Vietnam may seem calm, but in fact a huge political storm is brewing......
According to Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao, the Vietnamese government plans to build two high-speed railways connecting the capital Hanoi with China in the north of its territory by 2030.
According to the plan, one of the railways will run from Hanoi to Lang Son province on the border with China's Guangxi province, and the other will connect Hanoi with Lao Cai province on the border with Yunnan, and the completion of these two major railway infrastructure projects will further deepen the economic and trade ties between China and Vietnam.
Looking back at the year before last, the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, identified the country he visited for the first time as China after the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and then looking at the series of international interactions between China and Vietnam over the years, a clear trend is emerging, and Vietnam is accelerating its move closer to China.
In essence, this reflects Nguyen Phu Trong's superb political wisdom, and his eyes are on five or even 10 years later! In the author's opinion, Nguyen Phu Trong's series of moves have the flavor of "entrusting orphans" to China.
Next, let me analyze this topic for you.
Factional rivalry between the North and the South
Many comrades-in-arms know that there is a political "troika" in Vietnam, and the top leaders of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the president, the prime minister, and the chairman of the National Assembly share the supreme power of the country.
The key to the emergence of this political pattern lies in the factional disputes that have existed within Vietnam for several decades! Politically, although Vietnam is the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is divided into two major factions: the south and the north.
The southern faction, also known as the reformists, tended to favor the Soviet Union (Khrushchev) and the West, while the northern faction was close to the Soviet Union (under Stalin) and China, with the former being generally regarded as "revisionist" forces, and the latter being known as the inheritors of orthodox proletarian revolutionary ideas. For a long time, the southern faction was dominant in Vietnam because of its deep social roots.
In 1986, Vietnam decided to follow China's example in carrying out "reform and opening up," but there were huge differences between the northern and southern factions in the choice of route! The northern faction advocated emulating China, while the southern faction advocated learning from the Gorbachev model and carrying out political liberalization. After the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the northern faction won a complete victory, seized the leading power of innovation, and fought a beautiful battle of political turnaround.
Since then, the game between the two factions has entered a stage of relative balance and a tacit political understanding has been reached, with important members of the northern faction taking over the position of the Communist Party of Vietnam to grasp ideology and politics, and cadres of the southern faction taking over the post of prime minister and focusing on economic construction.
Even if there was a tacit political understanding, this could not fundamentally reconcile the contradictions between the two factions, and as Vietnam grew by leaps and bounds economically, the southern factions, which were increasingly closer to the West, began to raise "revisionist" slogans.
In 2010, Nguyen Van An, a senior general of the Southern faction and former chairman of the National Assembly, published a feature article arguing that Vietnam had embarked too early on the road to building socialism and that it should implement a series of reforms to correct systemic mistakes.
This extremely subversive "revisionist" wording has aroused fierce criticism from the northern faction bigwigs Du Mei, Li Ke Phieu and others, and this is also a major incident in which the contradictions between the north and the south have become public.
In 2016, Nguyen Phu Trong was re-elected, while Nguyen Tan Dung, who was prime minister at the time, was out. This was interpreted as a great victory for the northern faction, and since then, Vietnam's domestic politics have become increasingly dominated by the northern faction.
In addition, in the same year, Nguyen Phu Trong launched a massive "anti-corruption campaign" that continues to this day, which led to the exit of many southern cadres, and the political situation in Vietnam finally began to show a stable trend. Nguyen Phu Trong has been outspoken that the anti-corruption campaign aims to avoid the risk of "peaceful evolution" within the party.
Now it seems that Nguyen Phu Trong's vigorous and resolute methods have indeed been fruitful, the domestic "revisionist" forces have been greatly reduced in their living space, and the purity of Vietnam's socialist state has been more guaranteed.
But that doesn't mean the country can rest easy! In fact, a huge crisis could be imminent.
The crisis of "color revolutions".
Vietnam's current good situation can be attributed to Nguyen Phu Trong, whose strong personal leadership and a series of thunderous tactics have established him unchallengeable political authority at home, which has led to the concentration of power in Vietnam's highly decentralized state.
This is not only Nguyen Phu Trong's strength, but also a sign that Vietnam may once again usher in a major crisis.
The simple truth is that the situation now depends on Nguyen Phu Trong's personal authority, and the 79-year-old leader, who is not in good health, will almost certainly step down from the top position at the 2026 party congress. The vacuum of "authority" will inevitably re-expand the "revisionist" ideas advocated by the South.
What is even more crucial is that a poll recently released by a Singaporean think tank shows that 79 percent of Vietnamese people choose the United States if it is necessary to choose sides between China and the United States! This is a very dangerous signal, indicating that if the southern faction carries out a "color revolution" with a popular public opinion basis, a foreseeable crisis is imminent.
From Nguyen Phu Trong's standpoint, in addition to choosing a reliable successor, in order to prevent Vietnam from "changing the sky", he can only "ask for orphans" from China, the world's largest socialist country!
"Orphan" China
The reform of Vietnam led by the northern faction represented by Nguyen Phu Trong over the years is actually a comprehensive imitation of China's "reform and opening up", so China is the source of innovation and inspiration for the northern faction, and China's prosperity and strength also provide the most powerful political endorsement for the northern faction.
On the verge of retiring, Nguyen Phu Trong must do everything in his power to lead the entire country to a complete political and economic tilt towards China, so as to ensure that the "revisionist" forces do not make waves after his retirement.
Nguyen Phu Trong also understands a profound truth: At a critical moment, China will not sit idly by and watch Vietnam "change the sky"! Maintaining the purity of Vietnam's socialist country is also of great importance to China......
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