Vietnam wants to harness its diaspora in Australia and NZ to boost its growth. It may face strong opposition

Vietnam’s top leader, Tô Lâm, is visiting Australia and New Zealand this week with a high-level delegation of ministers. He will be the first general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam

– the highest political position in the country – to pay an official visit to both countries since 2009.

More than a dozen agreements are expected to be signed across both countries in education, agriculture, health care, technology, tourism, defence and security.

In addition, two other important issues will likely be discussed: the importance of the Vietnamese overseas communities (Việt kiều) in both Australia and New Zealand, and maritime security in the South China Sea.

Vietnam’s new global leader

Since becoming Vietnam’s top leader in August 2024, Tô Lâm has embarked on an unusually high number of foreign trips. Last year, he made visits to Russia, the United Kingdom and both Koreas, among other countries.

And this year, when he also assumed the title of president of Vietnam, he met with US President Donald Trump in Washington, Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. He also spoke at the influential Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where he warned the world was moving towards a “big fish swallowing the small fish” global order.

All of this is part of a new strategy on the part of Vietnam to assert a more active foreign policy as a rising middle power in the Indo-Pacific region, rather than continuing to be a passive player on the global stage.

Targeting the Vietnamese diaspora

The large Vietnamese diaspora in both Australia and New Zealand will certainly be on the agenda this week.

Last week, the Vietnamese Communist Party held its biennial diplomatic conference to confirm the party’s guidelines and foreign policy direction. A key resolution was officially adopted that changes the way the government wants to engage with the Vietnamese diaspora. It sees them more as a “strategic national resource” to be harnessed to help the country grow.

Tô Lâm’s visit to Australia will be the first litmus test for this policy.

There are about 350,000 people of Vietnamese heritage living in Australia and 35,000 Vietnamese students. There are also about 14,000 Vietnamese people in New Zealand.

Under its new policy, the government wants to leverage this overseas community to reach its goal of becoming a high-income country by 2045 and “a highly developed socialist nation by 2130”. How this will work remains to be seen.

Australia has one of the largest and most deeply established Vietnamese diaspora communities in the world. It’s an obvious target for the government to try to tap into. But despite this great potential, it would still be an uphill battle to overcome the longstanding distrust many Vietnamese-Australians feel toward the communist leadership, particularly among the highly skilled diaspora.

Many remain ideologically opposed or deeply sceptical of communist, one-party rule. Half a century after the end of Vietnam War, the Communist Party continues to treat the diaspora primarily as an economic and technological resource. Its new policies are focused on encouraging greater remittances, investment, technology transfers and the return of experts from the diaspora.

But there is little space for meaningful political participation, civil society activism and free expression.

On April 30 this year, two conflicting groups gathered in Melbourne to commemorate the end of the war, demonstrating the enduring divide in the overseas community. Those in the more established Vietnamese refugee community continue to protest human rights abuses in Vietnam. Meanwhile, a new wave of more assertive, nationalistic students are increasingly showing their support for the communist government.

Without greater openness and genuine efforts to hear the concerns of the more established diaspora, the Communist Party’s strategy of mobilising overseas Vietnamese to use as an economic tool is likely to fall flat.

The elephant in the room

Both Australia and New Zealand have also upgraded their relationships with Vietnam to a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” in recent years.

Defence and security cooperation has frequently been touted as a key pillar in the Australian-Vietnamese partnership, in particular. The countries held their first Ministerial Security Dialogue in Canberra in October 2024. And Vietnamese and Australian naval vessels have taken part in joint exercises together, including in the South China Sea.

Both countries have shared interests in maintaining a rules-based regional order, freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and the peaceful settlement of maritime disputes, in accordance with international law.

So, while China might not be the outward focus of meetings between the two countries, it is undoubtedly the elephant in the room. Given both Vietnam’s defence and security ministers are accompanying Tô Lâm to Australia, these issues will most likely be on the agenda.

Yet, Vietnam has to carefully manage its partnerships. China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner and an important foreign investor, while the United States remains the main market for Vietnam’s burgeoning manufacturing sector.

Against this background, Vietnam is trying to maintain “strategic autonomy”, expanding its network of partnerships to not be too reliant on a single country. As such, it will deepen its defence and security collaborations with Australia, but refrain from joining other states in publicly criticising China over its activities in the South China Sea.

Hai Thiem Bui does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.