An opening sequence from the film, The General: Vietnam in the Age of Tô Lâm', by director Laura Brickman. (Screenshot)
Japan's Lower House election recently concluded against a backdrop of fresh geopolitical tensions. China-Japan relations soured in recent months, with no sign of compromise as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested her country could become militarily involved if China attempted to invade Taiwan.
In response, China targeted Japan with export restrictions on materials required for the production of defense technologies.
Meanwhile, as this was going on, Japan-Vietnam trade surpassed $50 billion USD for the first time. Japanese businesses in Vietnam showed notable optimism about continuing their operations there.
The current Vietnamese population in Japan is largely comprised of workers and students, with over 630,000 legal residents reported as of late 2024. This makes them one of the largest foreign communities in Japan.
This comes as some observers note that Vietnam is one of the "winners in [Trump's] trade war [with China]." Countries seek to move manufacturing out of China and into alternatives like Vietnam instead. Japan is no exception to this shift from China to Vietnam.
Telling the Story in Film
This is reflected in the documentary The General: Vietnam in the Age of Tô Lâm (The General), directed by Laura Brickman. In it, Hoàng Tứ Duy, executive director of the pro-democracy party Việt Tân, describes this shift.
Their film, however, emphasizes that Vietnam is not a baggage-free alternative to China. In contrast to the vigorous contestation of power in Japan's election, Tô Lâm was reelected as General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party, the most powerful position in Vietnam, without a contest. He has held this position since the death of former leader Nguyễn Phú Trọng in July 2024.
According to the film, Tô Lâm's leadership is an embodiment of the police state that remains hostile to ideals of freedom and democracy. An internal document showed Vietnam's military was taking steps to prepare for a possible American "war of aggression" and considered the United States a "belligerent" power.
Meanwhile, according to Human Rights Watch, there are currently more than 160 political prisoners in Vietnam. They include bloggers, writers, lawyers, human rights activists, and others.
Even on the economic front alone, the film points out that Vietnam's seemingly bullish appearance hides a noticeable vulnerability. Vietnam's economic power is concentrated in a few conglomerates: Vingroup, Vinhomes (the conglomerate's property arm), and Vincom Retail account for almost three-quarters of 2025's stock market gains. With its financial and legal leverage, Vingroup sued 68 individuals and organizations for defamation. While it was unsuccessful in a majority of these cases, the expenses and legal hassles could be deterrents for whistleblowers.
The General encourages international actors to reconsider whether compromising on democratic attitudes for short-term economic benefits from Vietnam will destabilize their own societies. It does this through chilling overviews of transnational repression and the Vietnamese state's insidious and global surveillance system.
Transnational Repression
The Vietnamese government's capacity to chase both Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese detractors beyond its borders sends the message that the state is beyond criticism. The movie uses one of its most shocking cases of transnational repression as a framing device.
One such case concerns Trịnh Xuân Thanh, chairman of state-owned gas and oil conglomerate PetroVietnam. He sought political asylum in Berlin after accusations of financial mismanagement, "a routine accusation [used] to justify political repression."
However, the film relates how members of the Vietnamese secret service and the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin orchestrated the kidnapping of Trịnh Xuân Thanh while he was on a walk with his girlfriend in Tiergarten Park. They dragged him into a van, which, upon investigation, showed signs of struggle, blood, and chloroform.
Thanh was then detained and drugged in the Vietnamese embassy in Germany before being driven to Slovakia, where Slovak and Vietnamese leaders were ostensibly gathered to discuss trade.
In the movie, the case concludes with footage of Thanh, likely under duress, stating that he voluntarily returned to Vietnam. It is suggested that the real motive behind his kidnapping was that he had crucial information about the Communist Party that helped Tô Lâm and Nguyễn Phú Trọng eliminate opponents within the Politburo. Indeed, all those involved with the kidnapping are presented as having some notable connection to Tô Lâm, who himself escorted Thanh from Slovakia to Hanoi.
A Second Case Study
A second case highlighted in the movie involves the human rights lawyer and founder of Hội Anh Em Dân Chủ (Brotherhood for Democracy), Nguyễn Văn Đài. In 2015, he was arrested and beaten under Article 117 (formerly Article 88) of Vietnam's Penal Code, which criminalizes producing, storing, or disseminating information aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Đài described the harrowing conditions of his prison stay in the film. He was given raw rice, rotten vegetables, and worst of all, water with a strange chemical smell, while guards whispered that they were prepared to kill him. He was only taken to Germany after almost dying in a prison cell that reached 45 degrees Celsius with no cooling system or windows.
In Berlin, he still faces death threats. And occasionally, he is advised by German security to shelter in his home, away from spies.
Reaching for Critics Beyond Borders
The General highlights that Tô Lâm's crackdown does not confine itself to Vietnamese speakers or those of Vietnamese ethnicity or citizenship. While Vietnamese intelligence has infiltrated Western countries ー primarily through embassies ー their espionage tactics pale in comparison to those carried out in Thailand.
One of the film's interviewees was Nguyễn Văn Ân, a religious rights activist and protestor against Formosa Plastics' environmental disaster. He describes how Vietnamese state operatives embed themselves in organizations supposed to protect political refugees. For example, the Vietnamese state plants interpreters in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who then leak the files of Vietnamese asylum seekers.
Furthermore, many spies live in refugee communities in Bangkok. Shortly after his interview, Ân himself was briefly detained under claims of an expired visa, even though he and his family are approved asylum seekers awaiting resettlement. Thai police allowed Vietnamese authorities to enter his cell and pressure him to return to Vietnam.
High Profile Pressure
In the film, the most high-profile case of the Vietnamese state's act of transnational repression is Y Quynh Bdap. He is a human rights defender for the minority Montagnard and Ede indigenous groups. Thai Immigration Police kidnapped Bdap on June 11, 2024, following an extradition request from Vietnam that was fulfilled.
Bdap's current whereabouts in Vietnam remain unknown.
The movie illustrates the ways Tô Lâm's repressive practices also extend to those who are not ethnically Vietnamese or even speak the language. In one case, a spy messaged the director seeking details about the film's premiere, apparently to prevent its screening in advance.
Elsewhere, the regime has also threatened tech giants such as Facebook and YouTube in an effort to block anti-state content. During the film's development, authorities also warned the film's translator that her family would be in danger if she continued with the project. Subsequently, right before The General's premiere at the Foreign Correspondents' Club Thailand, the Vietnamese embassy pressured multiple Thai government departments to stop the documentary's screening.
Relations with Neighbors
Although the Vietnamese government may not appear to directly oppose Japanese interests, it shares a cordial relationship with two of Japan's noteworthy opponents: China and North Korea.
Despite ongoing issues between China and smaller Southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea, Chinese President Xi Jinping states that China continues to attach great importance to ties with Vietnam. Meanwhile, North Korean and Vietnamese leaders maintained regular exchanges, even during the pandemic.
In November 2024, South Korea's Suwon District Court sentenced three men to between five and 15 years in prison for spying in South Korea under the instructions of the North Korean intelligence agency. One of the meeting places for the North Korean spy network was Hoàn Kiếm Lake, a popular tourist destination in Hanoi.
Failure to monitor for the presence of Vietnamese spies can create openings for other hostile actors as well as further discord within the Vietnamese diaspora in Japan.
What Japan Can Do
Japan might take two responses to the threat from Tô Lâm's leadership to democratic values. The first is the rising wave of anti-immigrant sentiment and desire to shut out foreigners. Indeed, this sentiment might be an understandable response given issues with integrating Vietnamese nationals.
However, nostalgia for a homogenous and supposedly more harmonious and cohesive past has not worked in any country that has faced questions about national identity against an ethnically diverse backdrop. With an aging population and reliance on foreign labor, Japan specifically cannot afford to cut off Vietnam. The two countries will only continue to be ever more closely entangled with one another through economic allegiances.
As the United States signals a retreat from the world stage through foreign aid cuts and tariffs, the East Asian democracies' close economic ties and soft power may give them a better chance of pressuring Vietnam on human rights.
Otherwise, Tô Lâm's leadership has not been afraid to exercise its authoritarian reach beyond Vietnam. It has reached into European embassies, human rights agencies, and even tech giants. Eventually, Japan and other East Asian democracies will be next unless they assert their values.
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Author: Theodore Pham
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