I personally don’t like “they hate each other but they hate X more” or “they hate X but hate each other more” way of explaining things. It’s way too simplistic, way too reductive, and as a Vietnamese, I kinda feel misunderstood and offended.

The general attitude of the Vietnamese people right now is cooperation. Our way to approach history is forgive but not forget.

We’d like to cooperate economically with developed nations in the West, but at the same time, we stay vigilant against Western attempts at subversion and color revolution.

Regarding China, there have been unfortunate grievances and conflicts between the 2 nations. But they are our neighbors. Even after 1000 years, we would still be neighbors. It’s an unchanging factor. So the wise amongst us know it is better for the 2 countries to cooperate than to fight. There’s a well-known Vietnamese proverb: “Bán anh em xa mua láng giềng gần”. It means to trade far away brothers for close-by neighbors. Not to mention, the West is no brothers.

Anyway, this propaganda attempt by this Autralian channel has not backfired too spectacularly, but it certainly proved ineffective. I’m not sure if Vietnamese are their intended audience, but it certainly caught our attention. There have been other attempts too, such as one from a Taiwanese channel, the reactions from Vietnamese were overwhelmingly negative, the video got deleted quickly. They always try to use Vietnam as a pawn against China, and that annoys us.