Việt Nam’s Ministry of Justice has signed cooperation agreements with China to study its model of a socialist rule-of-law state, focusing specifically on the Central Comprehensive Law-Based Governance Commission.
Latest Developments: The justice ministries of both nations signed several cooperation documents on April 15, during high-level talks held as part of President Tô Lâm’s ongoing state visit to Beijing.
In these agreements, the Ministry of Justice noted that due to their “similar political systems,” Việt Nam actively seeks to learn from China’s model of a “socialist rule-of-law state with Chinese characteristics.”
Details: A primary focus of this learning exchange is the structure and role of China’s Central Comprehensive Law-based Governance Commission.
Established in 2018 as an organ under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, it serves as the top body responsible for designing and directing the nation’s legislative agenda. Its goal is to advance “law-based governance” and build a “socialist rule-of-law state with Chinese characteristics.”
Currently, the Communist Party in Việt Nam lacks a specialized legislative body equivalent to this Chinese commission. The specific contents of the newly signed documents remain unclear, as the Communist Party and state authorities rarely publish the full texts of cooperation agreements, particularly those involving China.
Context: In Việt Nam, the concept of a “socialist rule-of-law state” is often treated as a synthesis between the Soviet-derived model of socialist legality and Western notions of the rule of law, adapted specifically to support legal reforms initiated during the Đổi Mới period.
Why it matters: Domestically, the Vietnamese legal system is frequently viewed as a “bottleneck”—one of the most significant obstacles to the country’s ambitions for sustained high growth and a “new era of national rise.”
To overcome this, the Communist Party is pursuing a series of aggressive policies to “comprehensively improve the legal system.” This ongoing effort includes confirmed plans for a sweeping revision of the 2013 Constitution in the near future.
Hoàng Nam wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on April 14, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine has the copyrights of the English translation.
