Nguyen Phu Trong, who has died aged 80, was the general secretary of the ruling Communist party of Vietnam for the past decade, and he succeeded in bringing three US presidents to the country. He oversaw unprecedented economic growth, yet endeavoured to preserve the socialist regime by stamping out corruption and suppressing dissent.
Launched at the start of his second term of office (2016-21), his anti-corruption campaign of “blazing furnaces” took down the party chief of Ho Chi Minh City, Dinh La Thang, in 2017, and the deputy prime minister, Hoang Trung Hai, in 2020. Over the next four years, more than 200,000 party and government officials were disciplined, expelled or charged with criminal offences.
