A Chinese toy, Labubu, gets people lining up in Vietnam. Recruiters fill roles that ask for Mandarin. Record numbers of Vietnamese students apply to universities in China. For a country long seen as the place where Beijing’s charm offensive falls flat, that is a lot of warmth, according to two researchers at Singapore’s ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
Hoang Thi Ha and Pham Thi Phuong Thao laid out the trend in a commentary for the institute’s Fulcrum site, published in September 2026. Their argument: Vietnam is often held up as proof that China’s soft power is weak in Southeast Asia, given a millennium of resistance to Chinese domination, a border war within living memory, unresolved maritime disputes and surveys of elites showing deep distrust of Beijing. Young people, they say, are moving in a different direction.
Dramas, milk tea and TikTok
Chinese historical dramas have been on Vietnamese television for years, and Vietnam is now among Asia’s largest markets for them. Streaming content from iQIYI, Tencent Video and Youku shows up on Vietnamese platforms VieON and FPT Play. Some Vietnamese celebrities have built followings on Chinese reality shows, and Chinese formats have been remade for local audiences.
Shops tell the same story. The authors point to Mixue, the Chinese ice-cream and tea chain, which had more than 1,300 outlets in Vietnam by late 2024, making it the chain’s second largest overseas market. Chagee, Cotti Coffee, KKV and Pop Mart have followed, and malls in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City now carry them.
Online, TikTok has over 70 million monthly active users in Vietnam, out of 460 million across Southeast Asia. Vietnamese-language creators who live in or travel through China show viewers its cities and how people there work and do business.
Visas, tours and classrooms
Governments are pushing too. The two countries marked 75 years of diplomatic ties and named 2025 the “Year of Vietnam-China Humanistic Exchange.” After President Xi Jinping’s April 2025 state visit, a joint statement invited young Vietnamese on “Red Study Tours.” More than 1,000 have gone, visiting revolutionary-history sites in Guangzhou and technology hubs.
From August 2026, Vietnamese citizens can pass through China visa-free for up to ten days. Chinese visitors to Vietnam jumped 41.3 per cent to 5.3 million in 2025, which made China Vietnam’s largest source of tourists. Vietnam, for its part, became China’s fourth-largest source market by mid-2026.
The number of Vietnamese students in China went from 11,300 in 2018 to about 25,000. South Korea (43,300), Japan (36,300), Australia (33,000) and the US (31,300) still draw more. China has committed to at least 1,000 government scholarships and 1,000 Chinese-language teachers for Vietnam.
Jobs that pay for Mandarin
Money plays a part. The recruitment platform JobOKO reported roughly 13,000 openings for Chinese speakers in 2025, up 50 per cent from 2024, many in industrial parks and Chinese-invested firms. Monthly salaries on LinkedIn, TopCV and VietnamWorks run from USD500 to USD2,000, which the authors call attractive by Vietnamese standards. Vietnam also posted the world’s highest registration numbers for the HSK Chinese-proficiency test in the first quarter of 2025, and some university Chinese programmes have recorded admission scores above those for English.
Old sensitivities remain
Feeling for China has limits. In 2025, Vietnamese consumers boycotted Chagee after its app and website showed the disputed “nine-dash line,” and some Chinese dramas carrying the same map were pulled. The authors say such episodes interrupted the trend without reversing it. Chagee has since returned to Vietnam.
