Vietnam

Vietnam's Communist Party governs a one-party state that has produced one of the developing world's most impressive growth trajectories through Doi Moi — market-oriented reforms initiated in 1986 that maintained party control while liberalising economic activity. The model explicitly follows China's reform path with a lag of roughly a decade, creating a state-directed capitalism where foreign direct investment flows freely but political competition is prohibited. Vietnam has become a primary beneficiary of supply chain diversification away from China: Samsung's Vietnamese factories produce roughly half of the company's global smartphone output. The party maintains control through a collective leadership model that rotates power among four pillars (General Secretary, President, Prime Minister, National Assembly Chair), preventing the personality-cult concentration seen in China under Xi. Vietnam's anti-corruption campaigns have removed sitting members of the Politburo — an institutional self-regulation mechanism rare among authoritarian systems, functioning like an immune response that eliminates compromised cells to preserve the organism.