Author: CRT Admin

By Dr. Dinh Hoang Thang (Fellow, The Caux Round Table)

• In today’s maritime disputes, strategic advantage no longer belongs to the country with the stronger legal right. Increasingly, it belongs to the country maintaining the more timely and sustained presence at sea.

• Today major powers ask not only which partner a country chooses, but also  how efficiently that country operates according to credible standards—and so whether it is worthy of long-term strategic trust.

[Dr. Dinh Hoang Thang, a retired Ambassador and former senior official of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, has kindly agreed to support the Caux Round Table’s initiative to consider the implications of Vietnam’s evolving enhancements in economic developments, civic dialogue, and administrative reforms. Ambassador Thang’s insights and understanding of strategic contexts are remarkable and provide practical guidance for all interested in the future of Vietnam and of Vietnamese/American reciprocal relationships of mutual benefit.]

 Introduction

Rarely has the South China Sea witnessed such a rapid succession of developments within such a short period of time.

Without any right under international law, China has once again unilaterally imposed its annual fishing ban across a vast expanse of the South China Sea. Encounters between Chinese maritime forces and Vietnamese fishermen continue to occur. 

Second, the Vietnamese transport vessel Khoi Nguyen 18 sank near the Spratly Islands. 

Third, the nuclear-powered American aircraft carrier USS George Washington arrived in Da Nang following joint operations with Japan and the Philippines. 

Fourth, at almost the same time, Washington increased commercial pressure on Hanoi through higher tariffs and stricter scrutiny of supply chains.

At first glance, these appear to be unrelated events. Taken together, however, they reveal a broader strategic reality: security, sovereignty, and economics are no longer separate policy domains. They have become increasingly intertwined in shaping Vietnam’s strategic environment.

 I. ARE TENSIONS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA JUST AD HOC AND INCIDENTAL OR IS COMPETION FOR MASTERY OF THOSE WATERS ENTERING A NEW STRATEGIC PHASE?

Viewed individually, each of the above developments might seem more or less accidental. Considered chronologically, however, they point to something more strategically significant. What is changing is not merely the frequency of incidents in the South China Sea, but the manner in which major powers are simultaneously employing military capabilities, economic leverage, and diplomatic influence to shape the strategic environment surrounding Vietnam.

Without open access to the entire South China Sea, what can Vietnam hope for in promoting its economy in the coming decades?

In the northern part of the South China Sea, China continues to enforce a unilateral fishing ban covering waters that Vietnam considers to fall within its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 

A detailed 1794 British navigation map of the South China Sea shows no land feature in the sea with a Chinese name while other features and cities are shown with Malay, Vietnamese or English names.

In 1837, Father Jean Louis Taberd wrote in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal that Gia Long, Emperor of Dai Viet in 1816 “went with solemnity to plant his flag and take formal possession of [the Paracel Islands}, which is not likely any body will dispute with him”

(The journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Calcutta :Bishop’s College Press,1832-1936 v.6:pt.2=no.67-72 (1837): p. 745, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/123871)

Vietnam’s Fisheries Association has repeatedly protested these measures. Meanwhile, reports of Chinese maritime authorities confronting, expelling, assaulting, and confiscating fishing equipment from Vietnamese fishermen continue to emerge, reinforcing a persistent sense of insecurity among coastal communities that depend on these traditional fishing grounds for their livelihoods.

Against this backdrop, the sinking of Khoi Nguyen 18 near the Spratly Islands immediately attracted international attention. According to reporting by The New York Times, the vessel was supporting projects intended to strengthen Vietnam’s logistical presence in the Spratly archipelago. Vietnamese authorities have attributed the accident, at least preliminarily, to severe weather conditions. To date, no publicly available evidence justifies conclusions beyond those officially released.

Nevertheless, the fact that the incident occurred in close proximity to Chinese-controlled and heavily militarized features gives it significance extending well beyond that of an ordinary maritime accident.

Then, less than a week later, the USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group entered the South China Sea after concluding joint operations with Japan and the Philippines before making a port call in Da Nang.

Taken together, these developments suggest that the South China Sea is entering a new strategic phase  where military competition, geopolitical influence, and competing visions of regional order intersect.

II. AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER AND A SUNKEN SHIP

The arrival of USS George Washington in Da Nang was far more than a routine naval port visit. 

Before calling at Vietnam, the carrier strike group had conducted joint operations with Japan and the Philippines across the Western Pacific and the South China Sea. The strategic messages from Washington in making this naval deployment was unmistakable: the United States intends to maintain a sustained military presence in the Indo-Pacific while strengthening its network of regional partners in support of freedom of navigation and a rules-based maritime order and that the United States looks favorably on Vietnam’s right and ability to contribute to the sustainability of that freedom under a rules-based international order

For Vietnam, receiving another U.S. aircraft carrier demonstrates Hanoi’s continued commitment to expanding defense cooperation with a wide range of partners within its long-standing foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, diversification, and multilateralization. 

More significant than the visit itself, however, is the strategic context in which it occurred—immediately following a series of heightened tensions in the South China Sea and amid intensifying strategic competition among the major powers.

If USS George Washington symbolizes power projected from outside the region, the sinking of Khoi Nguyen 18 points to a very different strategic reality. Today’s competition in the South China Sea is measured not only by the number of warships deployed or diplomatic statements issued, but increasingly by a country’s capacity – say China’s – to maintain a continuous and effective presence on the ground—or, more precisely, at sea.

(Consider the analogous situation in the Strait of Hormuz – Iran’s capacity to maintain a continuous threat to freedom of navigation through the Strait)

According to publicly available information, Khoi Nguyen 18 sank near Fiery Cross Reef, close to one of China’s largest military installations in the Spratly Islands. Chinese authorities reported that they had rescued most of the crew, while Vietnam publicly expressed appreciation for the rescue operation. From a humanitarian perspective, saving lives at sea is a universal obligation that deserves recognition regardless of sovereignty disputes or political differences.

Yet beyond this humanitarian dimension lies a broader geopolitical reality. China’s ability to reach the accident site more rapidly than any other actor reflects something far more significant than an efficient rescue capability. It reflects the extensive military infrastructure, logistical support, coast guard assets, and maritime forces that Beijing has built over the past decade on the artificial islands under its control. That unilaterally imposed permanent hegemonic presence has fundamentally altered the operational realities in large parts of the South China Sea.

The strategic lesson to be learned from these recent events, therefore, lies not in speculation about why the Vietnamese vessel sank. Rather, it lies in what the incident reveals about the evolving nature of maritime competition. In contemporary territorial disputes, strategic advantage belongs not only to the side with the stronger legal claims under international law, but increasingly to the side capable of maintaining the most persistent presence, responding the fastest to events, and exercising the greatest degree of practical control over contested waters.

In this sense, USS George Washington and Khoi Nguyen 18 inadvertently illustrate two dimensions of the same strategic picture. One reflects the growing involvement of external powers in preserving the regional balance of power. The other demonstrates that competition for effective presence is unfolding every day in the disputed waters themselves.

Facing these two dynamics, Vietnam must respond to a challenge that extends beyond defending its sovereignty. The more difficult task is to strengthen its own maritime presence while ensuring that isolated incidents do not become catalysts for wider strategic confrontation among the major powers.

III. WASHINGTON’S DUAL MESSAGE

On the one hand, a focus on the visit of USS George Washington, might lead one to conclude that Washington is placing renewed emphasis on the military dimension of its relationship with Vietnam. Yet, on the other hand, when this deployment is considered alongside recent American policy developments in bilateral trade, a more comprehensive picture emerges. U.S. policy toward Vietnam is no longer operating on two separate tracks—security on one hand and economics on the other. Increasingly, the two have become integrated components of a single more comprehensive strategic framework.

From a security perspective, Washington’s message to officials in Hanoi and all other nations is relatively straightforward. As China continues to expand its military and maritime presence throughout the South China Sea, the United States seeks to demonstrate that it remains a decisive balancing power in the Indo-Pacific, with Freedom of navigation operations, expanded defense cooperation with Japan and the Philippines, and the port visit of USS George Washington, all reinforce Washington’s commitment to preserving a regional order based on international law, where both large and small states are entitled to exercise their lawful rights at sea.

At precisely the same time, however, the United States has been sending Hanoi a second—and arguably more consequential— bilateral message. Rather than focusing on naval deployments, this message concerns Vietnan’s domestic economic governance. Washington has intensified its scrutiny of Vietnamese exports through investigations into rules of origin, tariff circumvention, forced labor, and direct inspections of manufacturing facilities participating in global supply chains. Combined with recently announced tariff measures, these actions suggest that the United States is no longer evaluating Vietnam solely as a rapidly growing trading partner. Increasingly, it is assessing the comity, transparency, and credibility of Vietnam’s economic institutions.

At first glance, these two messages may appear contradictory. On the one hand, Washington is strengthening defense cooperation with Vietnam; on the other, it is imposing more self-interested economic conditionalities. However, In reality, they are mutually enforcing American national concerns – one military and the other economic.

The United States seeks a Vietnam that is sufficiently capable to contribute to a stable balance of power in Southeast Asia. At the same time, it also seeks a Vietnam that is sufficiently capable of meeting the standards regarded in Washington as essential for a long-term strategic partnership between the two peoples: transparent supply chains, compliance with international trade commitments, stronger regulatory governance, and reduced vulnerability to opaque production networks closely linked to China. In other words, Vietnam is being evaluated not only according to its geopolitical location and its regional responsibilities, but also according to the compatibility  of its development model with global standards today and with future advancements in the quality of goods and services, technologies, and openness of markets.

This more comprehensive American approach reflects an evolution in American strategic thinking. For many years, defense cooperation and economic cooperation were often treated as relatively separate policy domains. Today, that distinction is becoming increasingly blurred.  As Vietnam becomes more important to the United States – perhaps becoming A Comprehensive Strategic Partner, the country’s value to the United States will be judged not merely by the number of high-level exchanges or naval visits, but by its capacity to uphold predictable rules, safeguard the integrity of international commerce, ensure transparency in global supply chains, and adapt to the evolving norms governing the international economic system.

For Hanoi, therefore, the strategic test of national success extends well beyond skillfully balancing diplomatic relations among major powers. It increasingly depends upon Vietnam’s ability to undertake domestic reforms that correspond to an international environment undergoing profound transformation. In this context, diplomacy and institutional reform can no longer be viewed as separate agendas. A country’s international credibility is becoming inseparable from 1) the quality of its domestic governance as deployed in achieving excellent economic performance – and 2) from its capacity to translate international commitments into consistent national practice – to “walk its talk”.

Ultimately, in the twenty-first century, major powers are no longer asking only where a country stands on issues of the moment. They are also asking how well that country is governed, whether its institutions operate according to internationally credible standards, and whether it can be trusted as a reliable strategic partner over the long term.

Conclusion:

In his remarks ahead of the 33rd Diplomatic Conference, Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung reaffirmed the implementation of Politburo Resolution No. 06-NQ/TW, emphasizing that Vietnam’s external relations and international integration must advance in close coordination with the country’s internal development. This formulation raises an intriguing possibility. Might Vietnam eventually move beyond a diplomacy centered primarily on balancing external relationships toward what could be described as “timely diplomacy”—a diplomacy capable not merely of adapting to geopolitical change, but of recognizing historical shifts early enough to shape national strategy accordingly?

For many years, Vietnam’s foreign policy has succeeded in preserving a delicate strategic balance among the contending major powers while steadily expanding the country’s international partnerships. That achievement has given Vietnam an important strategic asset—one that deserves to be preserved. Yet as competition among the major powers increasingly shifts away from direct military confrontation toward rivalry over technology, supply chains, trade standards, and the capacity to shape regional order, maintaining balance alone may no longer be sufficient to advance and protect the interests of the Vietnamese people.

If the phrase “bamboo diplomacy” is indeed appearing less frequently in Vietnam’s official discourse, the more significant question is not whether a slogan is fading, but whether Vietnamese diplomacy is gradually entering a new stage of strategic thinking. 

Recent developments—including the prominent participation of the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador at a high-level political event attended by Vietnam’s senior leadership—may be viewed as signals worth noting well. Even so, it would be premature to interpret such transactional episodes as evidence of a new foreign policy doctrine. In diplomacy, genuine strategic change is rarely announced overnight; it is revealed through the consistent accumulation of decisions, priorities, and policy behavior over time.

Such a strategic transformation for Vietnam, if it should emerge, would not abandon the principles that have guided Vietnam’s diplomacy for decades. Rather, it would represent their evolution. Strategic balance would remain essential, but it would no longer be the ultimate objective. The larger goal would be to anticipate structural changes in the international system, strengthen the nation’s long-term resilience, and expand Vietnam’s capacity to shape—not merely respond to—the external environment in ways that serve its enduring national interests.

Success in achieving that, perhaps, is the most consequential strategic test facing Hanoi today.

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.

The central question facing all Vietnamese today is whether Vietnam possesses enough confidence to accept the competition of ideas as a force for development. Marx, after all, was never afraid of contradiction. In every age, it is those who hold power who most fear contradiction.

Hoang Thang Dinh

Ph.D. in Political Science; Fellow of the Caux Round Table

History sometimes produces anomalies – unnecessary inconsistencies and contradictions that become visible only when a political order faces a decisive turning point. A ruling party founded upon Marxism-Leninism may continue to proclaim its loyalty to that doctrine in every official document, while in practice steadily suppressing the very force that Marx regarded as the source of all development. Seen from this perspective, perhaps the greatest paradox in Vietnam today is not that Marxism is feared, but that Marx’s own personal intellectual dialectic is.

This is not merely a play on words. If one sets aside the familiar conventions surrounding revolution, dictatorship, and class struggle, the philosophical core of Marx’s thought revolves around a single question: how does society develop? His answer was clear. Every social order contains contradictions within itself. Change arises from the meeting up  of opposing forces and their mutual antagonisms, while absolute uniformity leads not to progress, but to stagnation.

The question, therefore, is not whether contemporary Vietnam continues to invoke Marxism-Leninism as an official doctrine. It plainly does. The more important question is whether a political system can remain faithful to Marx while attempting to remove contradiction, silence competing ideas, and reduce social life to hearing only a single authorized voice.

That contradiction between Marxist dogma and Marx’s philosophy of the natural law bringing about human evolution lies at the heart of Vietnam’s present dilemma.

1. What Did Marx Actually Say About Human Development?

Marx did not invent the social dynamic of dialectics. He inherited it from Hegel and transformed it by shifting its center of gravity from the realm of spirit to the material and social world. Yet whatever differences separated Marx from Hegel, the central proposition remained intact: there can be no movement without addressing contradictions and no development without conflict between what exists and what is struggling to emerge.

Hegel proposed a natural law of change.  A fixed logic – the thesis – comes into being. Then, in a fluid ecosystem, a counter-logic appears – the anti-thesis. Next, the thesis and the anti-thesis interact and meld their truths one with the other to create a new logic or truth – the synthesis. And then the cycle repeats itself: the synthesis becomes a new thesis which begets a new anti-thesis, which then combine into a second generation synthesis, which …

Thus, from a Hegelian approach, any contradiction between a thesis and an anti-thesis is only an interim waystation on the road to successful innovation and the future.  It is to be welcomed as step forward for humanity.

Hegel’s dialectic conforms nicely to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which holds that any energy state which does not flow degenerates. The isolated system – a thesis – cut off from innovation and new energy flows (anti-theses) succumbs to entropy whereby its internal energy is decomposed and becomes useless chaos.  Such an isolated system ultimately loses all productivity and so becomes useless.

For Marx, contradiction was therefore not simply a system defect to be eliminated. It was the driving force of history. Without tension inside the forces and relations of production, there would be no structural transformation of the economy over time. Without conflict between old institutions and new social realities, there would be no political change. Without disagreement between competing interpretations, there would be no advance in human understanding.

Dialectics, in this sense, is not a philosophy of unanimity. It is a philosophy of forward movement generated by differences.

Long before Marx, similar intuitions appeared in the civilizational wisdom of Asia. An old Chinese saying observes that “on the Yangtze River, the waves behind push forward the waves ahead”. The Vietnamese express the same insight more simply: “when old bamboo dies, new shoots rise”. Both images point to a universal law of life. Renewal occurs because the new emerges, challenges the old, and eventually transforms or replaces it.

A river without new waves becomes stagnant water. A society without new ideas gradually loses its vitality.

In fact, the Vietnamese have applied a Hegelian approach to nature for more than 2,000 years as part of their national identity – Truong Ton Dan Toc.  Their origin myth brings together a paternal figure – Lac Long Quan – with a maternal figure – Au Co – to meld their different energy orientations and so bring forth a unique new ethnicity.

Separately, the Truong Ton Dan Toc included a sophisticated balancing of different energy flows in the melding of Yang and Yin forces, Yang being the thesis and Yin the anti-thesis, and the 62 normal configurations of both energies constituting a set of differing syntheses.

Modern history offers repeated confirmation of this dialectic. In science, major discoveries often begin with the rejection of what had previously been accepted as truth. In economics, new firms and new technologies continuously displace established models. Joseph Schumpeter later described this process as “creative destruction,” the dynamic through which capitalism renews itself by dismantling obsolete arrangements and creating new ones.

The language differs, but the underlying principle is strikingly similar: without difference, there is no innovation; without challenge, there is no renewal.

This raises an unavoidable question. What happens when a society no longer accepts the existence of opposing forces? What happens when criticism is treated primarily as a political risk, debate is progressively narrowed, and difference itself becomes something to be monitored and controlled?

Under such conditions, social life does not merely become intellectually poorer. The very mechanism of development that Marx regarded as fundamental is disabled. The contradiction between theory and practice becomes even sharper when the political system responsible for suppressing disagreement continues to claim Marx as its ideological foundation.

It is precisely at this point that the anomaly of contemporary Vietnam reveals itself.

A genuinely dialectical society would not fear contradiction. It would institutionalize a process to constructively exploit contradiction, regulate it through law, and transform it into a source of correction and renewal. It would understand that disagreement is not necessarily disloyalty, that criticism is not automatically hostility, and that competing ideas are not enemies of national unity.

By contrast, a system that treats every significant difference as a threat may preserve outward conformity for a time, but it does so by weakening its own capacity to learn and grow stronger. It eliminates not only dissent, but also the warning signals through which errors are detected before they become crises.

This is why the issue reaches far beyond how best to interpret Marx. It concerns the conditions under which any modern society is capable of development. A nation cannot enter the knowledge economy while suppressing the social processes through which knowledge is tested. It cannot call for innovation if it fears intellectual independence. It cannot celebrate dialectics in theory while abolishing contradiction in practice.

The essential question, then, is no longer whether Marxism remains present in official discourse. The question is whether those who speak most frequently in Marx’s name are prepared to accept the principle at the very center of his thought: that development begins when opposing forces are allowed to exist, interact, and generate something new.

2. The Greatest Irony: Governing in Marx’s Name While Abandoning Marx’s Method

If Marx was correct that contradiction is the engine of historical development, then contemporary Vietnam presents a puzzle that deserves careful examination. The issue is not whether Marxism-Leninism continues to occupy a privileged place in official ideology. It clearly does. The more fundamental question is whether the governing method increasingly contradicts the very philosophical principle upon which Marx built his understanding of history. It is here that one encounters perhaps the greatest irony of Vietnam’s contemporary political development.

According to Marx, contradiction was never an unfortunate defect that society should eliminate. Quite the opposite. Contradiction was the source of movement, adaptation, and renewal. Social systems evolve because competing forces interact with one another, exposing weaknesses, correcting errors, and generating new possibilities. Development therefore requires tension—not permanent conflict, but the continuous encounter between different perspectives capable of producing higher forms of organization and understanding.

Measured against that standard, today’s Vietnam appears to be moving along a remarkably different path. Over time, the public space available for intellectual diversity has become progressively narrower. Journalism exercises less independent scrutiny than before. Civic organizations function within carefully defined limits. Scholars, artists, entrepreneurs, and policy specialists have all learned that some questions are best avoided and some conclusions are wiser left unstated. The significance of this trend lies not in any individual case, but in the broader political culture it gradually creates: one in which conformity offers security while intellectual divergence carries increasing uncertainty.

Such a development is not difficult to understand from the perspective of political power. Governments naturally seek stability. They attempt to reduce uncertainty, minimize social disruption, and preserve institutional coherence. These are legitimate objectives of governance. The difficulty begins only when stability gradually becomes indistinguishable from uniformity, and when the absence of disagreement comes to be interpreted as evidence of political success.

At precisely that moment, however, another process quietly unfolds beneath the surface. A political system may become more orderly, yet simultaneously lose part of its capacity for self-correction. Independent criticism becomes rarer. Alternative analyses disappear from public debate. Institutions hear fewer warnings before policy mistakes accumulate into structural weaknesses. What appears externally as consensus may, in reality, conceal a growing decline in the system’s ability to learn from its own experience.

Seen through Marx’s own dialectical framework, this outcome is deeply ironic. What is being reduced is not merely criticism of particular policies, but the social existence of opposing forces themselves. Yet Marx never regarded opposing forces as enemies of development. He regarded them as its indispensable condition. A society that removes contradiction from public life also removes one of the principal mechanisms through which historical progress becomes possible.

The paradox becomes even more striking as Vietnam enters what its leaders describe as a new era of national advancement. Official strategy now emphasizes innovation, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, private enterprise, and global competitiveness. These aspirations are entirely understandable. No country can hope to prosper in the twenty-first century without embracing scientific creativity and technological innovation. Yet history has never produced an innovative economy within an intellectually homogeneous society.

Here lies the paradox within the paradox. Competition is encouraged in markets, but competition among ideas remains far more constrained. Technological innovation is celebrated, while intellectual innovation often encounters institutional hesitation. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to challenge old business models, but society remains considerably less comfortable when citizens challenge established assumptions in public life. The result is an increasingly visible gap between the economic imagination required for modernization and the political imagination permitted within the public sphere.

Eventually, theory and practice begin moving in opposite directions. A nation may continue to invoke Marx as the philosophical foundation of its political legitimacy, while simultaneously narrowing the very conditions under which Marx’s dialectical method could actually operate. In that situation, dialectics survives primarily as doctrine rather than as a living method of understanding reality. Contradiction is praised in textbooks but discouraged in public life.

Perhaps this is the deepest irony confronting Vietnam today. The central issue is no longer whether some citizens criticize Marxism. The more revealing question is whether a political system that continues to govern in Marx’s name remains willing to accept the single principle that gives Marx’s philosophy its enduring intellectual vitality: that societies develop not by eliminating contradiction, but by allowing competing forces to interact, challenge one another, and ultimately produce something better than either could achieve alone.

3. Innovation Begins Where Conformity Ends

One of history’s greatest ironies is that many of civilization’s most transformative revolutions did not begin in royal palaces, government ministries, or the headquarters of powerful institutions. They began in places so ordinary that they seemed almost invisible. A suburban garage. A university laboratory. A rented apartment. A dormitory room. Again and again, history reminds us that the future rarely announces itself from the center of established power. More often, it arrives quietly from its margins.

When Bill Gates imagined that every office and every household would one day possess its own personal computer, the idea struck many observers as wildly unrealistic. When Steve Jobs insisted that technology should become an extension of human creativity rather than merely a calculating machine, established companies saw little reason to take him seriously. Years later, Elon Musk was widely dismissed for arguing that electric vehicles could redefine the automobile industry and that private companies could compete in space exploration. Their proposals often sounded less like business plans than acts of intellectual audacity.

The remarkable fact is not that these individuals encountered skepticism. Every genuinely original idea does. The remarkable fact is that these men lived in societies capable of distinguishing between disagreement and disloyalty. They were free to fail, free to be criticized, and equally free to prove that conventional wisdom had been mistaken. Their greatest protection was not political influence or inherited privilege. It was an institutional environment that accepted intellectual deviation as a normal condition of progress.

This pattern extends far beyond Silicon Valley. Galileo challenged the cosmology of his age. Charles Darwin overturned centuries of established assumptions about the origins of life. Albert Einstein transformed modern physics by questioning concepts that had appeared settled since Newton. Tim Berners-Lee changed the architecture of global communication with an invention whose significance few initially recognized. In every generation, history advances because someone is willing to ask questions that the majority has not yet imagined.

The lesson is remarkably consistent. Innovation is never produced by unanimous agreement. It emerges from continuous competition among ideas. Some fail. Many disappear. A few fundamentally reshape the world. The decisive factor is not whether every new idea is correct, but whether society provides sufficient intellectual space for better ideas to emerge, compete, and eventually replace inferior ones. This process is precisely what Joseph Schumpeter described as “creative destruction”—the permanent renewal of society through challenge rather than repetition.

This is why the world’s most innovative nations share certain institutional characteristics. Their universities enjoy substantial intellectual autonomy. Their scientific communities encourage rigorous criticism rather than ritual agreement. Their entrepreneurs regularly challenge established industries. Their journalists question those who govern. Their courts protect lawful dissent. None of these institutions exists because disagreement is inherently desirable. They exist because history repeatedly demonstrates that societies capable of correcting themselves invariably outperform societies that merely preserve appearances of consensus.

Vietnam now stands before precisely this historical reality. The country can import advanced technologies, attract foreign investment, construct modern infrastructure, and acquire sophisticated machinery. Yet none of these imports will on their own automatically produce innovation. The most valuable strategic resource of the twenty-first century is neither oil nor rare earth minerals nor financial capital. It is the human capacity to think independently, to imagine alternatives, and to challenge inherited assumptions before circumstances force change from outside.

This reality raises a question far more fundamental than industrial policy or technological strategy. Can a gifted Vietnamese student pursue an unconventional scientific hypothesis without fearing that intellectual independence itself may become a liability? Can a young entrepreneur openly challenge established methods without first calculating the political acceptability of new ideas? Can scholars engage in serious debate over national development without every disagreement being interpreted primarily through the lens of political conformity? These questions reach beyond individual freedoms. They concern the creative capacity of the nation itself.

Perhaps this brings us back, unexpectedly, to Marx. If contradiction constitutes the engine of historical development, then every society aspiring to innovation must ultimately decide whether it views intellectual diversity as a strategic asset or as a political risk. The answer to that question will determine far more than the future of academic debate. It may well determine whether Vietnam succeeds in building a genuine knowledge economy or merely acquires the outward technologies of one.

For nations do not become innovative simply because they purchase advanced machines. They become innovative because they cultivate citizens who are unafraid to think differently. History has rarely rewarded societies that perfected conformity. It has consistently rewarded those confident enough to allow new ideas to challenge old certainties before the rest of the world does it for them.

4. Strong States Do Not Fear Independent Minds

Perhaps the deepest misunderstanding in modern politics is the assumption that political stability demands intellectual conformity; that political stability and intellectual paralysis are essentially one and the same reality. History suggests precisely the opposite. The strongest states have rarely been those that eliminated disagreement. They were the ones that developed institutions capable of absorbing disagreement, learning from it, and transforming it into better public policy.

This distinction is more important than it first appears. Every government seeks stability; no responsible state welcomes chaos. Yet stability achieved through institutional resilience differs fundamentally from stability achieved through intellectual uniformity. The former grows stronger because criticism exposes weaknesses before they become crises. The latter often appears solid until accumulated errors suddenly reveal how little corrective capacity remains beneath the surface.

Modern constitutional government developed precisely from this insight. Independent courts, professional journalism, autonomous universities, competitive elections, civic associations, and open policy debate were never designed simply as expressions of individual liberty. They evolved because societies gradually discovered that governments, like markets, make mistakes. Institutions capable of identifying those mistakes early became one of civilization’s greatest political innovations.

In this respect, political systems resemble living organisms more than mechanical machines. A healthy immune system does not weaken the human body by constantly identifying abnormalities. It protects the body by detecting danger before it becomes irreversible. Public criticism performs a remarkably similar function within political communities. It identifies institutional blind spots, challenges obsolete assumptions, and exposes emerging risks before they mature into national failures. Silence, by contrast, is not always a sign of health. Sometimes it merely indicates that the immune system itself has ceased to function effectively.

This may explain why societies that appear highly stable often prove unexpectedly fragile when confronted with profound change. Systems accustomed to hearing only agreement gradually lose the capacity to recognize reality as it evolves. Information becomes increasingly filtered. Honest feedback becomes progressively rarer. Decision-makers receive reassurance precisely when they most need correction. Under such conditions, crises seldom emerge because criticism was excessive. More often, they emerge because criticism arrived too late.

Vietnam’s long-term challenge therefore extends well beyond economics or technology. The country undoubtedly requires investment, infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and scientific capability. Yet none of these achievements can fully substitute for institutions capable of continuous self-correction. Sustainable national development ultimately depends not only upon the efficiency of government but also upon the quality of feedback available to government itself.

Perhaps this returns us once again to the anomaly with which this essay began. A confident political order does not fear competing ideas because it understands that ideas, unlike conspiracies, become stronger or weaker through open examination. Only weak arguments require permanent protection from criticism. Strong arguments improve precisely because they survive criticism.

The question for a political system is what kind of “order” it should seek and institutionalize. There is a continuum of systems of order – from chaos and anarchy, at one pole, to a paralyzing stasis hugging tight to inertia at the other pole.  The most constructive and vital systems of order lie in the middle of the continuum. Finding such fluid but confined systems requires searching for a Middle Way, an Aristotelean Mean or a Daoist Wu-Wei equilibrium.

The American Constitution with its system of checks and balances is just such a Mean in the distribution of power among those who hold different Hegelian Theses and Anti-theses.  The Federalist Papers explained how checks and balances worked to produce a system of dynamic order avoiding both anarchy and tyranny through moderate movements taking place within a bounded social setting.

In Federalist Paper #10 we read: “AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. … By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”  Here James Madison associated “faction” with the seeking of power to dominate others living in the same community.

Factions, he said, arise from separations in the possession of social, economic, and political power. “From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties. … It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”

Federalist Paper #51 describes how checks and balances produce equilibrium among factions so that society as a whole benefits from the contributions of each faction:  “by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. …  Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. …  a subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.”

Where, in an operative Hegelian dialectic, different theses, anti-theses, and syntheses contend with each other in seeking approval and support, checks and balances are at work bringing about, over time, benefits for the entire society to share and enjoy. The central issue confronting Vietnam, therefore, is not whether intellectual diversity creates temporary discomfort. Every living society experiences disagreement. The more important question is whether the nation’s institutions possess sufficient confidence to transform disagreement into knowledge rather than interpreting it primarily as political risk. The answer to that question will shape far more than the future of public debate. It will determine the adaptive capacity of the Vietnamese state itself in a century defined by technological disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, and unprecedented rates of change.

For history leaves little room for ambiguity. Strong states are not those that succeed in silencing independent minds. Strong states are those confident enough to govern among them.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the question is no longer whether Vietnam remains faithful to Marxism-Leninism as an official doctrine. The more consequential question is whether it remains faithful to the single principle that gave Marx’s philosophy its enduring intellectual power: that development emerges through contradiction rather than conformity.

History has repeatedly demonstrated that scientific discovery, economic innovation, and political progress all begin with ideas that challenge established certainties. Societies prosper not because they eliminate disagreement, but because they possess the confidence to transform disagreement into knowledge, correction, and renewal.

The paradox confronting Vietnam today is therefore larger than Marx himself. A nation cannot aspire to become an innovation-driven economy while narrowing the intellectual space from which innovation naturally arises. Nor can it cultivate creative citizens while expecting them to think within predetermined boundaries.

The ultimate question is not who still speaks in Marx’s name. It is who still believes in the dialectical spirit that made Marx intellectually significant in the first place.

For Marx never feared contradiction.

History has never feared contradiction.

Innovation has never feared contradiction.

In every age, it is those with power who most fear contradictions.