The Quiet Rise of China’s Soft Power Among Vietnam’s Youth

Vietnam is often cited as proof of China’s underwhelming soft power in Southeast Asia: a millennium of resistance against Chinese domination, a border war within living memory, unresolved maritime disputes and elite surveys consistently showing Vietnamese respondents’ deep distrust towards Beijing. Yet, beneath these strategic tensions, a quieter shift is unfolding: young Vietnamese are warming to Chinese culture, language, lifestyles and economic opportunity. From crowds queuing for Labubu toys to the scramble for Chinese-language jobs, and from Chinese content sweeping through social media to record numbers of Vietnamese students choosing to study at Chinese universities, China is more woven into the everyday lives of young Vietnamese.

Four converging forces underpin this shift: cultural attraction, new-media connectivity, facilitation by both governments and economic incentives.

China’s cultural appeal to young Vietnamese today rests on cultural familiarity and contemporary trendiness. Chinese historical dramas have long been a fixture of Vietnamese television — Vietnam is now among Asia’s largest markets for Chinese dramas, whose reach is amplified by digital distribution. Content from major Chinese streaming platforms such as iQIYI, Tencent Video and Youku is carried on Vietnamese platforms such as VieON and FPT Play, bringing China’s digital entertainment directly into Vietnamese homes and smartphones. Chinese pop culture is increasingly localised: some Vietnamese celebrities have gained popularity on Chinese reality shows, while successful Chinese shows have been adapted into Vietnamese hits.

In real life, China’s appeal has spilled into shaping consumption, with its lifestyle brands becoming popular among young Vietnamese through trendy designs and affordable prices. For instance, Mixue, the Chinese ice-cream and tea franchise expanded to over 1,300 Vietnamese outlets by late 2024, making Vietnam its second largest overseas market. Other brands Chagee, Cotti Coffee, KKV and Pop Mart have followed, turning Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City malls into showcases of “Made in China” cool.

None of this cultural traction would travel as far or as quickly without new media. Algorithms have become effective ambassadors: TikTok counts over 70 million monthly active users in Vietnam, out of 460 million across Southeast Asia, and sits within a broader Chinese digital ecosystem through which Chinese content on culture and contemporary life reach regional audiences. Vietnamese-language content on TikTok and Facebook, including from Vietnamese Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) based in or travelling through China, offers an expansive window into China’s landscapes and urban life and how Chinese people live, work and do business.

This bottom-up, peer-driven attraction to China is unfolding alongside a renewed official push for closer people-to-people ties. Since the 75th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the designation of 2025 as the “Year of Vietnam-China Humanistic Exchange”, officials have promoted bilateral youth engagement. The joint statement during President Xi Jinping’s April 2025 state visit invited Vietnamese youth to join “Red Study Tours”. Over 1,000 Vietnamese youths have joined these tours, which combine visits to sites commemorating the two countries’ shared revolutionary history such as the former site of the Vietnamese Youth Revolutionary Comrades Association in Guangzhou, and visits to high-tech hubs showcasing China’s contemporary development and technological achievements.

Vietnam’s history suggests that affinity with China and resistance to its power have never been mutually exclusive.

Two-way travel has expanded, supported by growing rail links and air connectivity. From August 2026, Vietnamese citizens can transit China visa-free for up to ten days, while the Vietnam–China Tourism Cooperation Years 2026–2027 theme seeks to further strengthen people-to-people ties. The numbers are impressive: Chinese visitors to Vietnam surged 41.3 per cent to 5.3 million in 2025, making China Vietnam’s largest tourist source market; Vietnam became China’s fourth-largest source market by mid-2026.

Education diplomacy tells a similar story: Vietnamese student numbers in China have more than doubled from 11,300 in 2018 to about 25,000 today. While this trails behind the number of Vietnamese students in South Korea (43,300), Japan (36,300), Australia (33,000), and the US (31,300), it is expected to rise further with Chinese commitments of at least 1,000 government scholarships and 1,000 Chinese-language Vietnamese teachers.

Underpinning this is economic pragmatism. Vietnamese attraction to China rests not only on what China represents, but also on what engagement with China offers. As Chinese investment has poured into Vietnam, Mandarin has become a sought-after skill for young Vietnamese. Vietnamese recruitment platform JobOKO reported roughly 13,000 openings for Chinese-speaking professionals in 2025, up 50 per cent from 2024, with Chinese proficiency prized for better-paying jobs in industrial parks and Chinese-invested companies. LinkedIn, TopCV and VietnamWorks each list thousands of Chinese-language positions in Vietnam, with monthly salaries ranging from USD500 to USD2,000 — attractive pay by Vietnamese standards.

Demand is such that Vietnam recorded the world’s highest registration numbers for the Chinese-proficiency test (known as the HSK) in Q1 2025. In recent years, Chinese language programmes at some Vietnamese universities have registered the highest admission scores, surpassing those in English, reflecting surging youth interest in learning Chinese. English remains the default foreign language taught from primary school and is moving towards compulsory status by 2030, whereas Chinese is typically taken later for its practical economic value. Anecdotally from limited surveys, there is growing parent demand for early Chinese learning. Vietnam will pilot Chinese, Japanese and Korean lessons for preschoolers to prepare for future workforce competitiveness.

All this is unfolding as the Vietnamese government emphasises the more productive dimensions of its relationship with Beijing, while keeping long-standing South China Sea (SCS) tensions in the background. This favourable climate may have helped, but young Vietnamese people’s growing embrace of China coexists with deeply rooted patriotic sensitivities. The 2025 boycott of Chagee as its application and website displayed China’s disputed “nine-dash line” and the removal of some Chinese dramas displaying the same map show how quickly those sensitivities can resurface. Such episodes, however, have merely interrupted rather than reversed the broader trend. Chagee is back in Vietnam, just as bilateral ties have recovered from the more turbulent 2010s, when the SCS issue overshadowed the relationship.          

Looking Ahead

Whether this societal warming can cushion or withstand the next downturn in bilateral relations remains to be seen. Vietnam’s history suggests that affinity with China and resistance to its power have never been mutually exclusive, but a younger generation is now living this old paradox on new terms: they are drawn more directly and intimately into China’s orbit of culture and opportunity, while retaining the instinct to resist its power when national interests collide.

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