Updated July 19, 2024, 2:40 p.m. EDT
In the West, he may be best known for eating a gold-covered steak while his countrymen survive on an average of about US$10 a day.
But in Hanoi, Vietnam’s new top leader To Lam has for years been seen as an operator whose decades in politics long paved the way for his ascent.
On Thursday, that climb reached a new zenith after Vietnamese state media announced that Lam, 67, would take over the duties for Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. State media announced that Trong died Friday at the age of 80.
It comes less than two months after Lam was elevated to the Vietnamese presidency – a move that put him in pole position for the general secretary job, the most powerful in the country.
The son of a Vietnamese police colonel, Lam began his career in public security in 1979. He joined the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1981, eventually rising to become the minister for public security – the country’s top security official – in 2016.
In 2019, he was awarded the rank of general by then-president Trong.
Security czar
In his capacity as security minister, he focused on internal politics and counter-intelligence – areas that may well have helped him to later cement his political powers.
The stint was not without controversy. In 2017, Lam was accused of being involved in the kidnapping of Trinh Xuan Thanh, a fugitive oil executive and former provincial official, in Berlin.
Thanh later returned to Hanoi through Slovakia. The government denied kidnapping but the case led to a temporary rift in diplomatic relations between Germany and Vietnam.
But it would fit a larger pattern of alleged transnational repression and quashing of dissent overseen by Lam.
His term as security minister saw the arrests and suspected kidnappings of journalist critics, including RFA blogger Truong Duy Nhat, who disappeared in Thailand in 2019 but is now in jail in Vietnam serving a 10-year sentence.
Golden steak and ‘Onion Bae’
In 2021, Lam was involved in another controversy after he was caught on video eating a piece of gold-plated steak at a luxury restaurant in London.
A video clip of the general being fed a US$2,000 steak by celebrity chef Salt Bae went viral, causing a public outcry at home.
This was followed by a draconian crackdown, including the arrest and jailing of a noodle-seller nicknamed "Onion Bae" who had dared to ridicule Lam by posting a parody of the incident to social media. He remains in jail.
Lam subsequently ramped up anti-corruption crackdowns that saw off potential rivals within the party in what critics have said were clearly politically motivated investigations.
Lam’s enthusiastic implementation of this so-called “Blazing Furnace” campaign led to the sacking of half a dozen senior ministers and Politburo members within the span of months beginning in 2022.
Yet Lam is also said to have questionable hidden interests.
In May, the Tiếng Dân newspaper revealed that a younger brother of To Lam, To Dung, was the chairman of the construction and real estate firm Xuan Cau Group, noting that the company had been conspicuously absent from any investigation even as it has won projects worth billions of Vietnamese dong with little oversight.
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Private man
Little else is known about the private life of Vietnam’s new top man.
He does not appear to have ever given any remarks to Western media and nothing in English has been written of his immediate family, though Vietnamese reports say he has been twice married, first to Vu Hong Loan, the sister of a Vietnamese police major general and currently to Ngo Phuong Ly.
He appears to have several children. One daughter was revealed to have graduated from London’s prestigious School of Oriental and Asian Studies, or SOAS, in 2023.
On the global stage, Lam has made clear his endorsement of the so-called “Bamboo diplomacy” Hanoi has undertaken to balance its relations between East and West.
In June, he welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin, weeks after his swearing in as president, calling him “comrade” and hailing a successful visit.
Hanoi saw visits from Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden within the previous nine months.
The announcement that Lam will serve concurrently as president and acting general secretary suggests that the party has determined that Lam will be elected to a full term at the next party congress in early 2026, says Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asia expert at the National War College in Washington.
Lam would require an age waiver, and might face resistance from senior party elite who resent his seizure of power in the years leading up to Trong's death, he said.
Whether his caretaker role becomes a more permanent one, there seems little likelihood that Lam would veer from the established path.
At his presidential swearing-in in May, he promised to “continue to strengthen the party’s capabilities, its ruling power and combat prowess.”
He may well be looking to strengthen the same in himself.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Updated with an expert view on Lam's role and future prospects..