Vietnam’s most powerful leader dies leaving no obvious successor
By Sui-Lee Wee
Nguyen Phu Trong, the hard-line general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party who presided over his country’s economic and geopolitical transformation, and reshaped its leadership with his “blazing furnace” anti-corruption campaign, died Friday in Hanoi. He was 80.
His death, in a hospital, was announced by the official Nhan Dan newspaper, which said Trong had died of “old age” and an unspecified serious illness.
Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.Credit: AP
Speculation had swirled in January about Trong’s health after he skipped meetings with several foreign leaders. The seriousness of his illness became clear Thursday, when the party announced that he would step back from his duties to focus on his health, and that President To Lam, a former security minister, would take over his responsibilities.
For 12 years, Trong sat at the apex of power in Vietnam’s Communist hierarchy. He served an unprecedented three terms as party chief and nearly three decades in the Politburo. He consolidated power in one of the world’s few remaining Communist dictatorships, significantly weakening the collective form of leadership that had characterized the country’s Communist Party.
His death leaves no obvious successor.
“He was the most powerful leader in Vietnam after the Vietnam War,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “I think anyone who will be chosen as the next leader of Vietnam will face an uphill battle in having the same kind of authority that [he] had.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in December.Credit: AP
Trong represented a conservative Marxist-Leninist faction within the party, which includes another faction that is seen as more pragmatic and moderate. His death is likely to raise hopes in the West that a less doctrinaire leader could emerge. Trong, the only one in the 18-member Politburo who grew up during the Vietnam War, was a generation older than many of his peers.
A conservative ideologue who viewed corruption as a threat to the party’s survival, he began a wide-reaching anti-corruption campaign in 2011 that has accelerated in recent years, investigating thousands of people and prompting the dismissal of several top ministers. The results have been mixed: The campaign created a fairer business environment but has also instilled fear in many officials and paralysed decision-making.
Trong led the harshest crackdown on dissent in decades. Under his rule, the space for civil society — never abundant in a nation of roughly 100 million people — shrunk further.
Vietnam has the second-highest number of political prisoners in South-East Asia, with more than 160 people currently detained for exercising their basic rights, according to Human Rights Watch.
At home, Trong was viewed as a frugal leader who, unusual in Vietnam, did not abuse his power to enrich himself or his family. His official vehicle was a two-decade-old Toyota Crown, according to a 2022 article in Vietnamnet, an online newspaper in Vietnam affiliated with the Ministry of Information and Communications. He refused to have new suits made.
Trong oversaw one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies and raised Vietnam’s prestige on the international stage. Under his term, the world’s major superpowers courted the country aggressively.
Trong was adept at balancing relations with the United States and China, a strategy he termed “bamboo diplomacy”. (“strong roots, stout trunk and flexible branches”) He cultivated close ties with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, who visited Vietnam in December for a third time. Three months before that, President Joe Biden had been in Vietnam, cementing a new strategic relationship with Trong.
“He was a master of hedging,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor and Vietnam specialist at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu.
Trong was born in Hanoi into a farming family on April 4, 1944.
In 1981, after joining Vietnam’s Communist Party, he travelled to the Soviet Union, where he earned a postgraduate history degree in 1983. From 1991-96, he was editor-in-chief of the Communist Review, the mouthpiece of Vietnam’s Communist Party.
Trong was never seen as a strong candidate for party chief because he lacked extensive experience in government and economics. From January 2000 to June 2006, he was secretary of the party’s Executive Committee of Hanoi, the provincial capital. From 2006-11, he was chair of Vietnam’s National Assembly.
Vietnam’s principle of leadership is a collective one, and unlike China it has long resisted having a supreme figure at the top. Trong’s low-key manner made him a suitable compromise candidate for differing factions in the country’s Communist Party, and at 68, he was not expected to have a long term. He was elected general secretary in 2011.
Trong’s first term was notable for a sharp rise in anti-China sentiment after China moved an oil rig into contested waters near Vietnam’s coast in 2014. That led to protests in Vietnam and sent relations between the two nations to their lowest level in three decades.
Vuving said the oil rig incident had shifted Trong’s view of the West. Few countries spoke up publicly for Vietnam at the time, except for Japan and the United States.
In 2015, Trong became the first Vietnamese Communist Party chief to travel to the United States. He met with President Barack Obama and invited him to come to Vietnam. During his visit, Trong was asked about Vietnam’s human rights situation.
“Vietnamese people have never lived in a democratic atmosphere like today,” he responded, but added that “it is also important to see that individual rights must be placed in the context of the common interests of the community.
“The two sides’ understandings are still different, so the best way, in my opinion, is to increase dialogue. But we should not let human rights issues hinder our relations.”
In 2016, Trong agreed that Vietnam would sign on to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s trade initiative, which would entail Vietnam changing its laws to legalise independent unions and allow workers to strike.
He is survived by his wife, Ngo Thi Man. The Vietnamese government does not disclose details about the children of party officials, but it is believed that he is also survived by a son and a daughter.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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