From an ordinary magazine employee to a leader in Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong's life can be described as legendary.
At the pinnacle of Vietnam's power, he has always maintained a consistent style of humility, honesty and moderation, and is an out-and-out representative of the moderate faction in Vietnam's political arena.
Because of his outstanding political achievements during his tenure, as well as his gray sideburns and polite manners, resembling a university professor, Nguyen Phu Trong was affectionately called "the kind grandfather" by the Vietnamese people.
So, how did Vietnam's top leader, who is now in his old age, climb from the grassroots to the top of power step by step?
First, the grassroots counterattack
From the writing desk to the Vietnamese flag, Nguyen Phu Trong's story is full of inspiration.
Nguyen Phu Trong was born in 1944 into a peasant family in Dong Hoi commune, Dong Anh district, Hanoi City, Vietnam. At that time, Vietnam was fighting against the French colonizers, and Nguyen Phu Trong had to flee the war with his parents as a child.
It was not until Nguyen Phu Trong was six or seven years old that they were able to return to their hometown after many years of exile.
Despite the family's financial constraints and poor life, Nguyen Phu Trong's parents did not abandon their son's education, they tried to find educational opportunities for their children as much as possible, and also let him study with the learned seniors in the village.
In Vietnam at that time, few children from peasant backgrounds were able to complete their studies, and most of the students were forced to drop out of school due to family circumstances or various inconveniences, but Nguyen Phu Trong persevered. At that time, he was only a teenager, he got up in the dark every day, crossed mountains and rivers, went to schools in ten miles and eight townships to listen to lectures and study, and successfully completed his studies in Nguyen Gia Shao junior high school and high school in Jialin County.
The hard work paid off, and Nguyen Phu Trong's hard work eventually bore fruit.
In 1963, Nguyen Phu Trong was admitted to the Faculty of Philology of Hanoi University with excellent results. After graduating from university, he was assigned to work as a clerk in the communist magazine, a publication of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
While working at the magazine, Nguyen Phu Trong was exposed to communism and joined the Communist Party of Vietnam in December of the same year.
Because of his outstanding performance, Nguyen Phu Trong was also appreciated in the magazine, and he gradually grew from a small editorial staff member to the secretary of the Communist Youth League branch of the Communist Party magazine.
In 1973, with his good performance and high ideological awareness, Nguyen Phu Trong entered the Central Party School of the Communist Party of Vietnam for further study under the arrangement of his superiors. During this period, he devoted himself to the study of political economy and accumulated a wealth of political economy theories, which laid a solid theoretical foundation for him to enter the political arena later.
After graduating from the party school, Nguyen Phu Trong returned to the magazine again. In this editorial office, which is equivalent to the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong can be said to have risen through the ranks, becoming the deputy secretary of the party branch of the magazine in just a few years.
For ordinary people, such an achievement can already be called the best among the people, but for Nguyen Phu Trong, his broad road has just begun.
After a year of Russian language studies at the Party School, in the autumn of 1981 Nguyen Phu Trong went to the Soviet Union to continue his studies, where he received a PhD in 1983. After returning to China, Nguyen Phu Trong devoted another 10 years to the Communist magazine.
In August 1991, Nguyen Phu Trong became the editor-in-chief of the magazine.
It took him nearly 20 years to make a magnificent transition from an ordinary clerk to an editor-in-chief, and next, Nguyen Phu Trong will officially enter the Vietnamese political arena and add more color to his legacy.
In 1996, Nguyen Phu Trong was transferred to Hanoi as deputy secretary of the municipal party committee, and the following year he became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of Vietnam.
His intellectual background, coupled with his abundant theoretical knowledge, enabled him to become the center of state power in Vietnam in just four or five years, after working in the magazine for half his life.
After the turn of the millennium, Nguyen Phu Trong's status in the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Party became more and more elevated, and he was successively elected as the secretary of the municipal party committee of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, and was re-elected as a member of the Politburo of China Tobacco, and in 2006, he was successfully elected chairman of the National Assembly of Vietnam, officially entering the top level of power in Vietnam, known as the "four carriages".
Nguyen Phu Trong's long-standing style and outstanding work ability have accumulated a lot of prestige, and his popular approval rating has continued to rise. It is precisely because of this that in 2018, Nguyen Phu Trong was successfully elected as the president of Vietnam with an absolute margin of 99.79%.
2. Outstanding political achievements and severe punishment for corruption
Nguyen Phu Trong's iron-fisted approach to corruption is also one of the important reasons why he has won the trust of the Vietnamese people.
The gray-haired, kind-faced, bespectacled, mild-mannered old man who looks like a mild-mannered literature professor in a university class will show his tough side when confronted with corruption.
In 2013, Nguyen Phu Trong, then general secretary of the CPV Central Committee and director of the CPV Central Committee's Anti-Corruption and Anti-Negative Steering Committee, launched an anti-corruption campaign codenamed "The Melting Pot" against corruption within the party.
In the midst of this anti-corruption campaign, many Vietnamese officials have been held accountable for corruption.
Dinh Lo Thanh, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam and secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee, was dismissed from his post on suspicion of serious violations of discipline while serving as party secretary of the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Corporation, and was subsequently sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Under the impetus of Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam's high-level anti-corruption campaign has gradually deepened, and the searchlight of anti-corruption has also shone on the deep waters of power.
At the end of 2022, a corruption scandal that shocked the Vietnamese people was exposed, pushing the fight against corruption to a climax again.
During the epidemic, Vietnamese officials organized special flights to pick up Vietnamese citizens who were abroad to return to China, but an investigation by the anti-corruption department found that this original policy for the people has become an opportunity for some Vietnamese government officials to enrich their pockets.
Under the arrangement of these Vietnamese officials, almost everything from passenger planes to quarantine sites to daily food and drink was "operated in the dark". After a trip, you can get nearly 1 billion VND (about 300,000 yuan) in benefits.
As soon as the scandal broke, many high-ranking Vietnamese government officials were involved.
Among them were Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh and Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Thanh, both of whom resigned under pressure. At the beginning of 2023, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, then a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President of Vietnam, also chose to resign voluntarily.
As the leader of Vietnam's anti-corruption struggle, Nguyen Phu Trong, who is regarded as a model of honesty and integrity, has always acted correctly and sat firmly.
As soon as he took office, he disclosed his assets at the request of many outsiders, so that those ill-intentioned eyes returned in disappointment.
Even though he held many important positions in the state, Nguyen Phu Trong only had an old house he inherited from his parents and 300 square meters of hometown land, except for savings equivalent to his income level. This leader at the pinnacle of power, always put financial interests last, and with practical actions, he became an example of a clean and honest official in Vietnam.
3. Outstanding political achievements and friendship with China
For a long time, Nguyen Phu Trong had a high prestige among the Vietnamese people, in addition to the above-mentioned gentle and elegant temperament and honest and honest work style, and partly because of his outstanding political achievements.
In terms of political achievements, Nguyen Phu Trong injected a boost into Vietnam's long-term tepid development.
As early as 2003, when he was the chairman of the Theoretical Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, he pointed out sharply: "The development of a socialist-oriented market economy is a selective absorption of the achievements of human civilization." ”
During his tenure, he actively promoted Vietnam's economic reforms, accelerated market opening, and attracted foreign investment, injecting a steady stream of impetus into Vietnam's economic development.
Under his leadership, Vietnam's manufacturing and service industries have flourished, and its economy has become more modern and diversified.
Naturally, economic development has brought about the improvement of people's livelihood, and Nguyen Phu Trong, who was born from the grassroots, grew up in a poor environment, and naturally has a deep understanding of the lives of ordinary people in Vietnam. He paid special attention to education, medical care and other fields closely related to people's livelihood, which led to the overall development of education and medical care in Vietnam.
Perhaps because of the memories left by the time he spent in his youth as a teenager, Nguyen Phu Trong also attached equal importance to the construction of infrastructure, especially in the field of transportation, which strengthened the connection between urban and rural areas in Vietnam, and further stabilized and promoted economic development.
This series of fruitful reforms has ushered in a period of rapid economic development in Vietnam, and even the new crown epidemic, which has severely damaged the world's economic development, cannot suppress this booming economic momentum.
In addition to his outstanding political achievements, Nguyen Phu Trong also attaches great importance to diplomacy, especially friendly relations with neighboring countries. Since 1992, Nguyen Phu Trong has visited China many times and has made many contributions to promoting exchanges, mutual trust and consensus between China and Vietnam.
Nguyen Phu Trong, who was born in the Department of Literature, naturally has a lot of knowledge of famous works from all over the world. In an interview, he also publicly stated that he likes Chinese traditional culture very much, and he himself loves to watch "Journey to the West".
In 2015, during Nguyen Phu Trong's visit to China, he invited Liu Xiaolingtong, the actor of the Monkey King in the 86th version of "Journey to the West", to participate in the meeting at the Vietnamese Embassy in China.
postscript
At nearly 80 years old, Nguyen Phu Trong is still active in Vietnamese politics, and many observers even predict that his influence will continue long after he leaves office.
From a grassroots employee to the chairman of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong's life is legendary, and he still sticks to his heart in a high position, abiding by his heart, and always plays the role of a servant of the people, which is worthy of our admiration.