The Vietnam-China youth dialogue forum, centred on sustainable development for a green future, was held on February 9 in Guilin city, China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, bringing together a large number of young people and entrepreneurs from Guangxi and Vietnam’s Quang Ninh and Cao Bang provinces.
The forum provided an opportunity for young participants from both countries to meet, strengthen friendship, and exchange ideas, united by a shared goal of sustainable development and environmental protection.
Delegates noted that China has extensive experience in renewable energy development and smart urban management, while Vietnam benefits from a young workforce and strong adaptability to new technologies. These advantages, they said, provide an important foundation for more substantive youth cooperation in the coming years.
Presenting at the dialogue, Associate Professor Meng Xiaofei of the Marxism institute at Guangxi Normal University stressed that protecting the environment means protecting productive capacity, and improving the ecological environment means developing productive forces.
Sharing experience from a youth-led project to protect the Lijiang River in Guilin, volunteer Yu Xuan said environmental protection efforts must also ensure people’s livelihoods and allow communities to benefit from participating in conservation activities.
From the Vietnamese side, Hoang Quoc Viet, Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Quang Ninh’s Tax Department, highlighted Quang Ninh’s role as a border locality of strategic importance in economic cooperation, trade, and people-to-people exchanges between Vietnam and China.
He expressed hope that youth exchanges between the two countries would continue to expand beyond cultural interaction to include policy dialogue, digital-governance experience sharing, and green-development models suited to each country’s conditions.
He said that green transition combined with digital transformation, if driven by the intelligence and responsibility of young people, could become a new engine of growth, contributing to environmental protection, peacebuilding, and deeper Vietnam-China friendship.
Meanwhile, La Van Dung, a young entrepreneur from Cao Bang, said local youth had actively cooperated with their Guangxi counterparts in environmental communication activities along the border, working together to protect shared rivers, forests, and ecosystems.
On the occasion, he also proposed strengthening exchange programmes and learning initiatives on environmental protection, green economic development, and eco-tourism, as well as joint youth environmental campaigns in border areas and the sharing of youth-led green start-up models and initiatives./.
