Piloting Pragmatism: Vietnam’s Aircraft Diplomacy through the COMAC Deal

During General Secretary To Lam’s state visit to China on 14-17 April, Vietnamese budget carrier VietJet signed a financing agreement with a Shanghai Pudong Development Bank subsidiary for the operating lease of 10 Chinese-made COMAC C909 aircraft. More than a commercial transaction, the deal offers a glimpse into how Hanoi is managing its evolving relationship with China through an increasingly pragmatic economy-first approach.

At the practical level, the deal responds to a pressing market reality: Vietnam’s aviation sector is expanding rapidly, with aircraft supply struggling to keep pace. The country’s airlines handled about 84 million passengers in 2025, with the figure projected to rise to around 95 million by 2026. Yet global supply constraints persist. Engine maintenance bottlenecks — particularly affecting the CFM LEAP and Pratt & Whitney GTF engines used in the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX families — are expected to linger into 2026, if not beyond. Meanwhile, both Airbus and Boeing continue to face production backlogs and delivery delays. Diversifying suppliers, therefore, appears to be an operational necessity for Vietnamese carriers.

The C909 fills part of the gap. As a jet designed for short-haul routes and shorter, narrower runways, it serves a niche that aligns with Vietnam’s domestic and secondary-city connectivity needs. Since last year, VietJet has begun operating trial routes with C909 from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to the resort island Con Dao. The sequencing shows a measured and incremental approach: the airline began with technical and operational familiarisation before moving towards a formal commercial agreement. Notably, these flights proceeded without any major public backlash, which was rather significant in a country where people remain cautious about Chinese-made quality in sectors such as civil aviation, where safety is the paramount concern.

The agreement is also linked to VietJet’s parallel decision to launch five new air routes between Vietnam and China, aimed at capturing expanding flows of tourism, trade, and business travel between the two neighbours. In 2025, China was Vietnam’s largest source of international visitors, with over 5.28 million arrivals, or 25 per cent of all inbound tourists. Meanwhile, outbound Vietnamese travel to China has surged in recent years. Increasingly, Vietnamese travellers are drawn to China by competitively priced tour packages, improving connectivity, and a great mix of cultural landmarks, modern cities, and scenic destinations. Business travel has also grown alongside deepening trade ties and cross-border supply chains.

Still, to view the COMAC deal solely through a commercial lens would be incomplete. The timing and optics suggest that Hanoi’s aircraft diplomacy is at work, with VietJet serving as its key vehicle. The groundwork had been laid well before To Lam’s visit. When Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Hanoi for a state visit on 14-15 April 2025, VietJet positioned two C909s on the tarmac in proximity to Xi’s plane at Noi Bai Airport, a choreographed image showing the convergence of commerce and diplomacy.

Just a day before Xi’s arrival, the Vietnamese government revised a decree to permit the operation of aircraft certified by China’s Civil Aviation Administration. In effect, it extended recognition that had previously been confined to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

Aviation may be the latest expression of a broader pattern in which Vietnam is gradually opening space for Chinese participation in strategic sectors where Chinese firms command advanced technologies, cost advantages, and increasingly influential technical ecosystems.

For Beijing, which is actively promoting COMAC as part of its broader effort to challenge Western dominance in the aerospace sector, each overseas deployment of made-in-China aircraft carries reputational significance. Vietnam’s participation, however modest, lends symbolic validation to Chinese aviation technology and its certification standards. This, however, must be taken with a pinch of salt: the C909 remains heavily reliant on Western-made components for its engines, avionics, and flight-control systems. There are only three Chinese suppliers out of 22 key original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for the aircraft, accounting for 13.6 per cent of the total.

Still, Vietnam’s recognition of aircraft certified by Chinese authorities signals a forward-looking shift in its approach to Chinese technologies. What was once heavily constrained by strategic caution and national security concerns now appears subject to selective recalibration.

Aviation may be the latest expression of a broader pattern in which Vietnam is gradually opening space for Chinese participation in strategic sectors where Chinese firms command advanced technologies, cost advantages, and increasingly influential technical ecosystems. For example, Hanoi is harmonising its technical standards and operational protocols for the cross-border railway with China. It has also procured 5G communications equipment from Huawei and ZTE.

That said, Hanoi has made its decisions through a deliberately mixed and risk-managed approach. For instance, its 5G infrastructure involves Western suppliers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm for its core network. Similarly, the planned development of Vietnam’s first high-speed rail project linking Hanoi and Quang Ninh Province in the north will likely use Germany’s Siemens Mobility technologies rather than Chinese alternatives. This project is being led by domestic conglomerate Vingroup,

Despite the COMAC venture, Vietnam’s aircraft diplomacy still tilts heavily towards Washington — particularly as large aircraft purchases could help ease concerns in the second Trump administration over Vietnam’s huge trade surplus with the US. During To Lam’s visit to Washington in February this year, Vietnamese carriers VietJet, Vietnam Airlines and Sun Phu Quoc Airways signed deals to purchase nearly 100 Boeing jets.

Against that backdrop, the COMAC arrangement remains relatively modest, not only in scale but also in institutional exposure. By channelling the deal through VietJet, a private sector carrier, Hanoi may be seeking to contain potential operational, commercial, and even political risks at the corporate level. That buffer would be considerably thinner if Vietnam Airlines, the national flag carrier, were to be involved.

The COMAC deal thus represents a calculated experiment rather than a strategic pivot. Hanoi is becoming more willing to try Chinese technologies where they are practical and cost-effective, even as it continues to rely on a wider mix of partners. It is a gradual widening of options so that its aircraft — and by extension its foreign policy — can fly in multiple directions.

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