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Background Briefing: Vietnam: The Rise of the Princelings Carlyle A. Thayer August 2, 2013

[client name deleted] We are preparing a report on apparent nepotism or favoritism within the ranks of the Vietnam Communist Party. We are specifically interested in the case of Nong Quoc Tuan, son of former party Secretary General Nong Duc Manh. Q1. According to your 2011 party congress briefing,1 Tuan was elected to the party's Central Committee in October 2010 after just three months of serving as secretary of a provincial committee. What is the correct spelling of Nong Quoc Tuan's name? Your report appears to have a typographical error. Can you provide any other biographical details such as Tuans affiliations with state-owned enterprises? What was his experience before he became party secretary of Bac Giang province? Is it accurate to say that the Central Committee is a high-ranking one composed of 200 members? ANSWER: Nng Quc Tun is the correct spelling. There appears to have been a technical glitch when the Background Brief was printed and the in Tuans name was left blank. Tuan was elected to the Bac Giang provincial party committee in August 2010. In January 2011 he was elected to the party Central Committee at national level at the eleventh party congress. This is quite common; Tuan retained his provincial post while serving on the national party Central Committee. For example, forth-two per cent of the current national party Central Committee is comprised of provincial party officials (see Power Point slides below). Tuans career includes stints with the Vietnam Youth Union, Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, Central Committee for Ethnic Minorities, and a variety of posts in the Bac Giang party apparatus. There is no record of his affiliation with state-owned enterprises.

Carlyle A. Thayer, Vietnams 11 Party Congress: Policy and Leadership (Consultancy Report, January 24, 2011).

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2 The national party Central Committee (or more formally the Central Executive Committee) is composed of 175 full or voting members and 25 alternate or nonvoting members. It is the main party executive committee between national party congresses held every five years. The Central Committee must meet a minimum of two times a year. It now averages three meeting a year. The Central Committee selects the Politburo (in 2011 originally 14 members and now 16) and the Secretary General. Major Politburo decisions must be approved by the Central Committee. For example, last October the Politburo recommended that a certain comrade (Nguyen Tan Dung) be disciplined; the Central Committee declined to do so. Q2. Did Tuan serve on the Bac Giang provincial committee for just three months? ANSWER: Tuan was elected Secretary of the Bac Giang provincial party committee in August 2010 at an extraordinary meeting of the provincial party committee. There appears to have been some sort of political crisis/upheaval in the province two weeks earlier. Tuan was elected to complete the term in office ending in 2010. He was likely elected to a full term (until 2012) as provincial party secretary at the Bac Giang province congress in October. Tuan was elected to the national party Central Committee in January 2011. Later he was appointed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung as Vice Chairman of the Committee for Ethnic Minorities in June 2012. At that time he was identified as the Bac Giang party secretary. According to the Bac Giang Online newspaper Tuan was replaced by the current provincial party secretary Tran Sy Thanh.

Suggested citation: Carlyle A. Thayer, Vietnam: The Rise of the Princelings, Thayer Consultancy Background Brief, August 2, 2013. All background briefs are posted on Scribd.com (search for Thayer). To remove yourself from the mailing list type UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject heading and hit the Reply key. Thayer Consultancy provides political analysis of current regional security issues and other research support to selected clients. Thayer Consultancy was officially registered as a small business in Australia in 2002.

5 The Princelings. It is clear that family connections played a role in the selection of several new members of the Central Committee: Nong Quoc T 'an (born 1963), is the son of Nong Duc Manh the just-retired secretary general of the party. In October 2010, Tuan was elected secretary of the Bac Giang province committee and three months later was elected a full member of the Central Committee. Tran Sy Thanh, deputy secretary of Dak Lak province party committee, the son of Politburo member Nguyen Sinh Hung, was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee. Two sons of current party leaders were nominated from the floor of congress and elected alternate members of the Central Committee. The most prominent is Nguyen Thanh Nghi, Vice Rector of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture, the son of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Nguyen Xuan An, the party secretary of Lien Chieu district, Da Nang, is the son of retiring Politburo member Nguyen Van Chi. Other new members of the Central Committee hail from politically influential families. Pham Binh Minh, first deputy minister of foreign affairs, is the son of former Foreign Minister and Politburo member Nguyen Co Thach. Nguyen Chi Vinh, deputy minister of national defence, is the son of Vietnam War era-General and Politburo member Nguyen Chi Thanh. Tran Sinh Minh, deputy director general Vietnam Television, is the son of Tran Lam, former General Director of the Voice of Vietnam; and Central Committee member. Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, deputy minister of health, is the grandchild of Ha Huy Tap, former party secretary general (1936-38). Losers. Ho Duc Viet (born 1947), a member of the outgoing Politburo, and Le Doan Hop, minister of Information and Communication, are members of the so-called Nghe An province faction who were unsuccessful in their attempt to get elected to the Central Committee. Viet either failed to gain nomination to the Central Committee, an essential step to retain his Politburo seat, or retired on his own accord after unsuccessfully seeking endorsement as party secretary general. Other members of the Nghe An network, Nguyen Sinh Hung, Tran Van Hang (deputy director general of the party Propaganda and Training Commission) and Nguyen The Trung (standing deputy head of the party Mass Mobilisation Commission) however, were returned to office. Nine members of Cabinet who also served on the Central Committee were not reelected. At least seven of them reportedly received endorsement by the outgoing Central Committee but failed to gain sufficient votes from party delegates to be elected. These include Pham Gia Khiem (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs), Pham Khoi Nguyen (Natural Resources and Environment), Tran Van Tuan (Home Affairs), Tran Van Truyen (State Inspection Committee), Nguyen Quoc Trieu (Health), and Ho Nghia Dung (Transportation). Although Khiem was over the mandatory retirement age of 65 (he was born in 1944), the outgoing Central Committee tried to make his nomination a special case and failed. No member of the new Politburo has demonstrable experience in foreign affairs and Khiem's successor as Foreign Minister is an open question at this stage.
Source: Carlyle A. Thayer, Vietnams 11th Party Congress: Policy and Leadership (Consultancy Report, January 24, 2011), p. 5.