted as showing him sharing a bag of cocaine or confronting the Turkish president.
“None of these are true,” he said, and “everyone needs to calm down”. — Report by Francesco FONTEMAGGI – AFP
