It’s gone too right in the name of Market reforms and friendly foreign policies.
This doesn’t sound like a well-informed understanding of Vietnam. I suggest looking into Luna Oi’s videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Lunaoi/videos
From what I’ve seen, she tends to go into detail about Vietnamese policy and history, and where it’s coming from. She also did an english translation of a Vietnamese book on marxism-leninism:
https://www.lunaoi.com/product/ebook-historical-materialism/
Vietnam has the right to self determination and China’a model is not a carbon copy that is applied on vietnam.
For a while, China also looked like it was going too rightwards. This is a necessary step to trick the Westoids to invest in your country before you rug-pull them with communism later, ala Xi Jinping.
Vietnam is about 10-20 years behind China in their development. Once you understand that, the steps they take are basically a repeat of China.
I’m not that well-read on Vietnam but my read is this is probably a deliberate decision to stop them from having their leaders stolen in the night or having to become reclusive due to sanctions
They generally pass the sniff test to me for still being ideologically committed
I would consider, as a thought experiment, why McDonalds in China is still an example of socialism (I deliberately chose that example because of the contradictions it brings as it may allow for a much more dialectical materialist take of what socialism is).
