Vietnam too always ally with the stronger... except Viets are too stupid and always make the bad choice...even now Viets are allying with the US and hating on China while Thais are trying to have good relations with China...one is smart enough to chose good allies and the other one is stupid...
Zero leverage...investors invest in Vietnam because they can import supplies from China and re export to USA and Europe... if China stop exports to Vietnam then nobody will invest in Vietnam...
If China must give Islands to Vietnam because of French occupation, then Vietnam should give some land to combodia. :)
Actually what Vietnam cry for, they do 1000x worse to Combodia and Laos.
Philippines and Vietnam are notorious land grabbers, of course they get along well. Best friends. But still their added GDP is so small...by the way...looking at some statistics... Pinoys are doing much better than Viets ! How is that possible ? It's like India doing better than China => Never...