Vietnam's New Leader: A Tough, Capitalist, Hedonist

Lhat should What do you think of To Lam, the enigmatic new leader of the Vietnamese Communist Party, who has emerged victorious from a bitter power struggle over the past year? On August 19, Mr. Lam, on his first trip abroad, met with Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart. The two men signed 14 documents on everything from Communist Party schools to crocodile exports. Mr. Lam has reaffirmed the importance of Vietnam’s top trading partner. Yet next month, he will travel to the United States. It’s a sign that Mr. Lam intends to continue Vietnam’s bamboo diplomacy, oscillating between the two superpowers.

Nothing new. The most significant aspect of Mr. Lam’s trip came yesterday. En route to Beijing, Mr. Lam followed in the footsteps of a revolutionary known as Ly Thuy, who had arrived in 1924 in the port city of Canton, then the seat of the republican government in China. Better known today as Ho Chi Minh, he set about establishing the precursor to the Communist Party of Vietnam in Canton, now Guangzhou.

Mr Lam’s pilgrimage was nominally commemorating the centenary of Ho’s presence in that country. Worship of revolutionary ancestors is a prerequisite for accession to the highest office in Vietnam. His predecessor, Nguyen Phu Trong, was a Marxist theoretician until the day he died in July. Yet Mr Lam, who became general secretary on August 3, is neither a revolutionary nor an intellectual. A former policeman, he cut his teeth in the fearsome Ministry of Public Security. The choice of Guangzhou as his first port of call was intended to signal a revival of Vietnam’s capitalist animal spirits. Its trade with Guangdong province accounts for more than 20% of its total with China (see chart). Vietnam trades about as much with the Chinese province as it does with all of Japan.

Mr. Lam has implicitly celebrated capitalism, not socialism. To understand why, one must understand Vietnam’s troubled decade. The country is a rising power, with more than 100 million people, a young population, and labor costs half those of coastal China. It is courted by both superpowers and has benefited from American efforts to de-risk supply chains. As Chinese companies face higher tariffs in the United States, many are moving parts of production and assembly to Vietnam, which has become integrated into the supply chains of suppliers in Guangdong and, through them, to the rest of the world.

Yet Vietnam’s potential has been stifled by a wave of repression. Mr. Trong, as general secretary from 2011 until his death, waged a relentless anti-corruption crackdown that crippled civil servants. Some 200,000 people were punished; between 2021 and 2023, another 60,000 resigned. Public services have suffered, from health to education. Proposals for new infrastructure or industrial projects languish on the desks of officials who are terrified that their decisions will be scrutinized by anti-corruption bodies.

Although the campaign was conceived by Trong as a way to preserve the party’s legitimacy through a cleansing fire, it has instead begun to consume its main source of legitimacy: economic growth. Delays in energy projects have meant that factories seeking to expand capacity have been unable to obtain reliable electricity. Improvements in transportation infrastructure have been too slow to keep up with the increase in industrial production.

Mr Lam was Trong’s right-hand man. But he appears to have shrewdly used the anti-corruption campaign as an opportunity to purge the party of rivals, not just to rid Vietnam of corruption. Earlier this year, Vietnam lost its second president in two years, Vo Van Thuong; Mr Lam succeeded Mr Thuong. Vietnam’s presidency is largely symbolic, but winning it put Mr Lam in a prime position to become general secretary when Trong died two months later.

In his first meeting as general secretary with the party's anti-corruption chiefs on Aug. 14, Lam, who has just gained prominence, told them that the fight against corruption should not stand in the way of the country's development, even though he has pledged to continue it. Perhaps she will, as a way of extending her control over the party.

But Mr. Lam’s ties to the private sector suggest he may be sensitive to the concerns of the bourgeoisie. The austere Mr. Trong has developed few ties to business, preferring his ideological obsessions. By contrast, the Ministry of Public Security that Mr. Lam led until recently is an economic player, owning several conglomerates and a telecommunications company. And To Dung, Mr. Lam’s brother, is a business leader who has acquired interests in several sectors, including real estate, energy and rare earths, as well as the Vespa-mad Piaggio dealership in Vietnam.

Mr Lam also has an epicurean side. In his early years as minister, he was little known outside political and business circles. But on a visit to London in 2021, after inevitably paying homage to Karl Marx, the The capital-A meat-eating anti-corruption fighter was filmed being fed a steak wrapped in gold leaf by Nusret Gokce, a celebrity chef better known as Salt Bae. Mr. Gokce deleted social media posts containing the video, but it sparked a backlash. During his tenure as Vietnam’s police chief, Mr. Lam’s ministry built a concert hall in Hanoi that opened with the music of Frédéric Chopin, one of his favorite composers.

The new leader must keep the military at bay. It is concerned about the number of police officers running the government. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is another former Public Security Ministry official. With vacancies in the Politburo created by the anti-corruption campaign filled this year, the military unexpectedly won four of the 15 seats, ahead of only the police, with five. Usually, the military gets just one; four is its highest total since Vietnam’s Doi Moi reform era began in 1986, according to Nguyen Khac Giang in Cairo. Jesus– Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singapore think tank. A wise move might be to promote a loyalist army general to keep the peace between the two security forces.

Mr. Lam, who has devoted his career to domestic security, may be less susceptible to external threats than a rival in the armed forces. So he might turn more to another communist, authoritarian superpower on Vietnam’s northern border than to the United States, even though Chinese and Vietnamese ships sometimes clash in the South China Sea. But Mr. Lam will be aware that the party’s legitimacy also requires that it defend Vietnam’s sovereignty against aggression from the North. The two countries fought a brief border war in 1979, and China remains unpopular in Vietnam. Le Kha Phieu, who was general secretary from 1997 to 2001, was ousted by the Politburo, in part for cozying up too much to Beijing.

China was therefore an essential first stop for Mr Lam in his new post. Going to America before China would have frightened his comrades in Beijing. But he will go to America in September for the first time. AND General Assembly. During his visit, he is expected to discuss the U.S. Commerce Department's decision on August 1 to deny Vietnam market economy status. (The United States imposes tougher sanctions on non-market economies in trade disputes.)

U.S. officials, for their part, are likely to push for stronger security cooperation. Last year, the two countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership. They are unlikely to discuss Mr. Lam’s repressive past. While the new secretary-general may usher in a new era of economic dynamism, the crackdown on civil society is likely to continue. He arrested more than 330 activists and journalists during his tenure as public security minister, according to the 88 Project, a human rights group. With his experience of repression, conspicuous consumption and diplomatic balance, Mr. Lam is well-qualified for his new job.