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Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has flagged closer co-operation with Australia to deal with tensions in the South China Sea as he warned all sides to refrain from using force and intimidation.
Mr Phuc said Canberra and Hanoi, which are set to deepen trade and defence ties this week with a new strategic partnership, would cooperate closely to ensure security in the region and freedom of navigation and over-flight in the contested area.
"Vietnam welcomes and stands ready to join in efforts towards maintaining peace and stability in the region," he said in a written interview with Fairfax Media ahead of his visit to Canberra and Sydney this week.
"Both Australia and ASEAN have important positions and roles in the region."
His comments suggest Vietnam could be open to joint naval operations. That idea drew strong support from Australia's former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans on Tuesday when he said Canberra should do freedom of navigation operations not with the United States, as suggested recently by President Donald Trump, but with rising regional powers like Vietnam and Indonesia.
"I do think it's important we recognise we're all in this together and absolutely need to give a united, coherent message to China that when it does overreach….there is going to be push back," Mr Evans said at the ASEAN-Australia Dialogue.
Mr Phuc is visiting Australia ahead of the special summit with Association of South-East Asian Nations in Sydney this weekend. Vietnam, Australia's war-time enemy in the 1960s and '70s, has emerged in recent years to be one of Canberra's closest and most effective partners in the region.
While the two countries are upgrading their relationship, Mr Phuc said there was still "vast room" to improve trade and investment ties.
He noted the Vietnamese economy grew at 6.8 per cent in 2017, the fastest pace in a decade. Vietnam is the fourth biggest source of international students for Australia and is the sixth largest market for agricultural products.
"With the determination to accelerate economic reform and transform the growth model, the business and investment environment in Vietnam has significantly improved," Mr Phuc said.
At the same time Vietnam has moved to rapidly modernise its military, helped by a four-fold increase in its annual defence budget over the decade to 2016.
The US government's export office said Vietnam had "developed the most lethal power projection capabilities in Southeast Asia, including one of the largest navies, with advanced Kilo-class submarines, and now has the most sophisticated missile force in the region."
The US expects Vietnam's annual defence budget to grow by a further 30 per cent to $US6.2 billion by 2020.
Canberra's closer ties with Hanoi are just one part of the emerging regional coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is seeking to establish to balance the rising power of China.
Vietnam's signing up to the re-worked Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional free trade deal, was seen as a milestone in Japanese and Australian efforts to forge closer relations with Hanoi.
Vietnam, too, has strengthened ties with powers in the region, including the US, India and Japan, to hedge against Chinese aggression.
For Vietnam, one trigger for its strategic realignment was China's move in 2014 to place an oil rig in waters off the Paracel Islands, claimed by Hanoi, prompting angry protests across the country that lasted for weeks. Since then, while it has maintained a working relationship with Beijing, Vietnam has sought to bolster other relationships. Last week, it hosted a US aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, for the first time since the end of the Vietnam war.
"Maintaining peace, stability, security, safety, and freedom of navigation and overflight in the [South China Sea] where global major shipping routes pass through is in the common interest and a shared goal of all countries," Mr Phuc said.
While labelling the formal signing of the strategic partnership with Australia as "momentous" and noting it came as the two countries celebrated 45 years of diplomatic relations, Mr Phuc said it was just the start of a longer-term process of upgrading ties.
"In order to bring the bilateral relations to the strategic level, the two countries should continue to strengthen and expand cooperation in all areas," he said.
"We will continue to review and promote the effective implementation of the existing bilateral cooperation mechanisms, and on this basis, consider their upgrading or establishing new mechanisms for mutual consultation on strategic bilateral, regional and international issues," he said.
Mr Phuc said Vietnam was implementing and negotiating 16 free trade agreements as it sought to create an "attractive, transparent and level playground for foreign enterprises".
He said the revamped 11-member TPP, which does not include the US, and other free trade agreements would be used as an "additional driving force for reforms".
"We will bolster economic restructuring, perfect legal frameworks and policies, create a level playing-field as well as a favourable business environment as part of our efforts to fully and strictly meet our commitments to trade facilitation and liberalisation, and market access," he said.
Education services, wheat and coal are Australia's main exports to Vietnam in a two-way relationship worth nearly $12 billion last year, according to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade figures.
This places Vietnam behind the likes of Indonesia (two-way trade $16.4 billion), but the relationship is one of Australia's fastest growing in ASEAN with trade rising by an average of nearly 12 per cent over the last five years.