From wartime loudspeakers to digital networks: communist persuasion and pandemic politics in Vietnam

Giang Nguyen-Thu

doi:10.1177/1329878x20953226

Abstract

This commentary discusses the overall propaganda win of the Vietnamese government for its COVID-19 success and reveals the underlying logics of communist legitimacy in the wake of digital and biological virality.

Highlights

On 8 June 2020, Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc allegedly remarked on the country’s victory over COVID-19 by comparing the great achievements of Vietnam today, among which the pandemic success was just an example, with the impoverished years after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975
Mr Phúc’s statement, in its most explicit level, provides a rather sensible pairing between Vietnam’s exemplary success and the United States’ combination of shocking pandemic casualty and massive national protests. While his statement was received with more resistance than approval, even the most hostile critic failed to deny the government’s COVID-19 victory
The fact that the prime minister could not wait to use the COVID-19 to wash away historical trauma caused by the communist regime indicates that the sense of social hope and informational transparency briefly experienced during the pandemic period is unlikely to be linked with any improvement in political reformation

Summary

Introduction

On 8 June 2020, Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc allegedly remarked on the country’s victory over COVID-19 by comparing the great achievements of Vietnam today, among which the pandemic success was just an example, with the impoverished years after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The handling of Mr Phúc’s statement reveals the typical scenario of Vietnamese media censorship in the wake of the digital age (Nguyen-Thu, 2018), where one sees less harsh punishment than constant negotiations, or the dynamics of what Athique (2019) terms ‘digital transactions’ between state-run mass media and the relatively ‘free’ social media.

Results

Conclusion