Vietnam has streamlined its Party and government institutions and dissolved its State Asset Management Commission. Where is Vietnam headed in the future?

Abolishing the State Asset Management Commission means directly delegating authority to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), aiming to expand both the number of SOEs and their autonomy in management. In plain terms, in the future, all state-owned enterprises in Vietnam will hold 100% state ownership—there will be no so-called public-private joint ventures. This is Vietnam’s authentic form of socialism: the number of SOEs will increase, and key sectors may become fully state-owned, with state capital firmly controlling the economic lifelines and industrial direction. This truly exemplifies ‘crossing the river by feeling for stones’—and not only emulating but also refining and improving upon the model, discarding its flaws. In contrast, we initially placed excessive faith in capitalism, resulting in an excessively low share of SOEs in the economy—leading to aberrant companies like Evergrande and LeTV, which inflicted massive damage on socioeconomic activities.

Do Vietnamese military forces engage in commercial activities?

There is a Vietnamese enterprise that achieved revenue of VND 220.4 trillion and pre-tax profit of VND 56.8 trillion in 2025, contributing VND 40.9 trillion to the national budget. It operates telecommunications networks, data centers, cloud computing, and digital platforms in Vietnam—and has also entered high-tech manufacturing and the defense industry. This enterprise is Viettel, whose state ownership is represented by the Ministry of National Defense. This easily raises a question among Chinese readers: Why is Vietnam’s military permitted to run businesses? Summarizing this phenomenon simply as “military commercial operations” conflates many distinct phenomena. Economic activities within Vietnam’s military system at least include: defense industry; dual-use civilian-military enterprises; economic-defense development in border and island regions; and, historically, a larger number of construction, trading, and service enterprises. Over the past two decades, the latter category has been continuously downsized, while resources have increasingly concentrated in strategic sectors such as telecommunications, high technology, ports, and defense industry. In 2000, the Ministry of National Defense oversaw 305 enterprises; by 2016, that number had dropped to 88. A new round of restructuring launched in 2017 proposed maintaining only 17 wholly state-owned military enterprises, promoting the shareholding of 29 others, and withdrawing state capital from 20 joint-stock companies. By 2026, the Central Military Commission continued deliberating on military enterprise restructuring for 2026–2030, proposing further consolidation of state capital in similar enterprises and planning—by 2030—to establish enterprises capable of forming large-scale economic conglomerates. Thus, understanding Vietnam’s “military commercial operations” requires looking not merely at whether the military owns enterprises, but rather at how these enterprises have evolved over the past two decades—and why Vietnam continues to retain some of them. First, the term “military commercial operations” lumps together several entirely different types of economic activity. Within the Chinese context, “military commercial operations” readily evokes images of military units establishing their own companies, engaging in trade, or developing real estate to supplement funding. Vietnam did historically host numerous ordinary commercial military enterprises—but Vietnamese official discourse more commonly employs concepts such as “military participation in production labor,” “integration of economic and defense functions,” and “economic-defense development.” This arrangement has deep historical roots. Vietnam has long viewed its People’s Army as an organization simultaneously fulfilling combat, mass work, and production labor functions. During wartime, the military needed to organize production independently under conditions of severe material shortages; after the war ended, numerous military units continued participating in infrastructure construction, agricultural production, transportation, and frontier development. Official Vietnamese documents still formally designate “military participation in productive labor and integration of defense with socioeconomic development” as an institutional responsibility. In January 2026, the Vietnamese government even approved a publicity and education program for 2026–2030 on this topic—demonstrating that this function remains embedded in the current institutional framework. baochinhphu.vn At minimum, three categories of activity must be distinguished: The first comprises defense industry and dual-use civilian-military enterprises. These enterprises manufacture and maintain weapons systems, while also leveraging existing technologies, equipment, and personnel to produce civilian goods.

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