In a rare move, the US’ nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Ronald Reagan, will halt at Vietnam’s port city of Danang on Sunday.
Rare Docking
Local media cited a Vietnamese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson saying that the ship is due to arrive on Sunday afternoon and will stay at Danang until 30 June.
This is only the third time that a US aircraft carrier has docked in the Southeast Asian country since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt stopped in Vietnam in 2020 to mark 45 years since the end of the Vietnam War.
This year, the US is looking to upgrade its formal ties with Vietnam. The push comes amid Vietnam’s increasingly frequent disputes with China over boundaries in the South China Sea. China claims ownership over almost the entire water body, including the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam and other littoral states.
To assert navigational rights, US carriers frequently cross the disputed waters, which is a crucial trade route. However, the warships are often shadowed by Chinese vessels.
Biden’s Latest Remarks on China
The US’ move comes days after US President Joe Biden called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a “dictator,” at a campaign fundraising event in California.
Referring to the incident of a Chinese surveillance balloon that flew into US airspace earlier this year, Biden said that “the reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when [the US] shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it was he didn’t know it was there.”
It is “a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” he added.
The spy balloon incident had sent bilateral ties plunging to their lowest point in decades.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called Biden’s remarks “extremely absurd and irresponsible,” adding that they “seriously violate basic facts, diplomatic protocols, and China’s political dignity.”