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because customs procedures, platform data, and logistics processes are more tightly
connected. The practical consequence is not only stronger enforcement capacity, but also
faster institutional learning because pilot zones serve as regulatory laboratories.
Market effects. Vietnam’s recent reforms improve tax neutrality, platform
accountability, and the legal basis for consumer protection. Yet they do not automatically
produce the same speed, cost efficiency, or documentation discipline that Chinese
platforms can leverage through integrated logistics and data systems. China’s model
creates scale and fulfillment advantages, but it also imposes more intensive compliance
expectations on firms and raises concerns about data localization, ecosystem dependence,
and the difficulty of matching Chinese standards from outside the system.
Table 1. Synthesis of Vietnam–China policy asymmetry in CBEC
Resulting
Dimension Vietnam China Implication for SMEs
asymmetry
Strategic Retail Export China’s Vietnamese SMEs
objectives modernization, enablement, corridor face stronger
formalization, customs stance is competition from
SME facilitation, more export- faster and more
participation, digital logistics, infrastructure coordinated Chinese
gradual CBEC pilot-zone oriented fulfillment
expansion scaling
Policy Decrees plus Dedicated e- Vietnam’s Firms must navigate
instrument adjacent laws commerce law framework is compliance across
s on e- plus data laws, improving multiple Vietnamese
transactions, customs codes, but less instruments while
consumer and pilot zones unified competing against
rights, and integrated foreign
taxation ecosystems
Regulatory Transitioning Real-time China has Chinese
depth toward data- customs and higher sellers/platforms can
driven control; logistics traceability scale documentation
interoperabilit integration and and clearance more
y still uneven more advanced enforcement easily
precision
Market Greater legal Higher speed, Speed and Competing on price
effects clarity and tax warehouse cost alone is structurally
fairness, but intensity, and advantages difficult for
weaker ecosystem remain Vietnamese SMEs
logistics coordination uneven
synchronizatio
n
3.3. Corridor-critical levers: policy - data - logistics - market outcomes
The comparative picture becomes more useful when narrowed to the levers that
most directly affect the bilateral corridor. The first is withholding-tax architecture. Decree
No. 117/2025/ND-CP is important because it pushes Vietnamese regulation from passive
platform registration toward transaction-linked tax administration. In effect, it asks
platforms to become part of the data infrastructure of compliance. The success of this
model will depend less on the formal decree than on whether application programming

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