Vietnam’s ‘Blazing Furnace’ Anti-Corruption Campaign Continues to Burn

For the past 15 months, Vietnamese politics has undergone a spell of unusual instability, culminating in a series of high-level personnel changes last month. On May 22, in the country’s austerely appointed National Assembly chamber, To Lam, formerly the minister of public security, was sworn in as the country’s new president. Standing with raised hand beneath a large golden bust of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, he stepped into the gap created by the resignation in March of his predecessor, Vo Van Thuong, after just 13 months in the job.

This came two days after the Assembly selected Tran Thanh Man as its chair, replacing Vuong Dinh Hue, who had also recently resigned.

Hue and Thuong both relinquished their posts for unspecified “violations” connected with the country’s ongoing, and increasingly intense, anti-corruption campaign. Since 2016, the “blazing furnace” campaign has swept through  the country’s political and business elite, leading to hundreds of arrests and dozens of prominent prosecutions, including at the top levels of politics. Thuong was himself a replacement for Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who stepped down as president in early 2023, falling on his sword over a series of scandals related to Vietnam’s COVID-19 response.

By mid-May, this political blood-letting had left three of Vietnam’s five most important political posts vacant – only Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh remained aloof from the purge – as well as five of the 18 seats on the Politburo, the CPV’s top decision-making body. Four of these were also filled by the National Assembly during its session late last month.

The elections of Lam and Man and the plugging of the holes in the Politburo would appear to stabilize Vietnamese politics in time for preparations for the CPV’s 14th National Congress, which is scheduled for early 2026. At the same time, there is no certainty that the anti-corruption campaign has reached its culmination – nor that stability has returned to Vietnamese politics.

To begin with, it is hard to know whether Trong’s anti-graft drive has touched bottom. After eight years of intensifying pressure, investigators continue to unearth past and present scandals of mind-boggling magnitude. A notable example was the $12 billion theft involving the Ho Chi Minh City-based property firm Van Thinh Phat, along with dozens of accomplices throughout the banking sector and government agencies. The case was so complex and wide-ranging that the related documents reportedly weighed 6 tons.

This suggests that corruption is not some aberrant phenomenon, but rather inherent to the CPV’s brand of market-inflected one-party rule. Indeed, it might even have been an important component of the country’s recent economic successes. As Yuen Yuen Ang argued in her book “China's Gilded Age,” corruption – essentially, payments to gain access or expedite business dealings – helped turbo-charge China’s own era of rapid economic growth, at least in its early stages.

Given the ubiquity of corruption in Vietnam, the decision about whom to investigate, and whom to let off the hook, has inevitably been guided by political considerations. It has also empowered those in charge of leading the investigations, particularly the Ministry of Public Security and other disciplinary agencies, to the detriment of the technocrats who were ascendant prior to 2016.

Regardless of his initial intentions – and there is every reason to believe that he is a true believer who wishes to restore to the party its erstwhile reputation as a bastion of moral rectitude – Trong’s anti-corruption campaign has become closely entwined with factional and personal rivalries at the top level of Vietnamese politics, in particular, the race to succeed the 80-year-old Trong as the chief of the CPV.

All roads now converge on the next National Congress, when Trong is widely expected to step down, due to his advanced age and mounting health problems. There are now four candidates who are eligible under the CPV’s regulations to succeed Trong as party chief: President To Lam, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, National Assembly Chair Tran Thanh Man, and Luong Cuong, the head of the CPV Secretariat, who was elected last month to replace Truong Thi Mai, after she, too, stepped down due to unspecified “violations.”

As Le Hong Hiep, the coordinator of the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, noted in an article on May 21, all four candidates have strengths and weaknesses. Lam’s control of the Ministry of Public Security and its investigative apparatus has given him a powerful weapon with which to target political rivals and allowed him to survive his own brush with scandal in 2021, which came when he was videotaped being fed a gold-encrusted steak at a luxury London eatery. But Lam also has history working against him, given that a member of the police has never served as general secretary of the CPV.

Similarly, Chinh has been able to survive the relentless anti-corruption campaign, despite being shadowed by his own corruption scandal, which could potentially “hinder his political prospects.” Meanwhile, Man and Cuong, both rising stars in the system, have their own handicaps: in the former case, because of his southern origins; in the latter, because of his lack of high-level government experience.

As Hiep noted, “none of the four potential candidates has a clear and definitive advantage over the others, leaving the question of who will succeed General Secretary Trong up in the air.” He concluded that it is “highly probable that the ultimate decision will not be made until the eleventh hour.”

All this ensures that the more than 18 months between now and the next CPV National Congress will see continued rivalrous jostling throughout the Vietnamese political system, particularly within the inner circles of the party. All the while, the CPV will have to deal with the clotting of the Vietnamese economy as bureaucrats become more cautious, lest they end up in Trong’s anti-corruption net.

Much hinges on who emerges in the top spot after the next National Congress, and whether they are willing or able to maintain the momentum of an anti-corruption drive that is so closely associated with Trong. There is also the possibility, mentioned by Hiep, that the CPV fails to reach a consensus on the next party chief, forcing Trong to remain in power for an additional term in an increasingly decrepit state.

All of this will  determine whether the political instability of the past year ends up being a temporary or permanent feature of Vietnam’s politics – and whether the anti-corruption drive ultimately ends up strengthening the party, or undermining it.