The 50-Year Legacy of Việt Nam’s Political Background Checks 

In the years immediately following 1975, family background was often a factor that could determine a person’s future. [1] Having relatives connected to the Republic of Vietnam government could effectively end one’s educational and professional prospects. While this policy may be difficult to accept, it is understandable when viewed in the context of a communist government wary of the remnants of the former regime.

Today, most of the stringent background-screening requirements in education and employment have been relaxed. However, the Vietnamese government still maintains a three-generation background-check system for anyone seeking to join the police, the military, and certain specialized sectors within the state apparatus.

More than half a century after the war, most applicants to these fields were born into a completely different Việt Nam. The continued existence of this screening raises a broader question: The Vietnamese state has had more than 50 years to educate, govern, and shape multiple generations of new citizens, so why does the government still not place complete trust in the generations it has itself educated when selecting people to protect the regime?

The Origins of Post-1975 Background Checks 

To understand why this system persists, it is necessary to examine its origins. 

After 1975, the Vietnamese government faced a familiar challenge for communist states: creating a society that was theirs. Beyond merely changing laws or administrative structures, the government had to determine who was genuinely on their side. A major problem was the need to classify a society that it had not created. 

In southern Việt Nam before 1975, millions of people grew up under a completely different political, educational, and ideological system. From the perspective of the government at the time, background screening served as a form of self-protection. Because a newly victorious regime is inherently concerned about the return of forces associated with the previous order, controlling entry into the state apparatus—especially powerful institutions—was essential for ensuring stability.

These post-1975 background checks were applied far more broadly than they are today. By extending well beyond the police and military, the policy profoundly impacted social life and shaped the educational and career opportunities of countless individuals.

The Verification of a System-Trained Generation

While post-1975 background checks originated from concerns regarding individuals educated under a different political system, the situation has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. 

Today, an 18-year-old applying to join the police or military is not someone emerging from an opposing system. They were born under the current government, educated within its schools, and raised in a social environment engineered entirely by the state.

This changing demographic makes the persistence of background screening particularly noteworthy. For more than half a century, the Vietnamese government has built an educational system, a media environment, an official historical narrative, and political symbols intended to teach generations of citizens why the nation must be protected. [2]

However if decades of shaping new generations still require the state to evaluate political reliability based on a family’s past, it exposes a fundamental limitation. A regime can create generations of citizens who are familiar with its system, but growing up within that environment does not necessarily mean that a person will always be willing to defend it.

The Need for Loyalty During Crisis

It is important to distinguish between two levels of loyalty. While an ordinary citizen is only expected to accept the system, obey the law, and pay taxes, police officers and soldiers occupy a fundamentally different position. These individuals both live within the system and are explicitly tasked with protecting it. According to the government’s own description, they are the forces responsible for protecting the Party and the state. [3]

This distinction explains why political regimes pay special attention to those who wield coercive power. 

In “The Logic of Political Survival,” Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and his co-authors argue that a government’s survival depends heavily on a key group capable of either maintaining or destabilizing the power structure. [4] In authoritarian systems, this group is composed of those holding strategic positions within the ruling apparatus, rather than the general populace. An ordinary citizen’s loss of confidence may cause social discontent, but a protecting force’s loss of confidence can trigger a severe political crisis.

Hence, while the state only requires ordinary citizens to acknowledge its legitimacy, it demands absolute assurance that its protective institutions will stand by it during a crisis. Because mass education alone cannot guarantee this level of reliability, family background becomes an important metric for evaluating political trustworthiness.

Someone born into a family with multiple generations tied to the system is assumed to have fewer political conflicts with it. Conversely, families formerly associated with an opposing political order carry inherent uncertainty. From the regime’s perspective, while a “good background” does not definitively guarantee loyalty, selecting these individuals is viewed as a necessary measure for reducing overarching security risks.

Generational Memory and the Future of Background Check Verification

More than 50 years later, Việt Nam’s challenge has shifted. The state is no longer tasked with managing people who once lived under a different regime; instead, it must cultivate loyalty among those inheriting the current one. These younger demographics belong to generations with no direct memory of the founding of the regime.

Every government born out of revolution eventually faces this dilemma. While the first generation is loyal because it created the regime, and the second generation remains loyal through proximity to those founding memories, the third and fourth generations require a completely different foundation. They must be persuaded by present realities rather than the historical memories of their predecessors.

The persistence of background screening in the police and military transcends mere recruitment policy. It raises questions regarding the relationship between the state and its citizens. 

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Thúc Kháng wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on June 15, 2026. Đàm Vĩnh Hằng translated it into English for The Vietnamese Magazine.