Word.ws English Dictionary

bamboo diplomacy

bamboo diplomacy noun: a foreign policy of developing and maintaining nonaligned diplomatic relations with other countries, as practiced by Thailand and Vietnam.

Noun

bamboo diplomacy (uncountable)

  1. (Southeast Asia) A foreign policy of developing and maintaining nonaligned diplomatic relations with other countries, as practiced by Thailand and Vietnam.
    • "Since the formation of the modern Thai state in the nineteenth century, Thailand had at least four faces, or myths, upon which diplomacy was based, namely the discourses of independence, lost territory, anticommunism and flexible diplomacy."2022, Jittipat Poonkham, chapter 23, in A Genealogy of Bamboo Diplomacy: The Politics of Thai Détente with Russia and China, page 34
    • “Communist Party-ruled Vietnam has upgraded ties with the world's top powers, including former foes, China and the United States, as part of its "bamboo diplomacy", which it has pro-actively pursued since 2021 to navigate rising global tensions.”2023 December 27, “Vietnam's 'bamboo diplomacy' shifts into higher gear”, in Reuters

bamboo diplomacy meaning in Thai and Vietnamese

bamboo diplomacy in Thai

nonaligned foreign policy
การทูตไม้ไผ่

bamboo diplomacy in Vietnamese

nonaligned foreign policy
ngoại giao cây tre

Origin of bamboo diplomacy

The term implies an approach to diplomacy that is flexible and pragmatic, akin to bamboo bending with the wind.

Questions about bamboo diplomacy

What does bamboo diplomacy mean?
Bamboo diplomacy means a foreign policy of developing and maintaining nonaligned diplomatic relations with other countries, as practiced by Thailand and Vietnam.
What is bamboo diplomacy in Thai?
Bamboo diplomacy in Thai is การทูตไม้ไผ่. See Bamboo diplomacy meaning in Thai.
What part of speech is bamboo diplomacy?
Bamboo diplomacy is a noun.

Words near bamboo diplomacy in the dictionary

  1. bamboo borer
  2. bamboo ceiling
  3. bamboo ceilings
  4. bamboo coral
  5. bamboo curtain
  6. bamboo diplomacy
  7. Bamboo English
  8. bamboo fern
  9. bamboo ferns
  10. bamboo grass
  11. bamboo hair

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bamboo diplomacy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bamboo diplomacy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bamboo_diplomacy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.