🇻🇳 Ten days that shape five years

Hello friends!

Not a good start on this strict schedule business. I know, I know, we’re supposed to be sticking to a Monday and Thursday schedule but I wanted to get this out before we started getting more news! 

The Vietnamese Communist Party is hashing out the next five years for the country this week at the 13th Congress. Unlike just about every other country on earth, Vietnam is in the extremely enviable position of doing so en masse and largely maskless given the tremendous success in tackling the pandemic. This one from Nikkei Asia has been widely read but if you haven’t cracked in yet, please do so.

Now, Vietnam is a bit out of my ‘yep, got this’ areas of the region so I’m relying heavily here on the brilliant journalists and analysts who cover Vietnam to identify what it is exactly I need to be watching out for. 

How much we’ll get from the days in between, however, is another matter!

All of which is to say, I’ll be back next week with the best analysis and reporting. And don’t forget to sign-up to Mike Tatarski’s Vietnam Weekly here.

A couple days left for a big discount on Dari Mulut ke Mulut annual subscriptions here:

See you Monday,Erin Cook

The Congress takes place in Hanoi from January 25th until February 2nd (and I thought two days at Moonee Ponds Racecourse was pushing it!). It’s super secretive so we shall, as we often do here, turn to the Reuters explainers. 

The wire says policy is on the agenda but the bigger curiosity is the so-called ‘personnel changes’ which includes the 200 member Central Committee, who will be tasked with whittling that down to the 15 or so Politburo and from there down further to the leadership. So who’s in the running for Vietnam’s Next Top Boss? Reuters lays out the options, so click through above. 

While cadres are supposed to retire once they reach 65, that rule has been ignored in the case of two-term Gen Sec Nguyễn Phú Trọng, 76. His health has been declining since 2019 prompting open speculation of his successor. I thought the South China Morning Post had an interesting aside on this — Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (a comparatively ripe 66-years-old) has had a huge PR win with Vietnam’s COVID success and especially its economic success under such abysmal conditions. It’s an exhaustive piece, so recommended reading. 

The Financial Times published further information on the process earlier in the month, noting that typically the candidature list is worked out by that stage.  “Usually they are able to settle on a party chief about a month before the formal congress. This time it’s uncertain,” Alexander Vuving from the US-based Daniel K Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies told the paper.  

The economy will also be high on the list with an ambitious decade-long plan to transform the economy. There must be some relief Trump has gone, Bloomberg reports, with Biden seen as more reasonable in policy. Vietnam had been in the crosshairs for a few of Trump’s Asia economy tirades including labelling the country currency manipulators in the dying days of his administration.  

Human Rights Watch alleges an increase in jailings and arrests of dissidents in the lead up to the 10-day event.  “Vietnam’s Communist Party is preparing for the pageantry of its party congress while sending people to prison for posting their views and opinions on Facebook, as millions worldwide do every day. For all its propaganda about an ‘era of independence, freedom, and happiness,’ the Vietnamese government is really only interested in its citizens’ silence and servility,” says John Sifton, HRW’s Asia advocacy director.