Tô Lâm’s Presidency: Việt Nam’s Strongman Era?

After a long period of speculation, on April 7, General Secretary Tô Lâm officially assumed the state presidency for the next five years while retaining his position as party chief—an unprecedented consolidation of power in Việt Nam’s top leadership, which has historically emphasized collective leadership over the concentration of authority in a single leader. 

With Tô Lâm serving as both head of the party and head of state, many international observers compare him to China’s Xi Jinping.

Tô Lâm’s remarkable consolidation of power over the last two years appears to fit into the global rise of “strongman” rulers in the last decade. Such leaders are typically autocratic figures who pair populist rhetoric with sweeping promises of how they will reform the government to appeal to the masses—while defying institutional norms in their own countries to consolidate power into their own hands. 

From Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping to America’s aspirational autocrat Donald Trump, Tô Lâm seems to be just another example of this global phenomenon.

However, as Harvard political scientist Stephen Walt argued recently in Foreign Policy, with the recent pushback against autocrats such as Viktor Orban in Hungary, strongmen are not completely invisible, especially when “their policy failures have demonstrated the limitations of relying on one person’s judgment.” 

This article explores the many ways in which Tô Lâm’s “strongman” tendencies are being expressed through his ambitious economic development goals and his approach to anti-corruption. Simultaneously, the article also identifies ways in which Tô Lâm’s strongman rule might be challenged, including through his relationship with the private sector and the business community.

The Strongman’s Promises

It is clear that party chiefs have always been politically significant under the one-party system in Việt Nam. However, Tô Lâm fits the “strongman” archetype more than any of his predecessors, not only because of his police background but also due to his unprecedented political position—holding both the party chief and presidential roles—and his promises to systematically reform the government for the greater good.

This change is evident in the way in which, since the beginning of Tô Lâm’s reign as general secretary, he signaled a different approach to governance than his predecessor Nguyễn Phú Trọng, an ideologue who focused on party leadership and survival rather than economic development. 

Tô Lâm’s rise to power was accelerated through Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s “burning furnace” anti-corruption campaign, which empowered then-Public Security Minister Tô Lâm to eliminate competition and force the surviving officials to fall in line. 

As Tô Lâm successfully sidelined rivals and consolidated power, his anti-corruption campaign started to look different. His anti-corruption campaign began to take on a different character. 

Increasingly, the campaign shifted its focus from combating corruption to eliminating what officials called “waste,” prioritizing the efficient use of public resources over holding cadres accountable through criminal prosecution. This might be his way of correcting the bureaucratic inertia from the Nguyễn Phú Trọng era, when officials were too afraid of legal implications to decide on anything. 

Simultaneously, he consistently emphasized the importance of economic development, going so far as to call for double-digit growth as one of the top priorities in the coming five years.

To push for his economic agenda, in his first year as party chief, Tô Lâm carried out a massive government layoff in the name of increasing bureaucratic efficiency. Shortly before Trump announced the U.S. government’s push to trim the civil service through the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, Tô Lâm had his DOGE moment by cutting 20% of Vietnam’s government staff, a move that was likely politically risky for him. The fact that he successfully pushed for the initiative with little public resistance demonstrated his domestic power and influence.

The people with whom To Lam surrounds himself also symbolize his different approach. Former Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, who was once regarded as a disgraced figure due to the rampant corruption during his reign, is again being seen in public with Tô Lâm and other important officials. Most recently, he was even awarded Japan’s prestigious Order of the Rising Sun during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to Vietnam, under the witness of Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng. 

The emergence of former Prime Minister Dũng’s public appearance (alongside the rising career of his son Nguyễn Thanh Nghị, who is now a member of the Politburo) signals Tô Lâm’s departure from his predecessor—from fixating on anti-corruption to focusing instead on economic growth and private sector development.

At the same time, Tô Lâm’s strongman tendency is most evident in how he continues to suppress free speech and the media through his police power base, despite the forward-looking and business-friendly image of his administration. Under his rule, even major state-owned news channels—national television VTV, Voice of Vietnam (VOV), and the Vietnam News Agency—were placed under the direct control of the party, furthering the Communist Party’s already strong influence over the media. Unsurprisingly, this year, Việt Nam remains the lowest-ranked country in Southeast Asia in RSF’s Press Freedom Index.

The Strongman’s Achilles Heel(s)

Tô Lâm’s business-friendly rule and external-facing leadership have mostly excited foreign investors and the private sector, creating strong momentum for him. But this does not mean that his administration is free from structural problems that will likely challenge his economic growth promises.

Firstly, Tô Lâm will have to navigate the burgeoning tension between foreign investors and domestic companies, which are both positioned by the party as crucial development accelerators for Việt Nam. This tension shows up in two ways: either when foreign and domestic companies are direct competitors or when foreign companies are unable to enter the Vietnam market due to conflicts with local partners.

A recent example of the foreign-domestic competition is Morgan Stanley-backed PNE, a German renewable energy company, losing its wind energy bid to Vingroup, which has little to no experience in wind energy development. 

Additionally, there are not many examples of major foreign investors in Vietnam who have been able to successfully enter the market without pursuing a joint venture with a Vietnamese company (with the exception of SpaceX), creating a power imbalance between domestic and foreign companies. This dynamic would likely continue to deter foreign investment from companies that are either not open to creating a joint venture, unable to find a suitable local partner, or whose local partners happen to clash with them.

Secondly, Tô Lâm will have to carefully navigate the U.S.-China technology competition and dynamics in Việt Nam. While it is no secret that Tô Lâm wants to attract more U.S. investment to advance Việt Nam’s technology sector, his ambitions might clash with his security apparatus’sgrowing reliance on Chinese surveillance technology. 

On the sidelines of the Board of Peace meeting in February in Washington, Tô Lâm paid a visit to the White House, during which President Trump vowed to remove Việt Nam from the D1 and D3 lists—which have prevented Việt Nam from accessing U.S. advanced technology. 

At the same time, however, Reuters reported that Việt Nam’s police-owned Mobifone is considering Chinese tech companies for building parts of its 5G network. If true, the decision to further involve China in Việt Nam’s sensitive telecommunications sector will most likely trigger concerns from the U.S. government, threatening Tô Lâm’s own push to access more U.S. technology.

Thirdly, Tô Lâm should be aware that corruption still exists in many forms. Just because his anti-corruption campaign has eliminated his competition, it does not mean that corruption as a broader issue no longer exists in Việt Nam. And it definitely does not mean that the business community is not frustrated. 

Due to the competition-elimination nature of Tô Lâm’s anti-corruption campaign (which resulted in the removal of many high-level leaders who were considered potential rivals to Tô Lâm), the Ministry of Public Security is believed to have been able to gather what political scientist Michael Johnston called “kompromat”—evidence of corruption to threaten political rivals as well as uncooperative officials. 

Because of these developments, government officials are likely more careful, but for the wrong reasons. Instead of refraining from corruption because it is inherently bad, they might get more creative with corruption or simply choose to align themselves with Tô Lâm’s allies. In effect, this situation means that Việt Nam’s corruption problems will likely continue to exist.

According to Johnston, it is also important to note that corruption is not just bribery; it is also nepotism, official theft and fraud, using official resources for under-the-table business, conflict-of-interest problems, and many other things. Việt Nam has mainly focused its anti-corruption efforts on bribery, while other types of corruption continue to exist.

Without a systematic approach to anti-corruption in its various forms, corruption will continue to frustrate not just the country’s citizens but also its many foreign investors. This issue is even more pronounced for U.S. investors, who are bound by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977), which explicitly prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials to obtain or retain business.

Lastly, Tô Lâm should be aware of the limitation of the one-party state, which is unlikely to be improved anytime soon despite the forward-looking tendency of his administration. With the recent appointment of Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng, Tô Lâm has effectively surrounded himself with allies who are determined to carry out his vision. 

The media continues to be tightly controlled, and civil society continues to be non-existent—a legacy from the Nguyễn Phú Trọng-era crackdown, which resulted in limited political or policy disagreements in both public and private forums.

While the unity of governance visions will likely result in these leaders delivering more results in the short term, it is dangerous in the long term to have little-to-no opposition, even within the same political party, as it will probably create an echo chamber among the top leadership. 

This echo will likely foster a feedback loop that reinforces ineffective and even potentially dangerous policy decisions as top leaders are under the impression that they have the full support of their people. This is a lesson that Xi Jinping himself—Tô Lâm’s model—has had to learn.