Vietnam’s Connectivity and Embeddedness in the Maritime Silk Road and Global Maritime Network

Zhi-Hua Hu

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2923528

Abstract

Vietnam is one of the sixty-five countries in the belt and road (BR) initialized by China and especially an important player along the 21st century maritime silk road (MSR). Moreover, Vietnam faces the Pacific Ocean and possesses an intrinsic advantage of maritime transport. Based on a big data system of port and shipping, the Vietnam's connectivity with the MSR and thus the global maritime system is analyzed by visualization and network analyzing methods. The mutual significances between Vietnam maritime network and the MSR (except for Vietnam) are derived from the flows between them; primary flows and key maritime trading clusters are discovered. Considering the global maritime network, the Vietnam's embeddedness in MSR and the global maritime network are portrayed by network analysis. In the context of the belt and road initiative (BRI) proposed by China, the alignment of Vietnam to the MSR and the world is examined. In conclusion, Vietnam is along the MSR while plays globally.

Highlights

Vietnam borders on China, Cambodia and Laos by land and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand across the sea
A maritime connection is defined by that a vessel visits a pair of ports and one of the ports is in Vietnam
In 2017, 10,145 vessels visited the ports of Vietnam while 2,638 of them are ‘‘domestic’’ vessels, which only visited the ports of Vietnam

Summary

Introduction

Vietnam borders on China, Cambodia and Laos by land and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand across the sea. Vietnam’s connectivity with the world is analyzed based on port connectivity [20] in the global maritime network. Coupled with the AIS vessel tracks and the vessel profiles, the flow networks are created as FlowNet. Trade data is used to present a kind of Vietnam global connectivity with the world.

Results

Conclusion