Vietnam’s Communist Party’s Nguyen Phu Trong presided over his country’s transformation and reshaped its leadership with his “blazing furnace” anti-corruption campaign.
Nguyen Phu Trong, the hard-line general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party who presided over his country’s economic and geopolitical transformation, and reshaped its leadership with his “blazing furnace” anti-corruption campaign, died Friday in Hanoi. He was 80.newspaper, which said Trong had died of “old age” and an unspecified serious illness.Speculation had swirled in January about Trong’s health after he skipped meetings with several foreign leaders.
A conservative ideologue who viewed corruption as a threat to the party’s survival, he began a wide-reaching anti-corruption campaign in 2011 that has accelerated in recent years, investigating thousands of people and prompting the dismissal of several top ministers. The results have been mixed: The campaign created a fairer business environment but has also instilled fear in many officials and paralysed decision-making.Trong led the harshest crackdown on dissent in decades.
Trong oversaw one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies and raised Vietnam’s prestige on the international stage. Under his term, the world’s major superpowers courted the country aggressively. Vietnam’s principle of leadership is a collective one, and unlike China it has long resisted having a supreme figure at the top. Trong’s low-key manner made him a suitable compromise candidate for differing factions in the country’s Communist Party, and at 68, he was not expected to have a long term. He was elected general secretary in 2011.Trong’s first term was notable for a sharp rise in anti-China sentiment after China moved an oil rig into contested waters near Vietnam’s coast in 2014.
“Vietnamese people have never lived in a democratic atmosphere like today,” he responded, but added that “it is also important to see that individual rights must be placed in the context of the common interests of the community.”
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