HANOI - Vietnam’s top leader To Lam will visit China next week in his first foreign trip since his appointment as general secretary of the ruling Communist Party earlier in August, three officials familiar with the matter told Reuters.

       The move would confirm the close ties between the two communist-run neighbours, which have well developed economic and trade relations despite occasionally clashing over boundaries in the energy-rich South China Sea, a crucial commercial waterway that Beijing claims almost in its entirety – irking several countries in the region.

       Mr Lam, who is also the state president of the South-east Asian nation, is planning to arrive in China on Aug 18.

       He will meet President Xi Jinping and other officials over the following two days, said two Vietnamese officials and one Hanoi-based diplomat, declining to be identified as the trip has not been officially announced.

       The Chinese and Vietnamese foreign ministries did not reply to requests for comment.

       As state president since May, Mr Lam, 67, has already visited Laos and Cambodia, in line with his predecessors.

       He also met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who visited Hanoi in June, and had a phone call with him last week after his appointment as head of the party.

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       It would be the first foreign trip since he was named party chief on Aug 3, following the death of long-serving general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong two weeks earlier.

       The country has no paramount leader, but the late Mr Trong consolidated powers in the hands of the head of the party.

       Both China’s Mr Xi and US President Joe Biden complimented Mr Lam after his appointment as party chief, with some investors in the regional industrial hub seeing his ascent to the top job possibly helping to put an end to recent political turbulence that has slowed projects and reforms.

       Mr Lam, a general and former minister of public security, may relinquish the presidency in the coming months, likely when Parliament meets for a regular session in October, multiple Vietnamese and foreign officials said.

       That would be after the annual United Nations General Assembly in September, which Mr Lam would attend as Vietnam’s president, two officials said, noting that he would also meet Mr Biden on that trip.

       All of Vietnam’s top jobs will be again up for grabs in 2026 when the country’s Parliament ends its five-year term, with many analysts and diplomats seeing Mr Lam as currently the best placed to keep the leadership of the party. REUTERS