By Shen Xiaoning

A Beacon of China-Vietnam Friendship

By Shen Xiaoning

Hugely successful Bac Giang Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant sets a positive example of cooperation between nations

As the capital of Vietnam’s Bac Giang Province, the city of Bac Giang is situated 50 kilometers to the east of the country’s capital, Hanoi. There were no taxis here just a few years ago, but now the local economy is booming, largely thanks to investment from Chinese enterprises and business cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. Nowadays, Bac Giang is developing into an important industrial city as well as a logistics hub in northern Vietnam.

Fruits of Mutually Benef i cial Cooperation

In the 1960’s, the Bac Giang Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant, built with China’s help, was opened as the fi rst of its kind in Vietnam. In the time that had elapsed since then, it played an important role in nitrogen fertilizer production in Vietnam. As time went on, however, the plant’s equipment became outdated, and the plant itself entered a period of gradual decline.

In order to turn the situation around, the plant launched a two-year technology upgrade project from 2000 to 2002 in cooperation with the Wuhuan Engineering Company, an international engineering company based in Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei Province. “After upgrading, the Bac Giang Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant resumed its normal operations, using equipment and technology from China,”said Zhou Yaoqing, a senior project manager at Wuhuan, who served as manager of the upgrade project at the time.

Eight years later, Zhou and his team returned to Bac Giang for a new project that greatly modernized the plant. He recounted his experience on the project from the Vietnam office of China National Machinery Import & Export Corporation (CMC) in downtown Hanoi.

Zhou Yaoqing, senior project manager of China’s Wuhuan Engineering Company, in an interview withChina Report ASEAN.

“In 2008, a consortium comprising of Wuhuan, CMC and Vietnam’s Chemical Industry Engineering Joint Stock Company made a bid for the upgrade and expansion project of Bac Giang Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant,” Zhou recalled. “Because of our rich experience in similar projects, advantages in price compared with our competitors and friendly relations based on previous successful cooperation with Vietnamese clients, the consortium won the bid on Oct. 7, 2010.”

After nearly fi ve years of construction work, the project, with total investment of US$395 million from the Vietnamese side, was completed on April 10, 2015.

The Bac Giang plant began using advanced coal gasif i cation technology after upgrade and expansion. Most of the devices and technologies the plant adopted were from China. According to Zhou, the annual output of the upgraded production line was 180,000 to 200,000 tons of urea and that of the newly-built line was 300,000 to 320,000, which helped the plant achieve its goal of an annual capacity of 500,000 tons of urea.

The synthetic ammonia unit at Vietnam’s Bac Giang Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant.

It is noteworthy that Wuhuan and CMC also jointly built the Ca Mau Fertilizer Plant in southern Vietnam in 2011. The Ca Mau plant was praised by then Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung as “the best chemical plant in Vietnam”. After the expanded Bac Giang Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant was put into operation, Vietnam not only realized self-sufficiency in nitrogen fertilizer, but also began exporting its products to neighboring countries.

“In addition to the use of China’s best technology, we also helped our clients introduce advanced technology from other countries,” Zhou added. In the past two years, the Bac Giang plant has not only expanded its production capacity, but also made progress in environmentally-friendly production due to its adoption of world-class technology and equipment.

While Vietnam made a historic breakthrough in nitrogen fertilizer production through cooperation with Chinese enterprises, the Chinese side has also benef i ted from this partnership. Zhou believed that overseas projects open a window for foreigners to understand China’s technology, thus creating more opportunities for Chinese fi rms and China’s capital to expand into international markets.

“Annual revenue of Wuhuan totals nearly 5 billion yuan (US$735 million) and most of that comes from overseas projects,” Zhou said.“I hope healthy and rapid development can be realized in Vietnam and Chinese companies can play a part in this process.”

Pursuit of a Shared Vision

“We have put great emphasis on respect for Vietnamese laws and regulations, as well as local culture and customs,” Zhou said. Vietnamese culture features various unique characteristics. For example, people in Vietnam celebrate women’s day twice a year. The fi rst is the International Women’s Day on March 8, and the second is the Vietnamese Women’s Day on Oct. 20.

“Female Vietnamese employees of our company receive fl owers as a gift on both of the days,” Zhou added.

With the ef f orts of Zhou and his team, the upgrade and expansion project reached successful completion, creating 300 to 400 jobs for the local people. The monthly pay for ordinary Vietnamese workers in the plant was nearly as much as that of people in white collar jobs in Hanoi. In addition to technology and equipment, Zhou’s company also provided a training program for local employees.

“To ensure prof i ciency on the job, we sent some workers to similar factories in China and the Netherlands to complete internships, while at the same time skilled Chinese workers explained step-by-step to Vietnamese workers on site how to use the new devices,” Zhou said.

The success of the Bac Giang project has shown that win-win cooperation advocated by China brings tangible results.

“After years of running overseas projects, now I fully understand the signif i cance of win-win cooperation as highlighted in the Belt and Road Initiative,” Zhou said.“After the Bac Giang project, we were approached by many Vietnamese companies for cooperation in other fi elds. Meanwhile, we made friends with local people and carried out cultural exchanges with them via the implementation of projects in other countries, which is conducive to the development of friendly relations between nations.”

With the project in the Bac Giang plant soon to be fi nalized, Zhou is set to jet of f to Iran, Bangladesh and later Indonesia, where his company has launched a number of new projects.