[UPDATE] Vietnam’s Leader Dies
End of reformist crusade?
By: David Brown
As Asia Sentinel reported earlier today, July 18, a communique issued on July 18 strongly suggested that Vietnam’s top leader, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, was on his deathbed. It has since been reported that Trọng, who has been Secretary General of the nation’s Communist Party since 2011, has died.
After turning back a challenger on the eve of the party’s 2016 congress in 2016 and notwithstanding a stroke in mid-2019, Trong had until recent months exercised unrivaled power.
Our original story picks up here. This spring, reports circulated that Trong has been working from a suite in the ICU of Hanoi’s Military Hospital 108 and spending his nights there “just in case” immediate medical attention is necessary. He missed meetings with several visiting foreign leaders early this year, and in 2023 cancelled a planned visit to the United States. A photo of Trọng and Vladimir Putin taken on June 20 during Putin’s brief visit shows Trọng slumping in his chair; unsurprisingly, the Sputnik News photo was not published by Vietnamese media…
And now the power struggle begins ... The reformist programme is dead. I expect corruption in Vietnamese political economy will thrive under the Vietnamese Communist Party and its new leader's patronage. Will the new leadership resist the lure of plane-loads of mainland China 'investments' or will the new leadership continue to turn toward the United States?