Vietnam is engaged in a spectacular dynamic of opening its economy internationally. But the Vietnamese Communist Party (PCV) intends to maintain total control over the country of 100 million inhabitants, and to protect itself from any risk of subversion from the West. This is what reveals a secret directive from the political office of the PCV, the party’s supreme leadership collective, made public on 1er March by Project88an NGO defending human rights in Vietnam based in the United States.
This document, distributed on December 21, 2023 to the country’s party committees, has since been the subject of numerous references in the official media. But the precise content of Directive 24, as it should be in this Leninist system where the party, in power since the reunification of the North and South in 1976, is the only master on board, has never been revealed before this ” leak “.
Directive 24 thus betrays the anguish “safe” communist authorities facing the “new challenges and difficulties for national security” generated by “the ongoing deep and broad international integration and implementation of international trade agreements”.
“Sabotage activities”
THE document alert on THE “latent risks of dependence on foreign countries, manipulation and exploitation of certain “sensitive subjects””. “The hostile and reactionary forces, continues the preamble, took every possible advantage from [notre] international integration process to increase their activities of sabotage and internal political transformation; (…) they create connections, foment movements, form networks and alliances of so-called “civil society,” “independent unions,” all of which prepare the ground for the formation of domestic political opposition groups. »
This bout of paranoia is certainly not surprising in the country of the single party: the PCV has shown no indulgence towards critical voices, especially since the current secretary general of the party and true number one in the country, Nguyen Phu Trong, consolidated his power with a third term in 2021. But it appeared three months after the American president’s visit to Hanoi: Joe Biden had obtained, in September 2023, the upgrade of the strategic partnership between Vietnam and the United States at the level of that of Vietnam with Russia and China, opening the door to a significant expansion of cooperation between the two countries, particularly in terms of high technologies.
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