As Vietnam prepares to debut its first domestic carbon trading exchange, a new collaborative academic work has emerged to unpack and compare carbon market frameworks in both China and Vietnam, offering targeted insights to support the Southeast Asian nation’s emerging climate market buildout. Titled *China-Vietnam Carbon Market*, the new book is the product of a cross-border research partnership between Vietnamese scholar Duong Thi Thanh — a long-time specialist in forest carbon sinks — and her doctoral advisor, Professor Zhang Ying from Beijing Forestry University (BFU). More than just an academic analysis, the publication stands as a tangible example of joint Sino-Vietnamese collaboration between research institutions and industry stakeholders, designed to deliver evidence-based academic backing for cross-border climate governance under the Belt and Road Initiative. Long before she enrolled in the doctoral program at BFU’s School of Economics and Management, Duong identified a critical gap in existing research: Vietnam’s forest carbon sink market had remained largely unexamined and understudied by the academic community. With a national forest coverage rate of 42 percent, spanning 14.7 million hectares of forest land that sequester an estimated 69.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, Vietnam holds enormous untapped potential in forest-based carbon mitigation. “This vast green asset gives Vietnam a strong foundation to develop a thriving forest carbon sink market,” Duong explained. She emphasized that establishing a standardized, scientific carbon accounting methodology is an essential first step to attract greater private and public investment into forest conservation and sustainable forest management. Through her doctoral research at BFU, Duong found that China’s decades-long journey building forestry carbon sink markets — from launching early regional pilot projects to rolling out a unified national carbon market — has generated a wealth of actionable expertise. Lessons from China’s work on carbon credit development, trading rule design, and market regulation carry direct, practical reference value for Vietnam, which is currently navigating the early stages of constructing its own national carbon market. The collaborative study not only addresses a key knowledge gap in regional climate governance research but also strengthens academic and environmental ties between the two neighboring countries, laying groundwork for future cross-border carbon cooperation under the BRI.