Vietnam

Vietnam is a one-party socialist republic of roughly 102 million people governed by the Communist Party of Vietnam. The 14th National Congress met in January 2026 and the new Central Committee elected Tô Lâm General Secretary at its first plenum on 23 January; he was elected state president again on 7 April 2026, when Lê Minh Hưng became Prime Minister. The review period was dominated by Resolution 18-NQ/TW, the 2017 Central Committee resolution on streamlining the political system, under which the National Assembly approved a new government structure on 18 February 2025 with the reorganised ministries operating from 1 March, provinces were consolidated in July 2025, and the number of newspaper organisations fell to 137 by the end of 2025, from 195 in 2019.

State media were restructured more comprehensively than at any point since Đổi Mới. On 15 January 2025 a major consolidation of national television took effect: the 13-channel VTC network, VOVTV, Nhân Dân Television, the Vietnam News Agency’s VNews and National Assembly Television ceased broadcasting, with relevant functions and tasks transferred to Vietnam Television. On 1 April 2026, following Resolution 03-NQ/TW, Vietnam Television, Voice of Vietnam and Vietnam News Agency ceased to be government agencies and became public service units of the Party Central Committee, under the direct leadership of the Politburo and Secretariat. Their directors concurrently became deputy heads of the Central Propaganda and Mass Mobilization Commission, renamed the Central Propaganda Commission from 1 August 2026, so that four of the five designated national key press organisations are now led by deputy heads of the body that supervises them. At city level, Hanoi merged six press bodies into a single Party-run agency on 1 February 2026. Ho Chi Minh City followed with a different model: Decision 863-QĐ/TU of 9 June placed the city’s press under a single Party Committee agency, reorganising eleven organisations, retaining three as constituent press bodies and ordering eight dissolved, with the new arrangement implemented across the June and July transition.

Vietnam ranked 174th of 180 in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index with a score of 21.15, improved from 19.74 but one place lower than in 2025, and last in Southeast Asia; only Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea and Eritrea ranked lower. PEN America ranked Vietnam fourth worldwide for imprisoned writers in 2025, with 24 jailed. A new Press Law and Cybersecurity Law took effect on 1 July 2026, the former broadening compulsory state access to journalistic sources and removing the previous restriction limiting such demands to the most serious crimes. Vietnam also became the first Southeast Asian country to bring a standalone artificial intelligence law into force, on 1 March 2026, with machine-readable labelling duties for AI-generated audio, images and video and, under a July implementing decree, verification and disclosure obligations specific to press organisations.

State Media Monitor maps nine organisations, none in the independent family. Eight are classified Captured Public/State-Managed (CaPu) and one, Voice of Vietnam, State-Controlled (SC).

That distribution requires explanation, because it does not indicate independence. Political control across all nine is exceptionally direct and in several cases codified: governing instruments assign the defence of the Party’s ideological foundation and the orientation of public opinion, appointments are made by Politburo, Party committee or supervising body decision, and no mapped organisation has an independent governing structure capable of insulating editorial policy from political authority.

The distinction lies primarily in funding. For the eight CaPu organisations, predominant state funding cannot be demonstrated from the available evidence, and in several cases that evidence points toward self-financing or commercial dependence. Vietnam Television drew about 9.7 per cent of its 2023 resources from the state budget; Tiền Phong reported that events generated 75 per cent of its 2025 turnover; and the leaderships of Thanh Niên and Tiền Phong have described their organisations as fully financially autonomous. Others publish insufficient consolidated data to establish the proportion of public and commercial resources. Voice of Vietnam is the exception: it stated in March 2026 that its financial autonomy remained modest and that it depended heavily on the state budget, and it therefore remains State-Controlled.

The eight classification corrections recorded in this cycle therefore reflect revised evidence about the funding criterion, not greater editorial or governance independence. Several of the organisations were simultaneously restructured in ways that moved political supervision closer to Party institutions. None of the corrections indicates a loosening of political control.

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