Hunter Marston. Contemporary Southeast Asia. Volume 34, Issue 2, August 2012.
When the Vietnamese government approved plans in April 2006 to begin mining huge bauxite reserves in the Central Highlands, it unleashed a series of high level debates that showcased a range of voices, lobbying interests, and outright opposition, that had hitherto been stifled. Between 2007 and 2010, civil society activists, bloggers, environmentalists, lawyers, and senior Communist Party officials, mobilized and coordinated opposition with an efficiency and strength that surprised both Vietnamese policy-makers and international scholars of Vietnamese society. Moreover, the extent of the news coverage, governmental reviews and public petitions criticizing the bauxite mines, revealed a vibrant civil society in Vietnam. The controversy also sparked national debate touching on far broader issues of nationalism, animosity towards China, as well as the role of the state in economic and evironmental development.
This paper examines the status of contemporary civil society in Vietnam from a process-oriented perspective. The traditional Western intellectual understanding of non-political civil society is not an appropriate framework with which to study Vietnamese civil society, which is almost invariably situated in a dense web of connections to the government. This paper, then, analyses Vietnam’s civil society in light of its actions and processes rather than by its political and structural links to the state in Vietnam.
I argue that the predominantly urban and state-centric approach of current models for analysing civil society falls short of resolving the complex dynamics behind such debates as that concerning Vietnam’s bauxite mines, which showcases a convergence of elite-level dialogue and grassroots opposition. Instead, we should look to an expanding and contracting space for civil society-like actors to lay claims that challenge policy from the top. The combined interaction of grassroots citizens and reform-minded political elites on certain policy issues will negotiate the future contours of civil society in Vietnam.
The analysis takes as a case study the current project of the large-scale bauxite mines in the Central Highlands. The Chinese-Vietnamese joint venture between two state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is seeking to take advantage of Vietnam’s immense bauxite reserves (the third largest in the world) in order to process aluminum. The project came under unprecendented criticism from mainstream elite in the Communist Party, environmental scientists, prominent lawyers and citizen bloggers. After a series of contentious policy debates and high-level reviews of the project’s sustainability, environmental as well as social impact, by various government ministries, the Vietnamese state-owned corporation Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group (VINACOMIN) went ahead with the mining project, and in early 2012 it began extracting and processing aluminum from its raw source, bauxite.
While collective citizen action has had a measurable impact on the agenda within Vietnam’s highest legislative body, the National Assembly, the failure to stop the bauxite mines reveals Vietnam’s continuing state-centred political control. Thus, one observes, on the one hand, an increasingly organized and prominent civil society able to lobby the state’s decision-makers and, on the other hand, an enduring elitist, state-centred approach to politics and policy formulation in Vietnam today. The arena of friction and cooperation between Vietnamese citizens and their government exposes coalescing civil society networks and actors. It is the nature of such civil society in Vietnam to which I now turn.
What is Civil Society?
The term civil society has appeared in a variety of contexts throughout the history of liberal democracies and in developing countries. Some argue that the existence of a civil society is the defining benchmark of democracy. The terms democracy and civil society are often closely linked. The case is not so in a non-democratic country like Vietnam. The link between democracy and civil society does not always necessarily hold true.
While standard, Western theories hold that civil society refers to all independent civil organizations outside of the state government’s jurisdiction, this definition does not apply to civil society in Vietnam. The growth of civil society in Vietnam has been extremely gradual, contested and inchoate. Civil society is a highly sensitive topic among the nation’s political leadership and is not yet a widespread concept at the grassroots level. However, growing civic activism and social awareness of a range of issues, from the environment to public health, have motivated a variety of actors in the public sphere.
The dominant theory on civil society in Vietnam tends to bifurcate the concept. Some theorists, assuming that authoritarian states retain complete control over inactive and passive populations, assert that there is no civil society in such countries. On the other hand, given the dearth of autonomous civil society organizations in this context, other scholars expand civil society’s inclusiveness to cover state actors and semi-autonomous organizations. State leaders at the political centre have certain advantages and leeway due to their positions of authority. At the same time, however, their highly visible positions mean they are especially vulnerable to inter-party or high level power struggles.
Grassroots activists lack comprehensive access to power, but their ability to avoid state scrutiny allows them considerable freedoms and networking capabilities. When the two groups forge links, state elites are able to grant grassroots activists the political coverage which they would otherwise lack, and citizens are able to connect state elites with the networks and local resources at their disposal, thereby forming and strengthening networks of civil society actors on multiple levels.
So how are we to define civil society? Civil society has generally been understood from two perspectives: structuralist and ideational. The structuralist perspective holds that civil society comprises certain associations in the public sphere that remain autonomous from the state, claim no political affiliations or objectives (that is, they are not political parties and do not seek positions of political power) and register in the non-profit sector. In other words, they are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) with no formal links to the state or private business practices. Their autonomy from the state and accountability to society puts them in a unique position to lobby the government for reforms and advocate policy measures.
The ideational perspective defines civil society as associations that promote public welfare, advocate such broad concepts as good governance and government accountability, and/or represent the rights of marginalized groups of people (such as labour unions, homeless or trafficked populations, or people living with HIV/AIDS). In theory, these associations are driven by a conviction for the public good.
As noted below, these definitions break down in the Vietnamese context. Most NGOs in Vietnam are not truly independent from the state (in access to resources, legal coverage, or maneuverability outside of the state’s monitor), and many Vietnamese NGOs explicitly avoid challenging state policy and would certainly not vocalize objections to state behaviour. Rather, Vietnamese NGOs often work closely with their counterparts in the government to reach consensus on shared interests. Therefore, this paper adopts a process-oriented approach. That is, it defines civil society actors in light of their behaviour and actions, rather than by their structural links to or independence from the government.
Vietnam’s Marxist-Leninist legacy casts a long shadow over the shape of civil society in Vietnam today. The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) still dominates politics and society, viewing itself as the sole, legitimate and authoritative voice of the Vietnamese people. As Vietnam struggles to define civil society with such legal actions as Decree 79, the so-called “Grassroots Democracy Degree” of 2003, which permits some local participation in governance projects, and the “Law on Associations” that came to a head in the National Assembly in 2006, state leaders and civic actors push the boundaries of contentious arenas, such as the legal status of NGOs and control over economic development, formerly limited to strict CPV control.
The Vietnamese Marxist model gives citizens the freedom to form associations but not to question the political authority of the Party. For this reason, mass organizations affiliated with the party have for some time been the most typical form of association in Vietnam, leaving little to no room for independent civil society organizations. The traditional slogan, “The Party leads, the people rule, the government manages”, captures the interconnectedness of what Joseph Hannah calls the “3-bubble model” of Marxist-Leninist thinking on civil society. However, Marxist theory of civil society is just as rigid and problematic as Western European formulae, as Hannah notes, and does not aptly apply to the Vietnamese context today.
The CPV is not the monolithic organization of standard Marxist theory. Benedict Kerkvliet, one of the more astute critics of state-society relations in Vietnam, sees the situation as “a kind of weather balloon for civil society”, in which a younger generation of reformers in the CPV (and non-Party members) negotiates the freedoms of an expanding civil society with an older generation of leadership. For this reason, Thaveeporn Vasavakul has called the contemporary period “Post-Socialist Vietnam”, and argues that doi moi reforms in the late 1980s resulted in significant recognition of organizations (to chuc) outside of central Party control. Along with political decentralization and economic liberalization has come the rise of a more politically active citizenry. Citizens and politicians alike attach themselves to different “sites of power”, forming factions around economic and political interests, such as the bauxite project.
It is difficult to tease out the major stakeholders in the bauxite controversy because of the lack of transparency of the deals being made between Chinese corporations, VINACOMIN, and the two respective governments. Opponents of this project include NGOs, independent activists such as scientists, lawyers and bloggers, as well as state elites from the National Assembly and various ministries. The debate is thus not confined to a narrow, Western concept of civil society as autonomous from the state in a democratic society. Moreover, actors outside of the government are not the only ones pushing the momentum for policy changes. A combination of state and non-state actors have called attention to the bauxite mining in the Central Highlands. For this reason, Hannah’s spectrum of a “civil society process” informs this analysis.
Three Models for Civil Society in Vietnam
To conceptualize this new coalition capable of challenging official state policy and to rethink our understanding of Vietnam’s state-society relationship, several scholars have come up with new theoretical models to explain civil society “in Vietnamese colours”.
Jorg Wischermann, a leading scholar of civil society in Vietnam, shifted scholarship’s focus away from a strict structuralist understanding of civil society, as defined by associations and their links. Instead, he encouraged a process-based approach towards civil society action in Vietnam. While his model is a strong one, his case studies soften his definition to the point of abstraction. He insists that most NGOs are driven by empathy and a motivation for “social responsibility” and strive for compromise and consensus. To impose new emotive criteria on civil society simply shifts our conceptual framework to another contested ground. Indeed, such qualitative stipulations may detract from our notion of civil society more than they help to clarify it. Worse, as Andrew Wells-Dang alleges, such “subjective evaluations” may be misleading. For this reason, others borrow Wischermann’s “continuum” model without adhering to all of his findings.
Hannah’s civil society model is the most comprehensive and, to me, the most accurate. He urges scholars to move away from the Western conceptual reliance on autonomy from the state as the paramount criteria for defining civil society and seeks to look for “civil society activities and functions—civil society process—wherever they can be found in a society, even if that means looking to state or quasi-state organizations”. In fact, he argues, “organizations that are less autonomous can, especially in authoritarian regimes, influence state behavior to a great degree”. As a result, Hannah builds on Wischermann’s “continuum”, on which he places a range of functions, from “public resistance to [the] regime” on the far left to actually abetting state policy implementation, on the far right. In between are various civil society activities such as opposition press, lobbying for policy change, advocacy and anti-corruption groups. Despite the merits of Hannah’s theoretical model, his case study focuses almost exclusively on urban-based NGOs, thereby failing to capture local constituencies in large debates outside the major cities of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hue. Furthermore, Hannah’s emphasis on the “authoritarian” nature of Vietnam’s regime obscures state-society relations and thereby risks framing civil society in light of oppositional politics, on the one hand, and “crony”, corrupt extensions of the state, on the other hand.
At the other end of the spectrum in some ways, Carlyle Thayer’s concept of “political civil society” places emphasis on the opposition coalition Bloc 8406 as the best hope for a civil society capable of challenging Vietnam’s dominant state. Bloc 8406, named for its founding on 8 April 2006, began as a coalition of little more than a hundred advocates for democracy in Vietnam who publish pamphlets to lobby the state and criticize public policy and has grown into a sprawling network of thousands of dissidents.
Though he relies on Hannah’s theoretical model, Thayer neglects a careful study of NGOs because their lack of independence from state bodies discredits them in his view. He perceives the overarching aim of civil society to be highly politicized: “In sum, civil society in its political sense refers to the struggle for democracy against the authoritarian Vietnamese state.” He therefore expects to see civil society present more vocal challenges to the Communist Party in the future. Thayer’s diagnosis seems inaccurate because overt critics of the regime such as Bloc 8406 and the Viet Tan have so far met with swift and total suppression. Significant political instability of the kind that many dissidents would hope for is highly unlikely for some time to come. Since the 1990s, NGOs and citizen associations pushing for reforms by cooperating with the regime have generally been far more successful and freer to pursue their social programmes unimpeded. Benedict Kervliet has convincingly argued that groups outside the state that use non-confrontational dialogue, based on “everyday politics” with “little or no organization” have been more successful in changing policy over time in Vietnam.
While each theoretical lens contributed to my thinking about the bauxite case and its implications for civil society’s expansion in Vietnam, they do not always match the diverse range of actors involved in the bauxite controversy. Nor do those scholars’ predictions explain the ability of ad hoc grassroots networks to bring such high-level attention to problems in peripheral areas like the highlands provinces where the bauxite mines are located. I offer three reasons why this is the case. First, Jorg Wischermann’s process-based focus on “civil society-like actions” highlights important trends in select, public welfare initiatives in urban centres, but the scope of his project is not broad enough to consider multiple sites of contention such as the bauxite controversy, which hinges on issues as diffuse as national security, environmental protection and local governance. If urban NGOs had seized upon the bauxite controversy and taken up an organized role in negotiating its outcome with the central government, Wischermann’s lens may have held true. However, the bauxite mines exposed wider, loose-knit coalitions revolving around contentious issues of nationalism, environmentalism and government accountability.
Second, Thayer tends to focus his attention overwhelmingly on the prospects for a unified front under the opposition Bloc 8406, while he dismisses civil society actors for “direct support of existing government programmes or … larger state-approved policy goals”, and does not regard them as capable of challenging the state like the dissident network. However, overt political agitation has only invited crackdown by Vietnam’s security forces, thereby undermining the front’s ability to organize effectively. His analysis acknowledges that the “party-state” has responded to challenges by elites or party members but does not pursue the implications of this debate as a sphere of civil society activity. Were networks such as the anti-bauxite coalition to adopt more overt political opposition, perhaps Thayer’s analysis would be more poignant, for he conflates Vietnamese civil society and organized political opposition. However, he tends to focus on marginal, radicalized dissidents such as the ultimately unsuccessful Viet Tan network, rather than more central, non-confrontational actors such as those in the bauxite case study, which have been able to shape the policy agenda in the National Assembly.
Finally, while Joseph Hannah’s spectrum of civil society enlarges on Wischermann’s continuum by taking note of inter-elite policy debates with an emphasis on the “civil society process”, and offers the most apt model to capture the elite-level debate surrounding the bauxite mines, his case studies are devoted to urban NGOs. Further study is needed to understand what is going on behind the scenes of debates that lie outside of the purview of city centres and NGOs. Nonetheless, Hannah’s conceptual framework is the lens that best matches the case of the bauxite debate. The range of voices as well as the roles of prominent supporters and opponents of the mines fall into various positions on his civil society spectrum.
The Bauxite Mines
Bauxite is the raw material for processing aluminum. According to the US Geological Survey, Vietnam has the world’s third largest reserves of natural bauxite (2.1 billion tons), though Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung puts the total higher (at 11 billion tons), which would make Vietnam’s the largest deposit of bauxite globally. Thayer estimates Vietnam’s bauxite reserves to lie between 5.4 and 8.3 billion tons.
Many Vietnamese are concerned about the toxic “red sludge” byproduct, which contains high levels of metal oxide and sodium hydroxide. The sludge could cause great damage to water supplies and the surrounding agricultural industry (primarily coffee), as well as to the health and safety of thousands of residents in the area. Many environmentalists, national ministers and religious leaders, seized on this issue, lobbying the government to halt development of the mines. The retired General Vo Nguyen Giap brought international attention to the issue by writing a controversial series of letters to the Prime Minister, protesting the government’s plans to go through with the project and warning of China’s invasive economic ties to Vietnam’s core domestic interests. VINACOMIN, along with its Chinese counterpart China Aluminum Company (CHALCO), have broken ground in Lam Dong province and now hope to begin exporting aluminum by the end of 2012. CHALCO has brought in hundreds of Chinese labourers to help with the construction of its production facilities. Additionally, the US corporation ALCOA has undertaken feasibility studies to tap into Vietnam’s huge bauxite reserves.
The controversy surrounding the CPV’s bauxite development plans is ongoing and hardly transparent, but the general timeline is as follows. In December 2001, the General Secretary of the CPV, Nong Duc Manh, signed a joint statement with China to process bauxite in the Central Highlands. It seems then Prime Minister Phan Van Khai was opposed to the venture along with other modernizers resisting increased dependence on China, with whom cooperation had been a core economic policy since do’i moi reforms and the end of Soviet aid in the late 1980s. This camp remains wary of Chinese direct investment in the interior of Vietnam. Thayer has convincingly argued that the group of Vietnamese politicians most in favour of closer relations with China is also comprised of those most strongly condemning domestic agitation for democratization. In his view, conservatives in the CPV favour Chinese style development and increased investment. The anti-bauxite petitioners who vehemently oppose Chinese incursion into Vietnam’s Central Highlands threaten the economic ties between Chinese and CPV leaders, thereby prompting crackdowns on civil society actors.
When Prime Minister Dung replaced Khai as Prime Minister in 2006, consensus began to consolidate in favour of the mining plans. At the Tenth National Congress of the CPV in April 2006, the Party approved the processing of bauxite and limited the export of unrefined resources. According to Resolution No. 66, passed that year, development projects with a price tag over twenty trillion Vietnam dong (at that time roughly $1.1 billion) had to be brought before the National Assembly for review. The bauxite projects would generate much more than this sum.
In November 2006, state-owned corporation VINACOMIN agreed to a contract with CHALCO, and the two companies signed a deal at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Hanoi that month. CHALCO pledged $1.6 billion in initial investments to develop two aluminum processing factories. The first was to be built in Nhan Co, Dak Nong province, and the other in Tan Rai, Lam Dong province. Vietnam has called for $15 billion in international investment by the year 2025, and VINACOMIN hopes to extract between 4.8 and 6.6 million tons of aluminum by 2015.
In November 2007, Prime Minster Dung decreed Resolution No. 167, setting the stage for zoning requirements, exploration and ground breaking in the two provinces. Despite high-profile negotiations, the bauxite development plans seem to have been under tight wraps, and the media failed to pick up on it. Alexander Vuving explains: “Although critics of the bauxite project had appeared in the pro-reform news media as early as 2007 when the Prime Minister approved it, the project only became a hot issue when it started to be implemented in 2008.” In June 2008, CPV General Secretary Manh made a visit to Beijing, in which he repeated Vietnam’s pledge to cooperate with China on extracting bauxite. The CPV has been leading the initiative on the bauxite project, and Party conservatives’ policies lie much closer to China’s than some ministers of the National Assembly wish. It is rumoured that CPV members at the eighth plenum of the Central Committee in October pressured Prime Minister Dung to speed up the opening of bauxite mining, criticizing his past economic policies. When he visited Beijing later that same month, China reportedly granted generous sums of economic assistance, and hundreds of Chinese workers were dispatched to the Central Highlands to begin construction work. This might have been an attempt to shore up support for Dung’s plans for Vietnam’s economic growth. Thus, it is important to note that “Vietnam’s top leadership is now tied to the success of the bauxite mines.” For this reason, Carlyle Thayer predicts that dissent will be “swept under the carpet” as the project develops.
In 2008 environmentalists began to speak out more publicly, warning of the dangers implicit in carrying out these projects without more thorough environmental impact surveys. However, their voices went largely ignored. It was not until January 2009 when revered Vietnam War hero and party member General Vo Nguyen Giap wrote a letter criticizing the bauxite plans that the debate went mainstream. In his letter Giap revealed that he had overseen an impact survey of bauxite exploitation in the 1980s and that the environmental safety results had led Soviet investors to advise against the development. Five days after he sent his letter, on January 10, a leaked copy led to a public outcry when it appeared online. Thus, at the beginning of 2009, the debate was opened to public scrutiny. Vietnam’s online community and countless bloggers have long been active in promoting government accountability and political reform, and this online buzz often merges with citizen activism offline: as Vuving posits, “Dense online communications both empower and ‘spill over’ into offline activities.”
Giap’s letter also noted that in addition to severe environmental damage caused by the bauxite mines, the large numbers of Chinese working in the Central Highlands would give China an economic and strategic foothold in Vietnam. This national security aspect of the mines resulted in a nationalist response in defence of Giap. In a press statement in February, Dung announced a conference to examine the environmental impact of the mines as well as a special investigation by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Dung put Deputy PM Hoang Trung Hai in charge of the conference—the first national seminar of its kind in Vietnam. The conference took place on 9 April 2009, and gave both critics and pro-development voices a chance to express their opinions. In response to the volley of criticism at the conference, Hai proclaimed that Vietnam would not exploit the bauxite resources and would consider the environmental costs before undertaking construction. Civil society groups opposed to bauxite mining had forced Hanoi to listen to and consider their case in high-level debates, demonstrating that non-confrontational advocacy couched in terms of national interest and conducted in league with Party elites can successfully engage with Vietnam’s central decision-making body.
On the same day as the conference, General Giap sent a second letter to Prime Minister Dung. When the CPV convened later in April, the pro-bauxite bloc attempted a more conciliatory and transparent policy. Although Dung and VINACOMIN announced that the bauxite development project would proceed, they promised that a more careful study of its socio-political impact would be conducted. Four days later, on 30 April, a petition protesting the bauxite mines signed by 135 prominent intellectuals made its way to the National Assembly. They also created a website to call public attention to the issue. Thich Quang Do, a vocal critic of the CPV and leader of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), also added his voice to the list of anti-bauxite petitioners. Two Redemptionist priests, already entangled in Hanoi land disputes that same year, threw their weight behind the cause, demanding that the results of the environmental impact surveys be made public. Vietnamese civil society networks were now using social media, petitioning and public outreach methods in a more systematic manner.
In May 2009 the National Assembly convened to discuss, among other issues, the bauxite mine. General Giap, now joined by retired General Nguyen Trong Vinh, sternly advised the Politburo to abandon the bauxite plans. At the end of May, Cardinal Pham Mirth Man, the Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City, criticized the exploitation of bauxite and called on Catholics to unite against the mines and to heed their Christian duty to protect the environment. As Thayer contends, “By May 2009, the anti-bauxite network of 2008 had grown into a national coalition including environmentalists, local residents, scientists, economists, retired military officers and veterans, retired state officials, social scientists, other academics and intellectuals, elements of the media, and National Assembly deputies. These critics were all mainstream elite.” In essence, elite members of civil society with ties to the Vietnamese state had formed an extensive network to oppose the bauxite mines.
While the National Assembly listened to critics, mining advocates hardly acknowledged the mounting evidence against the safety of bauxite extraction. Deputies in the National Assembly were divided into two camps. Notably, some critics pointed to Resolution No. 66, which stipulated that projects whose fiscal sums totalled over twenty trillion Vietnam dong must be submitted to the National Assembly. Proponents argued that the project had been divided among several different key players, and therefore did not exceed twenty trillion. These stakeholders included the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MoNRE), the Ministry of Industry and Trade and state-owned VINACOMIN.
In June 2009, prominent lawyer Cu Huy Ha Vu filed a lawsuit against Prime Minister Dung for violating Resolution 66 and attempting to speed the implementation of bauxite production through the National Assembly without adequate consultation. The lawsuit was filed with the People’s Court of Hanoi. When the People’s Court rejected it, Vu appealed the case to the People’s Supreme Court. This court rejected it too. One year later, Vu filed a second lawsuit against Prime Minister Dung for banning public petitions with Resolution No. 136, passed in 2006. He was arrested two weeks later and charged under Article 88 of the Penal Code, which pertains to propaganda against the state, and sentenced to seven years in prison followed by three years of house arrest. Vu’s case illustrates how isolated and confrontational activism is the most dangerous challenge to the state.
The Vietnamese government cracked down on other lawyers around the same time, including Le Cong Dinh, the defence lawyer and pro-democracy activist associated with Bloc 8406. With these and other arrests, the CPV made a clear point that it would not tolerate dissent once high level decision-makers had approved the bauxite plans. Not only does the Vietnamese government control all bodies involved in the bauxite mines (except China’s CHALCO), but in late July 2009, Prime Minister Dung enacted Resolution No. 97, requiring that scientific feedback on policy issues not be publicized but submitted directly to the appropriate ministries, effectively eliminating critical research on bauxite development.
Because of their structural separation, the two ministries and the SOE overseeing bauxite mining lack crucial mechanisms for communication. In an embarassing display of political red tape, Minister for Industry and Trade Vu Huy Hoang could not answer Deputy Duong Trung Quoc’s questions concerning the bauxite mines in the National Assembly. Quoc explained in an interview:
Bauxite is a complex issue but we divide it into different parts. The Ministry of Industry and Trade only covers business issues or how to use bauxite profitably. Meanwhile, the outstanding issue is [the] environment so the Minister of Industry and Trade couldn’t answer that question thoroughly … Bauxite is also related to defense and security or transport and society.
While state actors and the pro-bauxite coalition had emerged victorious in 2009, in 2010 civil society actors regrouped and relaunched a concerted effort to stop construction. In October, retired state officials, together with scientists and public intellectuals, collected a new petition in the wake of a massive bauxite accident in Hungary where red sludge waste had spilled out of its container killing seven people and injuring more than a hundred, and had contaminated the River Danube. Vietnamese critics of the bauxite mines were quick to warn the government of the possibility of a similar disaster in the Central Highlands. Scott Robertson, Vietnam-based spokesperson for the Wildlife Conservation Society, believes this was the beginning of a more autonomous environmental movement in Vietnam: “People are speaking out publicly, decisionmakers are being lobbied and there seems to be far more public debate than before.”
Deputy Duong Trung Quoc was one of the signatories to the petition, along with over 1,500 others. Other signatories included former Vice-President Nguyen Thi Binh, former Deputy Minister for Science and Technology and Director of Tri Thuc Publishers, Professor Chu Hao, and Vice-Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children, Nguyen Minh Thuyet. Professor Hao said that the state-sponsored Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA) was to conduct an independent study into the mines.
The government agreed to this most recent comprehensive and non-partisan survey, but Prime Minister Dung insisted that bauxite processing is “a major policy of the Party and the state”. Still, some experts are optimistic about the room for debate:
Unlike some protests of 2009 and 2008, in which objections to the mines had at times functioned as a way to push a wider political agenda, including the legitimacy of the one-party system, the dissension voiced in the past few months has mostly been more effective, and officials, in turn, now understand there are lines they may not be able to cross.
Certain high-ranking officials take more moderate positions than the competing factions. Nguyen Trung, former Ambassador to Thailand, for example, agrees with Thayer:
I think the Politburo is listening to ideas regarding a review of the bauxite project. This is advisable as they said it must be carried out with respect for the environment and local residents … It’s time for Vietnam to switch to a period of in-depth economic development, and this issue needs further discussion.
So while a cancellation of the bauxite project is virtually impossible at this point—mining was already underway in early 2012—perhaps lobbyists among the public and private sectors, civil society, state ministries, the National Assembly and the Party, have found some common ground to build on in future contentions. Then again, the Party and government have made it clear that there is little to no space for public opposition to policy decisions once they have been agreed upon by the central leadership.
Opposition to the mines in the form of concerted advocacy are therefore safest when civil society has protection in the form of an umbrella organization, such as VUSTA, or political patronage from high-level supporters such as General Giap. Indeed, civil society networks may even emerge within the Party, as Wells-Dang has argued.
While anti-Chinese nationalism represents a rallying point for mass mobilization of civil society networks, it simultaneously draws repression from CPV conservatives. Promisingly, Thayer notes, “when independent citizens advocate political liberalization, their ideas quickly seep into the CPV and become grist for factional infighting.” The fact that the National Assembly debated bauxite mining several times in the past five years likewise indicates that Gramscian civil society’s non-confrontational and conciliatory “collective pressure” can have results.
The case of the bauxite mines is thus one of the most telling contemporary examples of the changing nature of state-society relations in Vietnam. Not only does it expose the ability of more assertive and organized civil society coalitions to engage in elite, national debate, but it ultimately shows their weakness in having to rely on state organs as well as policy-makers in order to sustain their advocacy campaigns. This case study shows that Vietnamese civil society is not limited to NGOs but is rather tied to the CPV and the state, and at the same time shaping Party dialogue by outside pressure as well as by civil society actors’ associations with certain members. I have argued that interactions among the vacillating civil society network that encompasses both grassroots activists and reformist political leaders will guide elite-level policy in Vietnam in such a way that does not pose a direct challenge to the Party’s central authority. Rather, their interaction will both empower localized civil society networks as well as produce more open debates within the ranks of the CPV. Whether or not the country’s legal apparatus is ready to accommodate formal civil society, Vietnam’s “informal pathbreakers”, to quote Andrew Wells-Dang, have already laid claims to a shared sense of ownership of Vietnam’s future.
Other Cases of Civil Society in Vietnam
Two other recent debates resonate with the bauxite story. The first is the opposition that stopped construction in Reunification Park (Cong Vien Tho’ng Nhat) in Hanoi; the second debate is that surrounding reconstruction of the National Assembly building in Hanoi.
Many residents of Hanoi use Reunification Park for exercise and socializing. When newspapers announced plans for a $45 million hotel and entertainment centre, construction had already begun. Architects, journalists and frequent users of the park argued that it was a public place and that the hotel would only serve certain people’s interests. Tran Kieu Thanh Ha, Media and Advocacy Officer for the Canadian NGO Health Bridge, contacted the Vietnam Urban Planning Development Association to express concern and found that they agreed that it was in Hanoi’s best interests to preserve disappearing public spaces such as Reunification Park. They organized a conference with some help from the People’s Committee. Further online discussion in blogs and VietNam.Net ensued, condemning the construction plans, and finally the city decided to cancel the hotel project.
The National Assembly building sits atop the ancient Citadel of Thang Long in Hanoi. CPV General Secretary Nong Duc Manh and the Ministry of Construction supported a project to expand the National Assembly building over grounds that were found in 2002 to contain an abundance of archaeological treasures. However, a group of academics from the Association of Vietnamese Historians, the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and the Institute of Archaeology, began lobbying the Party Central Committee behind the scenes, emphasizing the location’s historical significance rather than openly criticizing the CPV’s agenda. As a result of their campaign, in November 2003 construction work was halted. The following summer, workshops led to the drafting of the academics’ proposal for a moratorium on new construction and the preservation of the old National Assembly building. In 2005, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai called off on-site construction. However, when Khai left office in 2007, plans were made to restart construction and to limit conservation efforts; archaeologists gave up hope of winning the debate. At this point, however, General Giap sent a letter to Vietnamese media, who printed it despite stern warnings not to. In 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recognized the citadel as a World Heritage Site. Though construction of the National Assembly building began in October of 2009, enough time was spent in debate to allow for the preservation of a considerable amount of cultural artifacts.
Similar to the case of the bauxite mines, the National Assembly plans proceeded despite intense public debate and high-level opposition. Hanoi authorities cancelled the construction of the hotel in Reunification Park amidst relatively smaller opposition. Any pattern for prediction regarding future projects would thus fail to account for elite level decision-making in the face of civil society organization against CPV programmes. Nonetheless, we can make some general conclusions about the accuracy of scholarship on debates between state leaders and civil society.
While useful for comparison, the majority of academic case studies on civil society in Vietnam are exclusively urban-based. The bauxite mines provide an enriching lens for the very reason that they are far from the capital and removed from city politics. The lobbyists who opposed the bauxite mines had no fundamental or daily relation to the development project other than their political disagreement. While the citizens of Hanoi rallied around causes that affected their local environment, the anti-bauxite advocacy network fought to steer the direction of national politics in a much broader sense and at a much larger scale. Citizens close to Hanoi politicians (physically as well as structurally) have a unique advantage in their proximity to the seat of power. The civil society actors that attached themselves to the bauxite debate reflect a new type of civic activism that bridges both grassroots, horizontal networks, as well as vertical hierarchies in the capital.
Conclusion: Theory Versus Reality
Recent scholarship on civil society does not adequately explain current events in Vietnamese state-society relations. This paper concludes that there is an expanding realm for multilevel debate, involving CPV and non-Party members as well as National Assembly leaders and a mobilized, grassroots citizenry, as seen in all three of the case studies in this paper; the freedom to address certain topics of debate and the new forms of organizational life have outpaced the legal infrastructure to govern them; and future political reforms will involve some level of compromise from factions within the major constituencies of Party, state and people, though the CPV firmly controls the reform process.
Reliance on dated models of authoritarianism, Marxism and civil society, cannot help us with an accurate description of civil society in Vietnam, particularly when it comes to the controversy surrounding the bauxite mines. An educated and vocal citizenry has found ways to bring issues before the National Assembly, prompting more accountable surveys conducted by mass organizations such as VUSTA and the Vietnam Fatherland Front. An increasingly independent media has helped to encourage public opinion and communication between elites and the people. Finally, debates between factions in the CPV have revealed an entrenched conservative bloc that is resisting the increased demands from reformers of a younger generation of leadership, who represent the interests of various social forces. As we have seen, these interests include, but are not limited to, land rights and public property (in the case of Reunification Park), historical and cultural preservation (the National Assembly building and Reunification Park), as well as environmentalism, anti-Chinese nationalism and the strenghtening of local governance mechanisms (the bauxite mines). The cumulative weight of local interests in combination with political decentralization and legal reform will continue to put pressure on the CPV to introduce further changes.
This paper falls far short of analysing events unfolding on the ground from the perspective of local voices. Much work is necessary to ensure that civil society debates address the “view from the ‘rice-roots'”. Further research will need to take into account the process of dialogue that draws on local advocacy as well as political leverage within the CPV centre. I have argued that the contentious debate surrounding Vietnam’s bauxite mines demonstrates a convergence of elite-level dialogue and grassroots opposition. Furthermore, we should look to the expanding and contracting space for civil society networks to assert challenges to top-down policy, demanding increased government accountability as well as citizen participation. The combined interaction of grassroots citizens and reformist political elites on key policy issues will shape the future contours of civil society in Vietnam. Though the bauxite opposition was not able to reverse the mines’ development, the arena of debate illustrated that a loose-knit network ecompassing Party members, state elite, and grassroots activists, and taking on a non-confrontational role in dialogue with the pro-bauxite bloc, could substantially influence the policy agenda. The actors opposed to the bauxite mines made their voices heard in such a way as to lay the foundations for a more robust civil society that is able to make demands on the CPV for increased government accountability and to open political participation to a greater number of citizens.