HOANG TRUONG
Hoang Truong is an associate of the Caux Round Table in Hanoi, a specialist most familiar with world affairs and an insightful observer of Vietnam’s foreign policies and global challenges.
There is no need to wait until the conclusion of the Third Plenum of the 14th Central Committee to understand its importance. General Secretary and President To Lam’s opening address alone provides sufficient material to identify an increasingly serious contradiction in the politics of Vietnam. On one hand, the Party leader speaks of modern governance, a knowledge-based economy, technology, human development, national resilience, and social trust. On the other hand, the Vietnamese people are being emotionally hammered by a “tsunami” of public denunciation, in which questions concerning history, culture, and ideas can quickly be turned into political accusations, while academic debate is pushed into the realm of national security.
[for the Vietnamese source see: https://dangcongsan.vn/xay-dung-dang/toan-van-phat-bieu-khai-mac-cua-dong-chi-tong-bi-thu-chu-tich-nuoc-to-lam-tai-hoi-nghi-trung-uong-3-khoa-xiv.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com]
Beginning with Nguyen Thanh Nam’s book Conversations with Thanh, this wave is now spreading to controversies surrounding the figure of “Saint Tran.” The target may have changed, but the method of disparagement remains largely the same: select a few sentences from an author, remove them from their context, attribute wrong-headed political motives to the author, mobilize the press and social media to condemn the writer, and then compel the institutions, organizations, and persons concerned to distance themselves from such thinking, disavow the author, or engage in self-criticism for having failed to “do the right thing”. Old fashion public loudspeakers have now been digitalized into thousands of social-media accounts, but the accusatory tone, the politics of labeling, and the psychology of going with the crowd still bear the imprint of an era that was thought to have passed.
1. FROM CONVERSATIONS WITH THANH TO A DIGITAL CULTURAL REVOLUTION
The case of Conversations with Thanh reveals the alarming extent to which this mechanism has spread. Nguyen Thanh Nam was prosecuted; those involved in the book’s publication were disciplined; and 23 media organizations that had published articles about the book faced penalties, including one whose license was revoked. FPT University, associated with the author under attack, also quickly issued a statement denying any involvement in the writing and publication of the book and declaring its opposition to the author’s views.
Regardless of whether the book is right or wrong, it is no longer being treated primarily as an intellectual product to be assessed through historical evidence, reasoned argument, and academic responsibility. Instead, it has become the focus of a political and media campaign whose reach extends far beyond the work itself.
What is disturbing is not merely the fate of one author. Even more dangerous is the precedent now being established for Vietnam’s “new era” as announced by General Secretary To Lam: any interpretation of potentially anything which differs from an “orthodox” historical narrative may be regarded as a threat to the regime; anyone who, say, introduced or reviewed a book, or simply provided a forum for its discussion, may also be held accountable for deviation from orthodoxy. In such an atmosphere, fear precedes thought. Publishers become afraid to publish, journalists become afraid to discuss, universities become afraid to defend freedom of inquiry, and intellectuals learn that the safest course is silence.
It is difficult not to see in this process the shadow of China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Vietnam today is, of course, not yet Maoist China: there are no Red Guards storming private homes, no mass public humiliations, and no struggle sessions conducted in precisely their old form. But the Cultural Revolution was not merely theater with costumes; it was, above all, a method of exercising power. That method transforms intellectual disagreement into political guilt, mobilizes the crowd to punish individuals, equates loyalty with the repetition of doctrine, and places symbols of authority beyond the reach of scholarly inquiry.
Understood in this sense, what is unfolding in Vietnam resembles a “digital Cultural Revolution.” The new Red Guards no longer wear red armbands but hide behind online accounts. Public loudspeakers are no longer merely mounted on street poles; they now reside in everyone’s mobile phone. A verdict is delivered by the court of public opinion before academic debate is even allowed to begin. When an entire society is mobilized to hunt down a sentence, a book, or a particular way of referring to a historical figure, the real objective is no longer to defend the truth. It is to compel everyone to look at the past through a single pair of eyes.
2. VIETNAM IN 2026 IS NOT CHINA IN 1966
Vietnam in 2026, however, is not China in 1966. This is a difference that no national leader can afford to ignore. Maoist China was a relatively closed society whose people had little access to outside information, while its economy was barely connected to global value chains. Vietnam today depends on exports, foreign investment and imported technologies, educational cooperation, global financial markets, and the confidence of international partners. Every act of intellectual repression immediately crosses national borders and becomes part of the evidence used by external businesses, universities, governments, and international organizations to assess Vietnam’s openness, risks of doing business, and the predictability of its institutions.
The digital equivalent of public loudspeakers and struggle sessions may therefore produce temporary silence, but its long-term cost is the erosion of trust. Citizens cease to believe that the law protects their right to debate. Intellectuals cease to believe that their good faith will be respected. Businesses can no longer be certain where the boundary between professional activity and political risk lies. International partners must also ask whether a country aspiring to become a center of innovation can genuinely accommodate independent minds, or whether a sudden outbreak of ideological anger can overturn every previous commitment to openness.
Seen against this background, the “four strategic shifts” outlined by To Lam at the Third Plenum expose an even wider gap between rhetoric and reality. He called for improving the Party’s leadership capacity and the operational quality of the state apparatus; achieving unified governance of the country’s development space; establishing a growth model based on productivity, knowledge, technology, and human beings; and strengthening national resilience, adaptability, and protection. These are all reasonable objectives.
But not one of them can be achieved in a society groveling in fear.
A knowledge economy cannot be born from obedience. Technology cannot develop sustainably if people are encouraged to produce only the soothing compliments their superiors want to hear. Productivity is not simply a matter of working hours or the amount of machinery invested; it also depends on the ability to analyze, recommend, criticize, experiment, and correct mistakes. Nor can national resilience be built by eliminating every dissenting voice, because a system deprived of contrary information gradually loses its ability to recognize its own errors.
Most notably, To Lam called on members of the Central Committee to express “clear positions, clear arguments, clear recommendations, and clear policy options.”
But why should the right to articulate clear positions be reserved only for those Vietnamese seated inside the Central Committee’s conference hall? A society of 100 million people, including millions of intellectuals, entrepreneurs, teachers, scientists, and overseas Vietnamese, must also have the right and even the duty to present views, arguments, and alternative policy choices. If debate within the Party is considered necessary to improve decision-making, then debate within society must be regarded even more strongly as a national resource for avoiding mistakes.
Further, To Lam demanded that every choice made by Party and Government leaders at all levels place the interests of the nation, together with the lawful and legitimate rights and interests of the people, above all else. At the same time, he emphasized the need to consolidate social trust. But such trust cannot be created by directive, still less through punishment. Trust emerges only when citizens see power exercised consistently, when the law is predictable, and when their legitimate rights are not narrowed according to political circumstances. A state that calls upon intellectuals to contribute while making them afraid to write books is destroying the very resource it seeks to mobilize.
3. VIETNAM CANNOT INTEGRATE WITH THE WORLD WHILE CLOSING ITS OWN SOCIETY
This contradiction becomes even clearer when compared with the messages To Lam has delivered in his international engagements. On American soil, he spoke of development as something that cannot be separated from the broader currents of humanity. More recently, he has tentatively approached the concept of “liberal education,” emphasizing the awakening of human potential rather than coercion and indoctrination. Although his language remains cautious, it nevertheless suggests that Vietnam’s leader understands that the country cannot enter the age of knowledge with an educational system designed merely to produce obedience.
Yet these tentative signs of openness repeatedly encounter an invisible wall. Certain ideas expressed before foreign audiences become blurred or disappear when official media publish the speeches at home. “Liberal education” is mentioned and then quickly placed under ideological suspicion, partly because the concept was once associated with the educational tradition of South Vietnam before 1975. An idea that should be judged by its present value is instead investigated according to its historical “political background.” The ghosts of ideology continue to prevent the country from embracing even those ideas that its own leaders understand to be beneficial, even necessary.
No country today can develop in isolation from the currents of humanity. Those currents consist not only of capital, markets, technology, and production chains. They also include academic freedom, the right to ask questions, the relative autonomy of universities, professional journalism, the rule of law, and the ability of civil society to exist. Vietnam cannot selectively embrace the material achievements of modern civilization while rejecting the intellectual and institutional conditions that made those achievements possible.
There is nothing wrong with Vietnamese leaders seeking a state visit to Washington. Expanding Vietnam’s relations with the United States and the West is also consistent with the country’s strategic interests. But partnerships in the twenty-first century cannot be built solely through diplomatic ceremonies or multibillion-dollar contracts. A genuinely attractive Vietnam must be one that its partners can trust, where citizens can breathe, intellectuals can speak, and businesses are not forced to search for invisible political boundaries behind every professional decision.
4. “SAYING ONE THING AND DOING ANOTHER”: A SYSTEMIC DISEASE
To Lam concluded his speech by demanding an end to the situation in which “policies are correct, but institutionalization is slow, implementation is undisciplined, and results remain limited.” Perhaps he should add an even more serious disease: policies are articulated in the language of openness, while power continues to operate according to the inertia of a closed system. When this happens, the problem is no longer simply the gap between resolutions and implementation. It is a conflict within the system itself: one faction seeks development through knowledge and international integration, while another continues to defend its cultural and administrative powers through control and fear.
How much longer must Vietnam and its people remain trapped in this contradiction? When will the country’s leaders fully recognize that Vietnam cannot invite the world to cooperate while suffocating intellectual life at home; that they cannot speak of liberal education while allowing society to be submerged in denunciation; and that they cannot call for the restoration of public trust while citizens continue to witness a government that says one thing and does another?
The proposed four strategic shifts will ultimately become no more than four formulas in a political speech unless they are accompanied by a more important shift, perhaps the most important shift of all: a transition from governing through fear to nation-building through freedom, the rule of law, and trust.