Is To Lam's Vietnam turning into Xi Jinping's China?

To Lam, the leader of the Vietnamese Communist Party, became the country's president this month following a unanimous vote in the country's National Assembly. The move notably went against informal norms that have long shaped elite politics in Hanoi. For decades, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) has tried to avoid concentrating too much power in one pair of hands. Unlike China, where, since the 1990s, the top party leader has usually also served as state president, Vietnam has generally preferred a more collective leadership style, known as the so-called "four pillars" system, with authority divided among the party chief, state president, prime minister and National Assembly. That arrangement was never the full-fledged separation of powers found in liberal democracies. But within the confines of one-party rule, it created a measure of internal balance and helped reduce the risk of one individual dominating the political system. Now, analysts say, that balance may be shifting. "It brings the Vietnamese political system closer to the Chinese one, which is dominated by [China's President] Xi Jinping," Alfred Gerstl, an expert on Indo-Pacific international relations at the University of Vienna, told DW. "Given his concentration of power, To Lam may be able to implement his ambitious reforms more quickly, but there is a risk that the established checks and balances will cease to function and that dissenting opinions within the party will be heard less and less," Gerstl added. Leaders dying in office Vietnam's political system has long relied as much on convention as on formal rules. In addition to the "four pillars" system, retirement-age norms also once helped regulate turnover of the political elite. But both of those guardrails have become to easier to bend in recent years. The VCP is now more willing to grant aging leaders passes on retirement and grant them new powers instead. For example, former party chief Nguyen Phu Trong secured a third term in 2021, breaking the long-observed two-term norm. He had already combined the party leadership and presidency from 2018 until 2021, after the previous occupant died in office. Trong himself served as the Communist Party leader until his death at the age of 80 in 2024.Looking to China for surveillance tools To Lam, a former public security minister, rose as a key enforcer of Trong's anti-corruption campaign, which removed hundreds of officials and helped reorder the political hierarchy. Like Trong, To Lam briefly held both posts before being pressured to step back as president. In January, he was confirmed for another five-year term as party leader at the Communist Party congress and, just a few months later, secured a five-year term as president. Under To Lam, Vietnam is also showing greater interest in elements of China's security and surveillance model, Gerstl said, arguing that this trend "goes hand in hand with new bilateral agreements and would further restrict freedom of expression in Vietnam." AI camera networks coming to Vietnam Vietnam was already one of the region's most restrictive states before Lam rose to the top. It ranks 173rd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index. Rights groups say the government has intensified pressure on civil society in recent years, narrowing what little space remained for dissent. Hanoi is planning to establish state-run data-trading exchanges overseen by the public security ministry, "mirroring China's centralized data model," according to a Reuters news agency report last week. How police use AI facial recognition To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Vietnam is also expanding a national electronic identification system, enabling authorities to identify individuals through AI camera networks being rolled out nationwide — another parallel with China. Recent government documents have also referred to building a "national firewall," while new legislation has increased internet providers' ability to collect users' personal data. To Lam hosted by Xi Jinping This week, To Lam visited China, his first official diplomatic trip since taking the presidency, following a tradition set out by previous Vietnamese leaders and Hanoi's official stance that views the two countries as socialist "comrades and brothers." During the trip, Xi Jinping stressed ideological solidarity and strategic coordination. According to Chinese state media, Xi described defending socialism and Communist Party rule as a shared strategic interest of both China and Vietnam. Security was also high on the agenda. With Lam in Beijing, Vietnam's public security minister, Luong Tam Quang, separately met three of China's top security officials, suggesting deepening ties in the institutions both systems rely on to preserve political control.US-China trade war intensifies as Xi reinforces Asia tiesTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Two paths ahead for Vietnam's new president Still, there are clear limits to the comparison with China. Vietnam has not attempted "Xi Jinping's Stalinist elimination of senior generals and the pervasive state of fear that Xi has injected into Chinese society more broadly speaking," Hunter Marston, a non-resident fellow with the Institute for Global Affairs, told DW. "Vietnam is far from a progressive democracy, but it lacks some of the totalitarian repression that China relies on more regularly for the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping's political survival," he added. In other words, while Vietnam remains an authoritarian one-party state, it has not built the same level of all-encompassing repression, ideological control or the cult of personality seen under Xi. Nor has To Lam yet shown that he can dominate the system to the same extent as China's leader. Now, with To Lam ruling as both party head and president, the country's future will depend on how he wields his new, broader powers. If Lam governs pragmatically, supporters may see the merger of the two posts simply as a way to push through reforms more quickly and give Vietnam's paramount leader a bigger formal role for partners abroad. But if the trend continues toward tighter repression, weaker internal restraints and a stronger security state, Vietnam may begin to look less like the collective authoritarian system it once claimed to be and a little more like its giant northern neighbor. Edited by: Darko Janjevic