How communist is Vietnam really?
Communist party, capitalist economy
The answer is both, Vietnam is a truly communist country at present AND has truly been absorbed by the global market economy. Vietnam is governed as a one party state and the ruling communist party is open about their Marxist–Leninist ideology, the party is steeped in the history of Ho Chi Minh thought and still requires that university students are educated this way. The government still has 8 official directions that the country follows, and still intends these aims to lead the country towards communism, with the eighth direction literally just being to build a strong and pure communist party. But despite this Vietnam has long been expected to become one of the world’s top 50 largest economies by 2050, benefitting from Special Economic Zones of reduced taxes and government investment in much the same way as China.
aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/25/vietnams-communist-party-meets-to-pick-new-leaders-set-strategy vietnamembassy-pyongyang.org/is-vietnam-one-of-countries-remaining-communism-in-the-world chronicle.com/article/foreign-universities-in-vietnam-ordered-to-teach-communist-ideology web.archive.org/web/20120116170035/http://www.tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/business/vietnam-to-be-listed-top-economies-by-2050-hsbc-1.58480 healyconsultants.com/vietnam-company-registration/free-zones