PHNOM PENH—Conservative forces have strengthened their grip in Vietnam after the ruling Communist Party, late last month, elected its incumbent general-secretary to a second five-year term in the country’s top political office. Analysts say the reappointment of Nguyen Phu Trong, 71, will put a brake on political and economic reforms, but it is unlikely to significantly alter the balance of the country’s crucial relationships with China and the United States.
The decision also spelled an end to the ambitions of the reformist Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who mounted a short-lived challenge for the Community Party’s top post before its 12th National Congress last week. Trong is said to have used his influence in the Politburo, Vietnam’s top decision-making body, to quash Dung’s bid for the leadership. The prime minister pulled out of the contest on Jan. 25, after failing to win sufficient support among the 1,510 party delegates.
Agreement on leadership changes is traditionally reached well in advance of the Communist Party’s showcase convention, which is held every five years. Trong will head the 19-member Politburo that will govern Vietnam until 2021, while Dung will remain in office until a new government takes over later this year.
In many ways, Trong and Dung represent the two poles of Vietnam’s system of so-called market-oriented socialism. Trong belongs to the party’s ideological old guard, drilled in Marxist-Leninist economic theory; Dung is pragmatic and reform-minded—a flamboyant figure by prevailing standards.
“He broke the mold,” says Carlyle Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, of Dung. “He’s not part of the gray collective. He’s a vibrant personality—for good or bad.”
During his 10 years in office, Dung has spearheaded market reforms that have led to the rapid expansion of Vietnam’s economy and strengthened ties with the U.S., the country’s former wartime enemy. Both of these have created friction with party conservatives, who have criticized the speed of the reforms and the rising cronyism and corruption they say have marked Dung’s time in power.
With the 66-year-old’s departure, the pace of reforms is likely to slow. Though the Congress expanded the Politburo from 16 to 19 members to accommodate several young technocrats, including Nguyen Van Binh, the president of the State Bank of Vietnam, the new generation remains in the minority.
The Communist Party “is doing everything it can to shift the economy to less dependency on China.”
Tuong Vu, a political scientist at the University of Oregon, points out that the body now includes five former generals and the heads of several top-level Communist Party organizations, as well as Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang—widely tipped to become Vietnam’s next president. “The conservatives dominate the Politburo,” Vu says.
Vu predicts that the new leadership will tighten national security and political controls, while advocating a more prominent role for the large state-owned sector of the economy. Meanwhile, the incoming prime minister, now-Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, whose appointment will be rubber-stamped in a few months’ time, is unlikely to be as assertive as Dung. Thayer describes him as “an understudy trying to feel his way under the shadow of the current general-secretary” and the “cabal” which stymied Dung’s leadership ambitions.
The tension between conservativism and reform could become more pronounced when Vietnam enters the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the major U.S.-led regional trade signed this week in New Zealand by 12 Pacific Rim countries. As a condition of TPP membership, Vietnam must further liberalize its economy, opening key sectors to foreign competition, and make concessions in other areas, including labor rights and intellectual property protection.
Despite those commitments, Vu predicted that Trong and his faction “will resist any concessions” that touch on human rights or democratic reforms. Trong set the tone for his next term clearly at the closing of the Congress on Jan. 28, defending Vietnam’s system of tight one-party rule. “A country without discipline would be chaotic and unstable,” he said. “We need to balance democracy and law and order.”
While Trong and other hard-liners remain suspicious of the U.S. and its advocacy of what the party terms a “peaceful evolution” toward democratic rule in Vietnam, there is a growing consensus within the party that good relations with Washington provide a vital counterweight to China’s powerful influence in the region.
This was symbolized both by Trong’s landmark visit to the White House last July—the first by a Vietnamese Communist Party chief—and also by his embrace of the TPP, which is seen as a means of reducing the country’s massive trade deficit with its northern neighbor. The party “is doing everything it can to shift the economy to less dependency on China,” Thayer says.
Tensions have spiked recently over territorial claims in the South China Sea, where China’s massive construction of man-made islands has pushed countries like Vietnam and the Philippines closer to the United States. On the eve of the National Congress, Vietnam accused China of once again deploying an oil rig in waters close to the Vietnamese coastline, demanding its removal.
Thayer says that under the new leadership, Vietnam’s government would probably be less confrontational toward China than Dung, who gained popularity domestically with his strong anti-Chinese rhetoric. Yet the government would still remain ready to counter any aggressive Chinese moves in the region.
The sentiments of the Vietnamese people could also come into play, as they historically harbor a deep fear and suspicion of China. In May 2014, when China parked another oil rig off Vietnam’s central coast, anti-Chinese riots broke out across Vietnam, with protesters ransacking factories believed to be owned by Chinese businesses. In general, Thayer notes, the change in leadership will shift the “scope and pace of how foreign policy is handled, but not the broad framework.”
Looming behind all this is one question that the recent Congress left unanswered: the issue of Trong’s successor. By appointing him to a second term, even though he had passed the mandatory retirement age of 65, the Communist Party effectively sidestepped the issue, ensuring that backroom intrigue between would-be successors will drag on under the next government.
Vu predicts that the leadership uncertainty will ensure a degree of instability in Vietnamese politics until the issue of the succession is settled. “They’re going to face the same kind of rivalry and competition for that position [as before], because there’s no obvious heir,” he says.
One man whose name won’t be on the list is Dung, soon to be the former prime minister. Once his term ends later this year, his career will be effectively over. Like other former Politburo members, he will enjoy a comfortable state-funded retirement, but will also require special permission to travel abroad.
“There’s no real role for them,” Thayer says of former high-ranking party men. “They can’t be a Jimmy Carter or a Bill Clinton, and go around and give talks. [Dung] will go into political oblivion.”
Published by World Politics Review, February 5, 2016.
