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U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic and economic relations were non-existent for more than fifteen years following socialist North Vietnam's victory in 1975 over U.S. ally South Vietnam. During that time, the United States maintained restrictions on foreign assistance to unified Vietnam.
Normalization of relations—particularly in the economic sphere—began hesitantly in the early 1990s, progressed incrementally through the mid- and late 1990s, and then accelerated markedly following the signing of a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) in 2000. One measure of the pace of the normalization of bilateral economic relations is the increase in trade flows, which rose from about $200 million in 1994 to over $1 billion in 2000, to nearly $4.5 billion in 2003. The United States is now Vietnam's largest trading partner.
The resumption of U.S. aid to Vietnam has closely tracked the normalization of bilateral relations. U.S. assistance began as a trickle in 1991, when around $1 million was spent for prosthetics for Vietnamese war victims, and increased to nearly $50 million in fiscal year (FY) 2004 covering a broad range of programs. Moreover, the level of assistance has more than doubled since FY2000. (See Table 1) For FY2005 through the end of April 2005, nearly $55 million in assistance had been spent.
By far the two largest components of the U.S. bilateral aid program are food assistance and health-related assistance, which together comprised about 60% of the nearly $200 million in aid the United States has provided to Vietnam since U.S. assistance began to increase substantially in FY1999. Spending on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in Vietnam has risen, especially since President Bush's June 2004 designation of Vietnam as a "focus country" eligible to receive increased funding to combat HIV-AIDS under PEPFAR. The United States provided $10 million in PEPFAR funds in FY2004, and over $27 million for FY2005 through the end of April.
Since mid-December 2004, Vietnam has reported over 30 cases, at least 14 of them fatal, of the H5 avian influenza (also known as the "bird flu"), raising concerns that the disease is re-emerging after an outbreak in early 2004 spread across Asia. The wartime and tsunami supplemental, H.R. 1268, which was passed by the House on May 5 and the Senate on May 10, 2005, includes $25 million to help combat the disease, of which the U.S. embassy in Hanoi expects approximately $4 million to be used in Vietnam.
Other sizeable assistance items include demining activities and programs assisting Vietnam's economic reform efforts. This latter group of programs has been designed to help the Vietnamese government implement the economic liberalization reforms it committed to in the 2000 U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement and will likely be required to undertake as part of its desire to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).2 Hanoi has set a goal of attaining WTO membership by the end of 2005. The U.S. also funds educational exchanges with Vietnam, principally the Vietnam Fulbright program, which receives more funding (typically $4 million annually) than any other Fulbright program in the world. These programs are not included in Table 1 because they are not funded through the foreign policy budget and confer benefits to both the U.S. and Vietnam. Additionally, the United States administers the Vietnam Education Foundation, which was established by Congress in 2000 to provide $5 million annually for scholarships and educational exchanges. Funds for the foundation are recycled from the Vietnamese government's repayments of the wartime debts South Vietnam owed the United States. Total annual funding for educational exchanges, including the Fulbright and Vietnam Education Foundation programs, has been in the $9–$11 million range since FY2003.
In May 2004, Vietnam was not selected as one of the first 16 countries eligible for the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). Vietnam was deemed ineligible, despite meeting the technical requirements for MCA eligibility, because it scored very low on some of the indicators used to measure political freedom. Vietnam again was included in the list of candidate countries for FY2005, from which eligible countries will be selected in late 2004. In September 2004, Vietnam again received low scores on the indicators of political and civil liberties maintained used by the Millennium Challenge Corporation to determine eligibility for the MCA.
Relative to other countries in Southeast Asia, Vietnam receives far less than Indonesia and the Philippines, front-line states in the war on terrorism that received an estimated $150 million and $110 million in FY2004, respectively. Assistance to Vietnam is roughly on a par with the next two largest Southeast Asian recipients of U.S. aid, Cambodia ($50 million) and East Timor ($30 million). Relative to the rest of the world, Southeast Asia is not a target for large U.S. aid programs, in part because many countries in the region have "graduated" from economic aid.
If U.S.-Vietnam relations continue to deepen, particularly in the political and military spheres, it is possible to foresee a continued expansion of the U.S. aid program in Vietnam. Possible areas for new or expanded programs include strengthening the rule of law (particularly judicial capacity building), counternarcotics, anti-corruption, education management, and the preservation of cultural and historical sites. On top of these items, two new programs currently are being considered for Vietnam:
Vietnam and the United States gradually have been expanding their embryonic security ties, which have lagged far behind the economic aspect of the relationship. Some in the United States see Vietnamese and U.S. security interests as mutually reinforcing, particularly with regard to China, and hope to develop military-to-military relations. These efforts culminated in November 2003, when Vietnamese Defense Minister Pham Van Tra visited Washington. Later that month, the guided missile frigate USS Vandergrift and its 200 crew members made a four-day call at the port of Saigon. Both events were firsts since the end of the Vietnam War and were followed up by additional visits in 2004. One option for expanding military-to-military relations would be establishing a bilateral IMET program. Since FY2002, the Bush Administration has requested funds for Expanded International Military Education and Training (E-IMET) courses to enhance English language proficiency among Vietnamese military officers. The program is designed to "facilitate [the officers'] attendance at conferences and confidence building meetings hosted by Pacific Command Headquarters." No funds have been disbursed, however, because Vietnam and the United States have not yet signed an IMET agreement. Funding for IMET programs would be affected by the restrictions in the proposed Vietnam Human Rights Act.
In an interview with the Washington Post days before departing for his June 21, 2005 summit with President Bush, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Khai said that during his trip to Washington, the United States and Vietnam would announce the launch of a bilateral IMET program.
The Vietnamese government in early 2004 invited the U.S. Peace Corps to Vietnam to begin discussion of opening a country program. Over 20 countries, including Cambodia, have made similar invitations. The Peace Corps has welcomed the invitation and in the near future intends to conduct a country assessment. Generally, if a country assessment team makes a positive report, it takes 12 to 18 months for a program to be established. New programs typically cost on the order of $1 million-$2 million annually. In its report (S.Rept. 108–346) accompanying the FY2005 Foreign Operations bill (S. 2812), the Senate Appropriations Committee expressed its support for opening a new program in Vietnam. The Vietnam Human Rights Act's restrictions would not have directly affected the Peace Corps.
Prime Minister Pham Van Khai indicated that one of his mid- level priorities during his trip to the United States in June 2005 is obtaining U.S. assistance for Agent Orange victims. During President Bill Clinton's five-day trip to Vietnam in 2000, the United States agreed to set up a joint research study on the effects of dioxin/Agent Orange. Over three million Vietnamese suffering from the alleged effects of Agent Orange were part of a class action suit filed in U.S. Federal District Court in Brooklyn against the chemical companies that manufactured the defoliant. The case was dismissed in March 2005, in a ruling that was widely publicized in Vietnam. In April 2005, the Bush Administration discontinued funding of a grant to conduct research in Vietnam on the possible relationship between Agent Orange and birth defects. The justification for the decision was that the Vietnamese Ministry of Health had not given its approval for the study.
In recent years, Congress has devoted considerable attention to Vietnam's human rights record. Vietnam is a one-party, authoritarian state. Since at least the late 1990s, the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) appears to have followed a strategy of relaxing most restrictions on most forms of personal and religious expression while selectively repressing individuals and organizations that it deems a threat to the party's monopoly on political power. Most prominently, the government has cracked down harshly on protests against various government policies by certain ethnic minority groups, particularly the Montagnards in the country's Central Highlands and the Hmong in the Northwest Highlands. The government also has stepped up repression of so-called cyber dissidents who have criticized the government over the Internet. On September 15, 2004, the State Department, under the International Religious Freedom Act (P.L. 105–292), for the first time designated Vietnam as a "country of particular concern," principally because of reports of worsening harassment of certain groups of ethnic minority Protestants and Buddhists. By law, within 90 days (extendable for another 90-day period), the President must decide on a course of action, including sanctions, with regard to Vietnam's religious rights situation. The President extended the review period, meaning that a decision must be made by mid-March 2005.
Congress played a key role in both the cessation of aid to Vietnam in the 1970s, and its restoration in the 1990s.
For much of the Cold War, aid to North Vietnam and most other socialist countries was prohibited. (Aid was prohibited under section 620(f) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, among other statutes.) The United States provided significant military and economic assistance to its ally, South Vietnam, particularly after the U.S. became overtly involved in inter-Vietnamese hostilities in 1965. In 1973, following the conclusion of a Paris Peace Agreement that brought an end to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Congress began cutting Nixon Administration requests for military and economic assistance to South Vietnam. President Richard Nixon's pledge to provide reconstruction aid to North Vietnam also proved unpopular in Congress, particularly after the collapse of the north–south cease-fire negotiated in Paris.
After the victory of socialist North Vietnam over South Vietnam in April 1975, the United States ended virtually all bilateral economic interchange, including foreign assistance, with unified Vietnam. (Prohibitions on assistance to Vietnam were included in P.L. 94–41, a continuing appropriations resolution signed into law by President Gerald Ford in the summer of 1975.) The restrictions included a halt to bilateral humanitarian aid, opposition to financial aid from international financial institutions (such as the World Bank), a ban on U.S. travel to Vietnam, and an embargo on bilateral trade. President Gerald Ford linked the provision of economic assistance to Hanoi's cooperation in returning and accounting for POWs and MIAs. In the FY1977 foreign aid appropriations bill Congress prohibited the use of any funds to provide assistance to Vietnam, a provision that was repeated annually until its removal in 1994.
In the early months of his administration, President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) and the socialist regime in Hanoi attempted to negotiate the outlines of a normalization agreement that would include U.S. assistance. The negotiations stalled, however, when the Vietnamese responded that they would neither agree to establish relations nor furnish information on U.S. POW/MIAs until the United States pledged to provide several billion dollars in postwar reconstruction aid. Simultaneously, Congress objected to Carter's moves by reinforcing existing prohibitions on aid to Vietnam. Normalization efforts ultimately were thwarted in 1978 by Vietnam's decision to align with the Soviet Union, its invasion of Cambodia, and its expulsion of nearly half a million ethnic Chinese who then became refugees in Southeast Asia.
Washington and Hanoi gradually began to normalize relations in the early 1990s, following Vietnam's withdrawal from Cambodia and improvements in Hanoi's cooperation on the issue of American prisoners of war (POWs) and missing-in-action (MIA) personnel in Vietnam. Economic assistance was resumed in 1991, when the administration of George H. W. Bush announced plans to send $1.3 million to fit disabled Vietnamese with artificial limbs.19 The announcement came days after Washington and Hanoi agreed to open an office in Vietnam to resolve outstanding MIA cases. In subsequent years, annual aid flows were generally small and limited to disaster assistance and humanitarian programs—such as prosthetics and aid to orphans—to ameliorate the effects of the war.
Coinciding with these developments, in 1991 and 1992 the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA affairs—chaired by John Kerry and vice-chaired by Bob Smith—conducted what many consider the most extensive independent investigation of the POW/MIA issue undertaken. In early 1993, the committee issued its report, which concluded that there was "no compelling evidence" that POWs were alive after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and that although there was no "conspiracy" in Washington to cover up live POWs, the U.S. government had seriously neglected and mismanaged the issue, particularly in the 1970s. The committee's televised hearings played a major role in defusing much of the passion that had surrounded the POW issue.
The U.S. aid program in Vietnam expanded gradually through the 1990s, in step with the acceleration of the normalization process. In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced that the United States would no longer oppose international financial institution aid to Vietnam. The following year, President Clinton ordered an end to the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam, a move that followed shortly after a vote in the Senate urging the embargo to be lifted. Ambassadors were exchanged in 1997. In Title II of the FY1991 Foreign Operations bill (P.L. 101–513) provided these funds, notwithstanding other legal provisions, including the ban on bilateral aid to Vietnam.
1998, President Clinton granted Vietnam its first waiver from the requirements of the so-called Jackson–Vanik Amendment (contained in the Trade Act of 1974, Title IV, section 402), which prohibit the President from normalizing commercial relations with selected socialist and formerly socialist countries if they do not meet certain requirements regarding freedom of emigration. A congressional resolution disapproving the waiver was defeated, as have such resolutions disapproving the presidential waivers issued every year since.
All of these steps provoked considerable controversy in Congress, though opposition to normalization decreased incrementally throughout the 1990s. Following the signing of the BTA in 2000, Congress overwhelmingly approved the agreement, which paved the way for the two countries to extend normal trade relations (NTR) status on a nonpermanent basis to one another. The signing of the BTA marked the end to legal restrictions on virtually all commercial transactions and most forms of economic assistance to Vietnam. Also in 2000, the Clinton Administration, in an undated unpublished determination, on national interest grounds, exempted Vietnam from the prohibition on most forms of assistance to 'communist' countries contained in section 620(f) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
Vietnam and the United States gradually have been expanding their political and security ties, although these have lagged far behind the economic aspect of the relationship. In 2003 and 2004, however, Vietnam's leadership appears to have decided to expand their country's ties to the United States, as indicated by the aforementioned military-to-military meetings and ship visits. It is still unclear how far, how fast, and in what form any new security relationship will develop.
As of April 2022, Vietnam maintains diplomatic relationships with 189 UN member states, State of Palestine and Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. In 2011 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, at the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam, released an official statement about Vietnam's foreign policy and a section of the statement stated: "Vietnam is a friend and reliable partner of all countries in the international community, actively taking part in international and regional cooperation processes. Deepen, stabilize and sustain established international relations. Develop relations with countries and territories in the world, as well as international organizations, while showing: respect for each other's independence; sovereignty and territorial integrity; non-interference in each other's international affairs; non-use or threat of force; settlement of disagreements and disputes by means of peaceful negotiations; mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit."
The World Bank’s assistance program of foreign aid to Vietnam has three objectives: to support Vietnam's transition to a market economy, to enhance equitable and sustainable development, and to promote good governance. From 1993 through 2004, Vietnam received pledges of US$29 billion of Official Development Assistance (ODA), of which about US$14 billion, or 49 percent, has been disbursed. In 2004 international donors pledged ODA of US$2.25 billion, of which US$1.65 billion was disbursed. Three donors accounted for 80 percent of disbursements in 2004: Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. During the period 2006–10, Vietnam hopes to receive US$14 billion–US$15 billion of ODA.
Russia–Vietnam relations date back formally to 30 January 1950, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics established an embassy to North Vietnam. The Soviet Union was one of the first countries in the world to recognize and formally establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam, laying the foundations for strong and cooperative friendship between the two countries.
The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs was a special committee convened by the United States Senate during the George H. W. Bush administration to investigate the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, that is, the fate of United States service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War. The committee was in existence from August 2, 1991 to January 2, 1993.
Formal relations between the United States and Vietnam were initiated in the nineteenth century under U.S. President Andrew Jackson, but relations soured after the U.S. refused to protect the Kingdom of Vietnam from French invasion. During World War II, the U.S. covertly assisted the Viet Minh in fighting Japanese forces in French Indochina, though a formal alliance was not established. After the dissolution of French Indochina in 1954, the U.S. supported the capitalist South Vietnam as opposed to marxist-leninist North Vietnam and fought North Vietnam directly during the Vietnam War. After American withdrawal in 1973 and the subsequent fall of South Vietnam in 1975, the U.S. applied a trade embargo and severed ties with Vietnam, mostly out of concerns relating to Vietnamese boat people and the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. Attempts at re-establishing relations went unfulfilled for decades, until U.S. President Bill Clinton began normalizing diplomatic relations in the 1990s. In 1994, the U.S. lifted its 30-year trade embargo on Vietnam. The following year, both countries established embassies and consulates. Relations between the two countries continued to improve into the 21st century.
American–Uzbek relations formally began when the United States recognized the independence of Uzbekistan on December 25, 1991, and opened an embassy in Tashkent in March 1992. U.S.-Uzbekistan relations developed slowly and reached a peak following the U.S. decision to invade Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Relations cooled significantly following the "color revolutions" in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan in 2003–2005, and the Government of Uzbekistan sought to limit the influence of U.S. and other foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on civil society, political reform, and human rights inside the country.
Bilateral relations between the United States and Cambodia, while strained throughout the Cold War, have strengthened considerably in modern times. The U.S. supports efforts in Cambodia to combat terrorism, build democratic institutions, promote human rights, foster economic development, eliminate corruption, achieve the fullest possible accounting for Americans missing from the Indochina Wars-era, and to bring to justice those most responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Guinea-Bissau–United States relations are bilateral relations between Guinea-Bissau and the United States.
Trinidad and Tobago – United States relations are bilateral relations between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States.
Laos–Vietnam relations refers to the current and historical relationship between the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
India–Vietnam relations, also knows as Indian-Vietnamese relations, are the bilateral relations of India and Vietnam.
The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue concerns the fate of United States servicemen who were reported as missing in action (MIA) during the Vietnam War and associated theaters of operation in Southeast Asia. The term also refers to issues related to the treatment of affected family members by the governments involved in these conflicts. Following the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, 591 U.S. prisoners of war (POWs) were returned during Operation Homecoming. The United States listed about 2,500 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action but only 1,200 Americans were reported to have been killed in action with no body recovered. Many of these were airmen who were shot down over North Vietnam or Laos. Investigations of these incidents have involved determining whether the men involved survived being shot down. If they did not survive, then the U.S. government considered efforts to recover their remains. POW/MIA activists played a role in pushing the U.S. government to improve its efforts in resolving the fates of these missing service members. Progress in doing so was slow until the mid-1980s when relations between the United States and Vietnam began to improve and more cooperative efforts were undertaken. Normalization of the U.S. relations with Vietnam in the mid-1990s was a culmination of this process.
Pakistan-Vietnam relations, or Pakistani-Vietnamese relations, refers to the bilateral relationship between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The relationship is largely based on mutual trade and international political cooperation between the two countries. Pakistan is represented in Vietnam by its embassy in Hanoi, and Vietnam also maintains an embassy in Islamabad. During the Cold War, Pakistan maintained close ties with the United States-led Western Bloc to counter rival India's allegiance with the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the United States was involved in the Vietnam War against Soviet-backed North Vietnam while in the same time period, Pakistan had engaged in two major wars with neighbouring India in 1965 and 1971, the latter of which resulted in a devastating defeat for Pakistan and saw the emergence of an independent Bangladesh. Due to the fact that Pakistan was an ally with the United States and had begun to indirectly wage war against the Soviets in Afghanistan with heavy U.S.−backing, relations became strained between the two, with Pakistan closing its diplomatic mission in Vietnam in 1980 and Vietnam doing the same in 1984. However, relations greatly improved in the 2000s, and Pakistan reopened its embassy in Hanoi in October 2000. Vietnam also reopened its embassy in Islamabad and trade office in Karachi in December and November 2005, respectively. Relations between the two countries have continued to remain friendly, with Vietnam expressing an interest in increased economic and military cooperation with Pakistan. The heads of both nations have in recent times paid official visits to each other, with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf visiting Vietnam in May 2001 and Vietnamese President Trần Đức Lương also paying an official visit to Pakistan in March 2004. Throughout the following decade, several visits were made by various Vietnamese and Pakistani ministries to each other. A major part of Pakistan's pursuit to enhance its relationship with Vietnam is outlined in Pakistan's "Vision East Asia" strategy. The emergence of such a strategy came as a result of Pakistan's desire to balance its relations with Vietnam and other East Asian / Southeast Asian states by making an effort to circumvent Pakistan's close relationship with China and Vietnam's growing relationship with India—the former being a cause of concern for Vietnam due to its tense relationship with China and the latter being a cause of concern for Pakistan due to its rivalry and history of armed conflict with India.
Malaysia–Vietnam relations date to at least the 15th century. Malaysia forged diplomatic ties with the modern-day Vietnamese state on 30 March 1973; as of 2015, these ties are still in existence. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the countries' relationship became strained as a result of the Cambodian–Vietnamese War and the influx of Vietnamese boat people into Malaysia. The subsequent resolution of these issues saw the cultivation of strong trade and economic ties, and bilateral trade between the countries grew strongly, with an expansion into areas including information technology, education and defence. Both countries are members of APEC and ASEAN.
U.S. - Vietnam Trade Relations refer to the bilateral trade relationship between the United States of America (U.S.) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam) from 1990s to 2012. After more than two decades of no economic relationship since the end of the Vietnam War, the two governments reestablished economic relationship during the 1990s. The bilateral trade between the U.S. and Vietnam grew slowly afterwards, and it has developed rapidly after the signing of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in December 2001. Total bilateral trade turnover has increased 1200% from $1.5 billion in 2001 to over $20 billion in 2011. The bilateral trade relations further developed after the U.S. granted Vietnam permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status as part of Vietnam’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007. The U.S. and Vietnam also came to a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) in 2007. Vietnam was recently the United States' 26th largest goods imports partner with $17.5 billion in 2011, and was the 45th largest goods export market with $3.7 billion in 2010. Vietnam with six other partners are now in the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations with the U.S. The growth in bilateral trade has also been accompanied by issues and problems, e.g. anti-dumping cases, worker’s rights, non-market economy, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection and Vietnam’s exchange rate policy.
After World War II and the collapse of Vietnam's monarchy, France attempted to re-establish its colonial rule but was ultimately defeated in the First Indo-China War. The Geneva Accords in 1954 partitioned the country temporarily in two with a promise of democratic elections in 1956 to reunite the country. However, the United States and South Vietnam insisted on United Nations supervision of any election to prevent fraud, which the Soviet Union and North Vietnam refused. North and South Vietnam therefore remained divided until The Vietnam War ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
The Philippines–Vietnam relations refers to the bilateral relations of the Republic of the Philippines and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Since the end of the Cold War, relations between the two countries have warmed significantly. Vietnam is sometimes referred to as the only communist military ally of the Philippines. Both nations have cooperated in the fields of education, tourism, agriculture, aquaculture, trade, and defense. Additionally, both nations have similar positions on the South China Sea issue, with Vietnam backing the Philippine victory in the ICC against China, and the Philippines backing to a certain extent the claim of Vietnam in the Paracels. Both nations have overlapping claims in the Spratlys, but have never made military confrontations as both view each other as diplomatic allies and ASEAN brethren.
North Korea–Vietnam relations is a bilateral relationship between Vietnam and North Korea. North Korea and the former country North Vietnam established formal diplomatic relations on January 31, 1950. In July 1957, North Vietnam President Ho Chi Minh visited North Korea; North Korean prime minister Kim Il Sung visited North Vietnam in November–December 1958 and November 1964. In February 1961, the two governments concluded an agreement on scientific and technical cooperation. North Vietnam merged with South Vietnam in 1976 to become the modern country of Vietnam.
The Vietnam War was a major event that shaped the course of the world in the second half of the 20th century. Although it was a regional conflict that occurred on the Indochinese Peninsula, it also affected the strategic interests of the People's Republic of China, the United States and the Soviet Union as well as the relations between these great powers. China, in particular, also played an important role in the Vietnam wars during 1950–1975. China's militarily supported North Vietnam by fighting South Vietnam and the United States in the Vietnam War. However, with the failure of the North Vietnamese and Chinese negotiations in 1968, the PRC began to withdraw support for the sake of preparing for a clash with the Soviets. Chinese influence over North Vietnam diminished from that point.
Relations between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union underwent significant change from 1969 to 1991, from open conflict to bitter détente to diplomatic partners by 1989. Relations between the Soviet Union (USSR) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dated back to the founding of the CCP in Shanghai in 1921, a meeting conducted under the supervision of the Communist International. The Soviets remained cautious partners with the rising CCP throughout the 22 years of the Chinese Civil War, and the USSR was the first nation to recognize the People's Republic of China in 1949. The following year saw the signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty and founding of the Sino-Soviet alliance as well as the beginning of a decade of economic cooperation between the two nations.