Clampdown Masks Internal Troubles in Vietnam

A mounting clampdown on dissent characterized by the detention of dozens of activists, bloggers, and dissidents in Vietnam signals the newly appointed Communist Party government’s leaders will be as, if not more, repressive as their predecessor regime. But is Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and President Tran Dai Quang’s ramped up repression a sign of their regime’s strength or weakness?

The crackdown has targeted particular activists who questioned the government’s handling of an environmental disaster in April, caused by a foreign-invested steel factory. Contamination from the factory resulted in mass fish deaths along Vietnam's central coastal provinces. Activist calls for official transparency and accountability, voiced in a series of brazen public protests staged across the country, have been countered with threats, intimidation, and surveillance, including cases of police and thugs violently harassing activists who have given aid to disaster-affected families.  

In early November, authorities nabbed Luu Van Vinh, a pro-democracy activist who established the non-state-sanctioned Coalition of Self-Determination for Vietnamese People group earlier this year with the stated aim of ending one-party rule. At least three other activists with the group were also apprehended on charges of attempting to overthrow the government. Authorities have also recently detained a handful of prominent bloggers who posted critical reports on the government’s perceived mishandling of the environmental disaster.

Such repression, to be sure, is par for the course in Vietnam’s harsh authoritarian context. But the clampdown underway now comes against the backdrop of rising economic pressures and lingering intra-party factional discord caused by from reshuffles at the Party’s Congress in January, which together threaten to destabilize Phuc’s and Quang’s young, unconsolidated administration. Those challenges raise questions about whether the crackdown on activists aims more to stifle dissent from spreading into a wider anti-government movement or distract public attention from other crucial issues weighing against the regime.

The government’s finances are of particular concern. The Planning and Investment Ministry recently announced that it needs to raise $480 billion, or 2.5 times gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, to “restructure” the economy over the next five years. State revenues, meanwhile, have declined sharply with slumping global oil prices, from 30 percent of the national budget in 2005 to less than 10 percent last year, putting public debt on course to rise three times faster than GDP. In October, Phuc announced in parliament big budget cuts for Hanoi and other cities to “share hardship and suffering” with outlying regions.

Hopes that the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership preferential trade pact would accelerate growth, replenish coffers, and open lucrative new markets steadily diminished during the U.S. presidential election campaign, where both candidates staked out anti-free trade agreement positions. Those hopes died altogether with the November 8 election of the inward-looking populist Donald Trump. Vietnam was poised to be the TPP’s biggest beneficiary, with some experts predicting the nation’s GDP and exports would expand 11 and 28 percent respectively in the deal’s first decade. But recently Hanoi opted not to ratify the deal.

Intra-party tensions, stoked during a contentious Party Congress in January, are still boiling months after Phuc and Quang’s appointments and Party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong’s controversial decision to retain his post beyond the Party’s usual retirement age. Trong has since spearheaded an anti-graft campaign, likened by some to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s corruption purge, targeting those linked to outgoing two-term Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who lost a leadership struggle to Trong at the Congress. Dung was viewed as close to the United States while Trong has more clearly aligned with China. 

Blogosphere scuttlebutt has focused on the case of former high-ranking official Trinh Xuan Thanh, who fled the country in dramatic fashion in August after being targeted for arrest in Trong’s anti-graft drive. Other Dung allies, including ex-Industry and Trade Minister Vu Huy Hoang and Ho Chi Minh City Secretary and Politburo member Dinh La Thang, have respectively been sacked and criticized for not curbing corruption in state enterprises. Some analysts have pointed toward the fatal shooting of three top Party officials in Yen Bai province in August as a violent manifestation of intense factional infighting in the Party.  

It is not clear if Trong, Phuc, or Quang believe the rival party faction has broken ranks and tacitly supported the spreading grassroots environmental protests to destabilize their regime. Independent reports indicated the Politburo deliberated whether to ban state media from covering news about the environmental protests, but couldn’t reach a unified position. The government leaders are more clearly united on the need to ferret out and suppress activists and bloggers calling for government accountability. But the mounting clampdown will do little to address the twin economic and political crises engulfing their new regime.