President Joe Biden has closed a visit to Vietnam by calling on the two countries to improve their collaboration.

President Joe Biden closed a visit to Vietnam on Monday by spotlighting new business deals and partnerships between the two countries and paying respects at a memorial honoring his late friend and colleague Sen. John McCain, who endured a lengthy imprisonment in Hanoi during the Vietnam War.

Biden met with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính, who also accompanied Biden to a quick drop by at a meeting of business leaders. Biden also sat down with President Võ Văn Thưởng, who hosted the U.S. president for a formal state luncheon. The two sides are looking to strengthen their partnership amid shared concerns about China’s assertiveness in the Pacific.

Both leaders spoke about strengthening Vietnam’s semiconductor industry. Biden made clear his administration’s commitment to an open Pacific.

  • @MicroWaveOPEnglish
    9•1 year ago

    Content of the memorial:

    The inscription on the memorial read and was translated to: “On 26 October 1967 near Trúc Bạch Lake, the citizens and military of the capital, Hanoi, captured Pilot John Sidney McCain. The US Navy Air Force Aviator was flying an A4 aircraft, which crashed near Yên Phụ power station. This was one of the ten aircraft shot down that day.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trúc_Bạch_Lake#Trúc_Bạch_war_monument

    And why Vietnam respects McCain:

    “For both the government of Vietnam and its people, Senator McCain was a symbol of his generation of senators, and of the veterans of the Vietnam war,” Vietnam’s foreign minister Pham Binh Minh wrote in a condolence book at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi on Monday.

    “It was he who took the lead in significantly healing the wounds of war, and normalizing and promoting the comprehensive Vietnam-U.S. partnership,” Minh said.

    McCain had been one of the most vocal proponents in Washington in favor of normalizing ties with Communist-led Vietnam, a former enemy of the United States.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mccain-vietnam/vietnam-says-john-mccain-helped-heal-the-wounds-of-war-idUSKCN1LC0P8