Constructing the Neighbourly “Other”: Trade Relations and Mutual Perceptions across the Vietnam–China Border

The normalization of post-war relations in the late 1980s has transformed the Vietnam–China border from a line of demarcation between two hostile neighbours into a zone of profitable economic opportunities. At the Lào Cai central market, Vietnamese small-scale traders and Chinese citizens interact with one another on a daily basis. Their narratives reveal that processes of constructing self-identity and otherness at the Vietnam–China border are ambiguous and multivocal. They attest to historically rooted stereotypes linked to China’s claim of civilizational and economic superiority as much as they are conditioned by face-to-face commercial transactions that challenge essentialized assumptions about the cross-border Other.