Adaptive Hedging and Institutional Framework: Vietnam’s Strategy toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative through the Two Corridors, One Belt Framework, 2000–2025

Abstract

This article examines Vietnam’s adaptive hedging strategy toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through an analysis of the “Two Corridors, One Belt” (TCOB) framework from 2000 to 2025. The central question is why Vietnam has insisted on preserving TCOB’s institutional independence from the BRI even as it participates substantively in Chinese led infrastructure cooperation — and how Hanoi has deployed TCOB as a vehicle for hedging between economic cooperation, sovereignty protection, and strategic autonomy. The article argues that Vietnam’s response to the BRI is neither acceptance nor rejection, but a form of adaptive hedging in which TCOB functions as an institutional buffer: by maintaining a relationship with the BRI that is linked but not subsumed, Vietnam absorbs Chinese infrastructure resources while resisting full incorporation into Beijing’s political narrative and strategic framework. Drawing on process tracing and qualitative case analysis, the article periodizes Vietnam’s strategy into four phases: binding engagement (2000–2011), characterized by active acceptance of Chinese infrastructure financing within the TCOB framework; economic pragmatism (2011–2017), in which Vietnam sustained economic cooperation with China while cautiously distancing itself from BRI labeling following the 2014 HD-981 crisis; dominance-denial and risk-aversion (2017–2020), during which Vietnam simultaneously constrained Chinese political influence through multilateral balancing and reduced economic dependence through CPTPP and EVFTA; and economic diversification with pragmatic cooperation (2020–present), marked by selective acceptance of BRI-linked projects alongside continued multi-directional partnership building. The article contributes to the hedging literature by showing that institutional frameworks can become instruments of policy autonomy. In the Vietnamese case, hedging is not only a matter of diplomatic positioning or economic diversification, but also a process of managing the institutional terms under which cooperation with China takes place. Vietnam’s experience offers comparative lessons for middle powers navigating asymmetric relationships with dominant regional powers.