An image of a Central Committee meeting in Hanoi. Image taken from this article.
General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng implemented an anti-corruption campaign in 2016 called “blazing furnace” in shorthand. Since then, the fire has ripped through both politicians and businesses, up to even the Presidency. Nearly 200,000 party members, 36 Central Committee members, and 50 police/military generals have been disciplined since the initiative began. In 2018, Dinh La Thang, the former party chief of Ho Chi Minh City, became the first sitting Politburo member to be criminally charged, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2023, President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc was implicated in a corruption scandal and resigned. He was replaced by Võ Văn Thưởng, who was then also caught in a corruption scandal a year later in March 2024, making him the shortest serving President in Vietnamese history. The Presidency is current headed by Võ Thị Ánh Xuân while they find a new President; she also took that role in 2023.
The ousted leaders tend to also be part of the more West-friendly, technocratic faction inside Vietnam, either reflecting how these people also tend to be more easily corrupted, or how the Communist Party is slowly moving away from a foreign policy which allies itself with the West (as Vietnam has comprehensive strategic partnerships with several Western countries), or some combination. Of course, this shouldn’t be overstated - Vietnam has maintained a close friendship with China for years, and both incumbent leaders are intimately familiar with anti-corruption campaigns and how and why they must be conducted in order to deliver maximum public benefit.
America clearly desires Vietnam to pick their side, because America strongly desires another vassal state in East Asia like the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan to further encircle and isolate China. And so the headlines and commentary of Western state propaganda like Radio Free Asia, the BBC, WaPo, Business Insider, etc reveal their increasing annoyance with Vietnam’s government. They often couch this in the standard “objective” economics language); about how removing leaders who foreign investors were reassured by might mean economic pain for Vietnam ahead. As Bhadrakumar noted in 2023, perhaps the BBC revealed their intentions the best:
Reading Vietnamese politics is always difficult — the Communist Party makes its decisions behind closed doors. But hard-line General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who was given an unprecedented third term at last year’s party congress, appears to be consolidating his authority by ousting senior officials seen as more pro-Western and pro-business. Officially this is all happening in the name of fighting corruption,… but it’s indicative of a power struggle at the top of the party… the likely rise now of more security-focused officials to the top of the party will be bad news.
Even a quick google search right now will show a bunch of articles by clearly nervous Westerners: Why Vietnam’s Escalating Anti-Corruption Campaign Might Backfire because, as we all know, only authoritarian regimes are vulnerable to things like public opinion and discontent, while Western “democracies” are insulated from such petty phenomena. Leaders here can have disapproval ratings of 60-70% and not even the slightest consequence will happen to them - a real sign of democratic freedom and justice over those primitive regimes in the East! Or, take: ‘Blazing Furnace’ Turns Vietnam Into Another Chinese Province; China turning both Russia and Vietnam into their provinces in just two years was a real diplomatic masterclass. Or, back in 2022: Vietnam’s ‘blazing furnace’ crackdown burns $40 bln off stocks. Not the stocks! Anything but the stocks!
If your actions as a leader are pissing off Bloomberg, you are going in the right direction.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Vietnam! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Is it fair to compare Biden vs Trump as the vote between war with Russia vs. war with China? (i.e. each candidate representing a different faction of hawks)
No, Trump doesn’t “represent” anything or anyone except his own stupid egotistical view of the world. The neolibs that might back him over Biden are not significantly concerned about the current war with Russia either and most importantly Biden is just looking for the best opportunity to dump Ukraine.
The difference on NATO policy is Trump says the quiet part out loud, when Trump says he wants the EU to pay up and do more, this is a universal feeling, except they can’t say that openly because NATO is of course a defensive alliance bla bla.
EU neolibs want to say the Ukraine war is about EU’s own sense of determination for defending western values shit, remember way back at the start the dipshit BBC reporter “oh no war in Europe white people dying”.
To expand a little bit, EU neoliberal parties want to emulate the same political process as in the US, where Dems successfully use 99% Hitler as a compromise to get everyone left of Nazis to vote for them. In the EU of course this is the anti-Russian and pro-NATO/western sentiment. One of the differences though is EU also has actual far right and neonazi parties so this is not particularly smart but they’re trying.
In this area they’ll love the opportunity to just comply with all of Trump’s “demands” and criticisms. You’ll see NATO led by Germany and France starting WW3 and the US will just have to help, oh noes this is so bad for the Biden team! [insert wipe tears with $100 bill meme here]
The war with China is a medium term prospect, for now the US wants plausible deniability so the first step is keep up escalating and provoking China. However both sides can’t do this in mere 6 months. It will take another ~2 years before we see how far and desperate the US will become trying to provoke China.
Thank you for your response. It makes sense.
My questions stems from the observations that: On one side: Trump was the first to introduce (economic) hostilities with China via tariffs (which got expanded under Biden) Conservatives who are into trump, and uncritically are into Putin (“traditional values”) Conservatives who are into hawks like Mearsheimer (who’s basically saying war with Ukraine bad, war with China in US interest)
And on the other side: Ukraine happening under Biden (Albeit as you mentioned, looking for the best opportunity to dump Ukraine now). Neolibs while not being particularly interested currently, at least are supportive of Ukraine.
Thus I made the connection: Trump = war with China (or at least doing another stupid first escalatory move similarly to raising the tariffs; Saying/doing the quiet part out loud) and Biden = war with Russia (albeit your response corrected that, I def see them trying to withdraw from there as well)
I wouldn’t put the cold war with China on Trump. I think the period of his presidency coincided with the Chinese government finally getting more independent on the geopolitical scene and also transitioning to high-tech manufacturing competing with the West (Huawei, BYD, Tiktok, etc…). Once the US government realized they are no longer dealing with just an obedient manufacturing hub, they launched the trader war. I think the policy would have been the same no matter if Trump/Clinton/Biden is in charge. Literally yesterday Biden announced even more tariffs on green energy products.
The war in Ukraine is kind of the same. The only reasons Republicans became pro-Russian is because the Democrats were anti-Russian and the parties are obliged to always disagree. If Russia invaded Ukraine under Trump they would just make up a different excuse to support them. “Evil Putin is restoring the Soivent Union. We must stop the commies!!”
Just keep switching back and forth so they’re too disorganized to be much of a threat
Spreading them thin and financially drain the reserves. With dedollarization picking up pace
's plan might work this time around lel
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