In a country where any attempt at meaningful political reporting can land you in jail, Vietnamese citizens are reduced to educated guesswork if they want to know what their representatives are up to. So when a key figure in the…
As the de facto leader of a populous, booming nation with a storied history in the heart of Southeast Asia, Nguyen Phu Trong can, nonetheless, count on virtually no name recognition outside Vietnam’s borders. Rodrigo Duterte, Aung San Suu Kyi,…
Vietnam’s top security official has warned that “hostile forces” are out to topple the government, as four activists were sentenced to lengthy jail terms in one week. A doctor and influential blogger, Ho Van Hai, received a four year term…
A court in Hanoi has handed out long prison sentences to once prominent figures in the Communist party in a clear demonstration of the power and ambition of the party’s current leadership. The former politburo member, Dinh La Thang, and…
Relations with Germany look set to deteriorate further as Vietnam prepares to put on trial a former oil industry executive allegedly kidnapped from Berlin in July. Trinh Xuan Thanh could face the death penalty if convicted on charges of embezzlement…
In a country where corruption is a deeply entrenched and pervasive aspect of daily life, Vietnam’s much touted anti-graft campaign looks increasingly narrow and open to questions about its effectiveness. Many of the high profile arrests have focused on the…
Barely two years ago, Vietnam’s Communist party boss, Nguyen Phu Trong, was being written off as an ideological stick-in-the mud on the brink of retirement. In the intervening months, he has reinvented himself as the central force in Vietnamese politics;…
The dismissal of the Communist party chief in the booming coastal city of Danang has rocked Vietnam’s political establishment just weeks before the city plays host to world leaders including Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Nguyen Xuan Anh, who also…
The Vietnamese president, Tran Dai Quang, has called for tougher controls on the internet – an intervention that follows weeks of rumours about his own political future. The former internal security chief, who is well known for his intolerance of…
China and Vietnam may be at loggerheads over territorial disputes, but the autocratic style of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, is inspiring some admiration south of the border. The Vietnamese Communist party leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, once dismissed as an…