Vietnam’s late Trong left a legacy in ‘bamboo diplomacy’

Jorge Heine, Boston University

As a rule, the U.S. secretary of state does not attend the funeral of the general secretary of a Communist party. Yet that is exactly what Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, had planned to do for the last rites of Nguyen Phu Trong, the longtime leader of Vietnam, who died in office on July 19, 2024, aged 80. Ultimately, Blinken couldn’t make it to the funeral, but he did visit Hanoi a day later. There, he paid his respects to the Vietnamese government and to the family of Trong, whose 13-year rule saw the country make enormous strides, including a drastic decline in the nation’s poverty rate – from 14% of the population in 2010 to 4% in 2022.

The passing of leaders provides an opportunity to draw a balance of their performance in office. Trong can be proud of his record – Vietnam has made much economic and social progress and looks set to continue along that route. Moreover, the legacy of Trong’s set of foreign policy principles – known as “bamboo diplomacy” – serves as a model for smaller states as they navigate the complexities of shifting geopolitics and growing tensions between the U.S. and China.

Vietnam was already on an upward trajectory when Trong came to power in 2011 as the most powerful figure in the country’s ruling Communist Party. After decades of stagnation and abject poverty, the opening up of Vietnam’s economy under the “Doi Moi” – or renovation – reforms of 1986 led to what the World Bank refers to as a “development success story.” The reforms helped Vietnam transition from being one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income nation over a 40-year period.

Under Trong’s watch, the country of close to 100 million people has seen average annual growth of 5.8% – one of the highest in Asia and the world. Despite its “sandwich” position in the current great power competition, Vietnam under Trong managed to maintain good relations with Beijing, Moscow, and Washington.

Yet Trong’s achievements weren’t foregrounded in some of the reports of his death. International coverage of the occasion was prone to fall back on the cliches that Western media too often bestows upon developing country leaders. “Hardliner” and “Marxist-Leninist ideologue” were the terms used to describe him in rather one-dimensional reports. To his credit, Blinken described Trong as “a visionary leader” in his tribute. Other U.S. politicians haven’t always looked upon Trong in such a positive light. During Trong’s historic visit to the White House in 2015, the Obama administration was slammed by lawmakers for accommodating the figurehead of “an authoritarian one-party system” responsible for a “deplorable human rights situation” in Vietnam.

Trong was a remarkable man with an enviable record. In contrast to other Vietnamese officials, he was modest and unassuming, lived in ordinary, government-provided housing, drove an old, battered Toyota Crown and was steeped in the mores of Vietnam’s collective leadership traditions.

Trong was especially successful in attracting U.S. companies eager to diminish their dependence on their operations in China, and to rely on “friend-shoring” – that is, investment that goes to countries seen as friendly. Amazingly, he was able to do the same with China. This careful cultivation of ties with both Washington and Beijing was the root of “bamboo diplomacy,” the foreign policy strategy that Trong will be best remembered for. The strategy – which Trong outlined in 2016 in a speech which noted that, like bamboo itself, a successful foreign policy needed “strong roots, stout trunk and flexible branches” – was triggered by the growing tensions between China and the United States.

[Abridged]