Vietnam Tests the Limits of Ideological Persuasion

The leadership of To Lam, Vietnam’s supreme leader, is usually associated with double-digit growth targets, a pivot towards the private sector and a sweeping bureaucratic overhaul. Less noticed is the central role of ideological work in the new governing agenda. The Communist Party of Vietnam’s Resolution No. 25 sets out a strategy to strengthen the Party’s ideological influence and build public confidence in its leadership. The document, which was issued on 22 August, puts an emphasis on proactive persuasion. It acknowledges that controlling information alone cannot secure public trust. The Party wants to shape how citizens interpret events before competing explanations take hold. The success of such an initiative, however, will depend on whether the institutions enforcing ideological boundaries can provide the candour that credible persuasion requires. This would include giving messengers the freedom to exercise judgment and providing substantive responses to honest feedback.

While the key objective of maintaining ideological hegemony remains unchanged, Resolution No. 25 explicitly shifts the emphasis from managing information to guiding public understanding, strengthening trust and building consensus. Its significance lies in making persuasion more systematic, anticipatory and measurable. Censorship remains available, including targets for blocking prohibited content. But the aim is to strengthen the Party’s ideological predominance through methods better suited to a more complex information environment.

This reflects a problem of authority as much as access. Young Vietnamese encounter political discourse through social media and entertainment as much as through official instruction, and they continually assess what they hear against how fairly the state treats people around them. Entrepreneurs, content creators and overseas Vietnamese command attention through achievements and networks beyond the Party’s apparatus. Vietnam’s economic opening has widened the field of competing voices. Increasingly, the Party has to compete for belief even when it can constrain what people say in public.

The proposed strategy is correspondingly broad. The Party’s online ideological messaging will be coordinated with its work in neighbourhoods and communities. Domestic communication will be aligned with overseas outreach, including among the Vietnamese diaspora. By 2030, the party plans to come up with 15,000–20,000 trusted or “positively influential people”. It would also provide specialised training for 4,000–6,000 core propaganda cadres. The ambition is to organise a distributed network capable of reaching people through the relationships and channels they already trust. Three conditions would have to hold for it to work.

The first requirement concerns credible messengers. Influencers attract audiences partly because they appear distinctive and relatable. At national summits for key opinion leaders (KOLs) backed by the Ministry of Public Security, authorities promoted a Digital Trust Alliance and programmes to train and assess influencers. Such official involvement can compromise their appeal if audiences perceive their messages to be scripted by the authorities. Training and assessment can improve communication skills, but political reliability does not automatically confer persuasive authority. The strategy therefore needs communicators with room to experiment, even when such experimentation produces interpretations officials find uncomfortable.

…the aim is to strengthen the Party’s ideological predominance through methods better suited to a more complex information environment.

The arrest of Nguyen Thanh Nam, co-founder of Vietnam’s technology group FPT, illustrates how precarious the task is. His book Chuyện với Thanh (Conversations with Thanh) offered a fresh account of Ho Chi Minh’s life. Initially, it attracted favourable coverage from mainstream media. Subsequently, however, it was recalled. The culture ministry publicly cited historical inaccuracies and language it deemed inappropriate about Ho Chi Minh and other party leaders. In July, authorities announced anti-state propaganda charges against Nam and four others related to the book and associated material. They also reported sanctions against 23 media outlets for praising it. Communicators observing this reversal may conclude that repeating approved language is safer than finding engaging ways to discuss official history. This runs counter to the initiative the new strategy needs.

The second requirement is honest feedback. Publicity for September’s second national summit for KOLs reported 25 million views and 1.2 million interactions. Such visibility helps explain the state’s interest in recruiting influencers to relay official information to wider audiences. But audience reach alone says little about whether people find the messages conveyed through these networks convincing. People can understand a policy and still question its justification. If officials reward communicators chiefly for visibility, the apparatus risks conflating exposure with agreement. There could be performance improvements on paper without the strengthening of trust.

Resolution No. 25 offers a potentially useful corrective: surveys and independent assessments of how far official information reaches citizens and how well they understand and recall it, together with mechanisms for public feedback. Yet understanding and recall do not necessarily constitute consent. Evaluators need to distinguish between people misunderstanding a policy and disagreeing with it. They must also be able to report criticism that officials would rather not hear.

The third requirement pertains to the need for substantive responses to honest feedback. An illustrative case is the  “Tree 55” campaign in August. In that case, young Vietnamese demanded accountability over a fatal collision involving former lawmaker Nguyen Sy Cuong which led to the death of an 18-year-old. A televised explanation of his exemption from criminal liability came with warnings that hostile actors could exploit the case to influence young people. This constituted a dual attempt at outreach and casting aspersions on such actors. Whatever the legal merits of the decision, treating persistent doubts as primarily a security problem discourages the very engagement that would reveal why an explanation has failed.

Policy Implications

Better coordination and more capable communicators could make official explanations clearer. To facilitate this, Resolution No. 25 pledges to protect cadres who “dare to speak frankly”. But the sterner test is whether feedback changes institutional behaviour.

In February 2026, for example, implementation of Decree No. 46 on food safety led to shipments being backed up at border crossings, leading to widespread complaints. The prime minister directed ministries and local authorities to resolve the issue, while tasking the media to explain the rules and reporting difficulties. Nine days after signing, the government temporarily suspended the decree.

The episode illustrates a capacity for correction in economic regulation. The harder question is whether such responsiveness can extend to politically sensitive concerns. If criticism and unwelcome feedback are treated as threats, better communication may produce only more polished versions of familiar propaganda. The presence of more messengers can explain government decisions, but the institutions making them must still give citizens reasons to believe.

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