Infrastructure as Strategy: How Vietnam Rewires Indochina through Ports and Roads

Vietnam is often portrayed as steadily losing its traditional influence in neighbouring Laos and Cambodia to China. Such assessments overlook an emerging dimension of Hanoi’s statecraft: by building critical infrastructure along its southwestern coast and granting Laos maritime access, Hanoi is transforming its coastline into strategic leverage to counter regional power shifts and consolidate its geopolitical footprint.

Laos – the only country having “special relations” with Vietnam, rooted in shared revolutionary history and deep political trust – has long relied on overland routes to Thailand and the Chinese-built Kunming-Vientiane high-speed train. This has improved connectivity across its mountainous terrain and boosted trade with China, but saddled Vientiane with heavy debts.

Vietnam offers a cheaper alternative: providing direct maritime access to help Laos overcome its landlocked geography. Since 2001, Vung Ang Port in Ha Tinh province — the nearest major port to the Vietnam-Laos border — has been developed with three berths, granting Laos not just access but substantive control. Through the Lao-Viet International Port Company, the Lao government has expanded its stake from 20 per cent to 60 per cent, securing management rights and development priority over the port.

With a designed throughput exceeding 6.5 million tonnes per year, Vung Ang is becoming an important maritime outlet for Laos, handling its minerals exports and other bulk commodities, as well as cargo from northeastern Thailand. The 585km Vientiane-Vung Ang corridor is approximately 200km shorter than the route via Bangkok to Thailand’s Laem Chabang port, saving transport time and logistics costs. Both countries are discussing upgrades to rail and road connectivity along this axis, including the proposed Vientiane-Vung Ang railway and Vientiane-Hanoi expressway.

The significance extends beyond economics. Attending the inauguration of Vung Ang’s third berth in 2025, Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith said the project helps realise Laos’ transformation “from a landlocked country into a connected country”. He framed it as a model of cooperation with special significance for politics, economics, defence and security. By anchoring Laos’ trade flows through Vietnamese territory, Hanoi has turned physical connectivity into political capital and strategic trust with Vientiane. Despite its growing economic dependence on China, Laos continues to regard ties with Vietnam as a top foreign-policy priority.

Further south, Vietnam once exercised considerable leverage over Cambodia, helping prop up the Hun Sen regime after the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s. In recent decades, however, China has emerged as Cambodia’s dominant economic partner, cultivating an “iron-clad friendship” that allows Phnom Penh to assert greater strategic autonomy from Hanoi.

As China expands its footprint across mainland Southeast Asia, Hanoi refuses to accept diminishing influence as inevitable by actively engineering alternatives.

A third of Cambodia’s international trade moves along the Mekong and relies on Vietnamese ports, notably Ho Chi Minh City and Cai Mep-Thi Vai, for maritime access. Phnom Penh is now seeking to reshape geography and rewrite its destiny through the China-funded Funan Techo Canal, a 180km inland waterway drawing from the Mekong and linking Phnom Penh to its maritime outlet at Kep Port. The project reflects Cambodia’s determination to reduce its reliance on Vietnam, a goal Prime Minister Hun Manet described as “breathing through our own nose”.

In response, Hanoi has proceeded with bold infrastructure moves that re-assert its advantageous geography and strategic leverage over Cambodia.

One such move is the construction of a 4.9km access road from Ha Tien town — located adjacent to Cambodia’s land border — to the planned Ha Tien port, roughly 25km from Kep. Officially presented as a provincial-level project to improve local logistics and commerce, the timing suggests it may have been conceived with the Funan Techo Canal in mind. It was approved in December 2024, several months after Cambodia unveiled the canal in August 2024. Construction of the access road began in June 2025 and has been progressing steadily since.

The location is also carefully calibrated: the project lies within Vietnam’s territorial waters approximately 3.7km from the historic waters governed by the 1982 Vietnam-Cambodia maritime agreement. It stays outside the sensitive zone to avoid provocation, yet it is close enough to Vietnam’s further offshore islands Hai Tac and Phu Quoc and Cambodia’s Kep to signal Hanoi’s potential reach and capability for area control and surveillance. For now, it is modestly scaled to local economic demand; over time it can be adapted for dual-use purposes such as surveillance as and when needed.

If the Ha Tien port sends a soft signal of presence towards nearby Kep, Vietnam’s far more ambitious project in its southernmost Ca Mau province operates on an entirely different scale. The Hon Khoai dual-use deep-sea port is capable of accommodating vessels up to 250,000 deadweight tonnes. Together with the 18km sea-crossing bridge connecting the mainland to Hon Khoai Island, this constitutes a transformative infrastructure astride key international shipping lanes in the Gulf of Thailand.

Once operational, Hon Khoai could emerge as a major transshipment hub, potentially eclipsing the Funan Techo Canal, given its ability to handle vessel sizes beyond the capabilities of Cambodia’s ports and the inherent efficiency advantages of deep-water ports over inland waterways.

Beyond commerce, Hon Khoai’s dual-use facilities can service and monitor one of Southeast Asia’s most important maritime corridors. Fully equipped, the port could function as a critical surveillance outpost and strategic hedge against potential Chinese naval expansion in the Gulf of Thailand, particularly from Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base.

The project’s strategic importance is underscored by the highest commitment of the Vietnamese leadership: its launch in August 2025 was attended by the defence minister, and construction is undertaken by Army Corps 12 — a major military construction enterprise. During a November 2025 visit, General Secretary To Lam described Hon Khoai as a “national strategic priority”, emphasising its dual role for civilian-economic purposes and as a critical defence-security outpost, and pledged to spare no effort to ensure its timely completion.

These projects reveal Vietnam’s strategy to convert geography and infrastructure into geopolitical influence. As China expands its footprint across mainland Southeast Asia, Hanoi refuses to accept diminishing influence as inevitable by actively engineering alternatives. Port by port, it is building its way to continued strategic relevance in its own periphery.

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