Neither Washington nor Hanoi mentioned China during US President Joe Biden's visit to Vietnam. But all of the questions thrown at Biden in a news conference on Sunday were about China rather than the upgrading of US-Vietnam relations to the level of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, despite that being the Southeast Asian country's highest tier of partnership and Washington hailing it as a "diplomatic victory".

Neither side may want to admit it in public, but it is China that has been the focus of the visit, as China has been the catalyst for the two countries' growing interactions.

The Biden administration wants to leverage the territorial dispute between Vietnam and China to drive a wedge between the two Asian countries. The White House stated ahead of the visit that "we support Vietnam's independence and sovereignty, particularly in the maritime domain".

Yet General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong has stressed the principles underscoring Vietnam-US relations should "include respect for the UN Charter, international law, and each other's political system, independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity". Biden should be clear what that means. To make his point unequivocally clear, Nguyen pointed out: "Vietnam wishes to be a friend with all countries."

That means despite the great lengths the Biden administration is going to entice Hanoi to jump onto its anti-China bandwagon, Hanoi is upholding Vietnam's strategic autonomy and refuses to downgrade itself from being a key regional player to a pawn in Washington's geopolitical game.

The across-the-board US-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership supposedly covers all the key sectors, ranging from technology to trade and investment. However, Washington's ingrained distrust of a socialist country, if not its ruling communist party, is self-evident in the limited assistance the Biden administration has agreed to provide Vietnam.

What the US wants from Vietnam is cheap labor, market, resources, or rare earth elements as Washington has highlighted this time, and a foothold in the South China Sea, with an agreement on visits by US naval vessels including aircraft carriers. What the US is giving in exchange is likely to be the usual pie-in-the-sky promises that developing countries know all too well.

There was almost no fruit on the branches of the US' assistance program to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which Biden unveiled in a high-profile US-ASEAN Summit last year, except a few more military bases near the South China Sea. Hanoi should not expect too much of what Biden promised to be delivered unless it is in the US' interest.

That the US has not yet finished the dioxin remediation project at the Bien Hoa Air Base Area shows how laggardly it is in remedying the "difficult past", as Biden called it. To that end, the US still needs to further carry out Unexploded Ordnance clearance and tracking, and to help Vietnam support persons with disabilities and to seek missing persons, which sadly constitute a major part of their upgraded partnership, about 50 years after the Vietnam War ended.

That should serve as a vivid reminder to Hanoi that Washington talks a better game than it plays.