The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). Founded in 1930 by Ho Chi Minh, the CPV dominantly established the government of Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), before becoming the sole ruling party when its state was known as the North Vietnam in 1954 after the First Indochina War and practically all of Vietnam (SRV) in 1975 after the Vietnam War.
Although it nominally exists alongside the Vietnam Fatherland Front, it maintains a unitary government and has centralized control over the state, military, and media. The supremacy of the CPV is guaranteed by Article 4 of the national constitution. The Vietnamese public generally refer to the CPV as simply "the Party" (Đảng) or "our Party" (Đảng ta).
The CPV is organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The highest institution of the CPV is the party's National Congress, which elects the Central Committee (CC). The CC is the supreme organ on party affairs in between party congresses. After a party congress, the CC elects the Politburo and Secretariat, and appoints the general secretary, the highest party office. In between sessions of the CC, the Politburo is the supreme organ on party affairs. However, it can only implement decisions based on the policies which have been approved in advance by either the CC or the party's National Congress. As of 2026, the 14th Politburo has 19 members.
After World War II, the party, operating through its Viet Minh front, overthrew the monarchy and purged its political rivals. During the Cold War, through its power as the ruling party of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), it fought against the French Union, the United States, and the Western-aligned State of Vietnam and Republic of Vietnam from 1949 to 1975. The DRV was aligned with the Soviet Union, China, and other Eastern-bloc allies. After taking power in all of Vietnam, the party officially unified the country as the Socialist Republic in 1976. The party had implemented a command economy in North Vietnam and later all of Vietnam since 1954, before introducing economic reforms, known as Đổi Mới, in 1986. The party is currently known for its advocacy of what it calls a "socialist-oriented market economy" and Ho Chi Minh Thought.
While continuing to officially hold to Marxism–Leninism, some independent analysts have argued that the party's ideological framing shifted following the introduction of the Đổi Mới in 1986, moving from a strict emphasis on classical class struggle toward performance-based economic legitimacy. At the 10th National Party Congress in 2006, the CPV formally amended its statutes to allow party members to engage in private business activities, defining its role as representing the interests of "the working class, the working people, and the entire nation". The party continues to uphold Marxism–Leninism, with state-owned enterprises still dominating over the "commanding heights" of the economy through State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in strategic sectors such as energy, telecommunications, and banking, alongside a centralized state bureaucracy The CPV maintains fraternal ties with global left-wing movements and regularly attends the annual International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP). In 1988, the party became the sole political party in Vietnam when it absorbed its two sister parties, the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party. Domestically and internationally, the party's one-party governance structure faces political opposition from the Vietnamese democracy movement and anti-communists, especially groups among the Vietnamese diaspora.
Contents
History
Rise to power (1925–1945)
The Communist Party of Vietnam traces its history back to 1925, when Nguyen Ai Quoc (later Ho Chi Minh) established the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League (Hội Việt Nam Cách mạng Thanh niên),
The Youth League's goal was to end the colonial occupation of Vietnam by France. The group sought national independence and the redistribution of land to working peasants. The Youth League's purpose was to prepare the masses for a revolutionary armed struggle against the French occupation. His efforts in laying the groundwork for the party was financially supported by the Comintern.
In 1928 the headquarters of the Youth League in Guangdong, China, were destroyed by the Kuomintang and the group was forced underground. This led to a national breakdown within the Youth League, which indirectly led to a split. On 17 June 1929, more than 20 delegates from cells throughout the Tonkin region held a conference in Hanoi, where they declared the dissolution of Youth League and the establishment of a new organization called the Communist Party of Indochina. The other faction of the League, based in the Cochinchina, held a conference in Saigon and declared themselves the Communist Party of Annam in late 1929.
The two parties spent the rest of 1929 engaged in polemics against one another in an attempt to gain a position of hegemony over the radical Vietnamese liberation movement.
A third Vietnamese communist group which did not originate from the Youth League emerged around this time in the Annam, calling itself the Communist League of Indochina. The Communist League of Indochina had its roots in another national liberation group which had existed in parallel with the Youth League, and saw itself as a rival to the latter.
The Communist Party of Indochina and Communist Party of Annam, together with individual members of the Communist League of Indochina, merged to form the modern Communist Party of Vietnam, founded by Ho Chi Minh in Kowloon, Hong Kong, from 3 February 1930.
At a later conference, per the request of the Comintern, the party changed its name to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). During its first five years of existence, the ICP attained a membership of about 1,500 and had a large contingent of supporters. Despite the group's small size, it exerted a huge influence in the nation's turbulent social climate. Consecutive poor harvests in 1929 and 1930, coupled with an onerous debt burden, drove many peasants to radicalism.
Left opposition
The party, particularly in the south, was rivalled by other nationalist and left-wing groups, notably Trotskyist organizations. In November 1931, dissidents emerging from within the party formed the October Left Opposition around the clandestine journal Tháng Mười.
These included Hồ Hữu Tường and Phan Văn Hùm who, protesting a leadership of "Moscow trainees", had formed an Indochinese group within the Communist League (Liên Minh Cộng Sản Đoàn), the French section of the International Left Opposition, in Paris in July 1930. Once considered "the theoretician of the Vietnamese contingent in Moscow",
Tường was calling for a new "mass-based" party arising directly "out of the struggle of the real struggle of the proletariat of the cities and country". Tường was joined in endorsing Leon Trotsky's doctrines of "proletarian internationalism" and of "permanent revolution" by Tạ Thu Thâu of the Annamite Independence Party.
Rejecting (in the wake of the Shanghai massacre) the Comintern's "Kuomintang line", Thâu argued against a nationalist accommodation with the indigenous bourgeoisie and for immediate "proletarian socialist revolution".
Recognizing the Trotskyists' relative strength in organizing Saigon's factories and waterfront, the ICP cells in the city maintained a unique pact with the Trotskyists for four years in the mid-1930s. The two groups published a common paper, La Lutte, and presented joint "workers' lists" for Saigon municipal and colonial-council elections.
In August 1945, the Trotskyists joined other non-communist factions in demanding arms to fight the French. Shortly after, under the direction of Tran Van Giau, their former collaborators systematically hunted down and eliminated them, a fate shared by large numbers of Caodaists, independent nationalists and their families.
First Indochina War (1945–1954)
In March 1945, Imperial Japan overthrew the French colonial regime in Indochina, and the Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai declared nominal "independence." However, by August 1945, Japan had surrendered to the Allies. Taking advantage of the power vacuum, the Viet Minh launched a nationwide uprising, leading to Bao Dai's abdication on the 25th.
Ho Chi Minh later became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Prime Minister) on 28 August 1945 and issued a Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2. Although the Viet Minh convinced Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate, the government was not yet recognized by any nation.
Ho Chi Minh repeatedly petitioned President Harry Truman for support for Vietnamese independence, citing the Atlantic Charter, but Truman did not respond due to his anti-communist stance. After the successful establishment of an independent government in Hanoi, Vietnam was occupied by Kuomintang forces in the north and Anglo-French forces in the south of the 16th parallel.
Amid mounting encirclement by Allied forces and domestic opposition in November 1945, the ICP was officially dissolved and was downgraded to the "Institute for Studying Marxism in Indochina". In reality, the party still operated clandestinely. However, this did not eliminate tensions between communists and nationalists inside the Viet Minh.
The First Indochina War between the Viet Minh and France broke out in late 1946, ending their negotiations. In practice, the Viet Minh became the leading force in the struggle against the colonialists and their anti-communist sympathizers. After being recognized by the People's Republic of China and the USSR in January 1950, the Viet Minh demonstrated a stance of class struggle of Marxist theory by implementing land reforms and redistribution.
According to the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), membership in the Viet Minh grew to about 400,000 members by 1950. In 1951, during the war for independence, the officially dissolved Indochinese Communist Party was re-established and renamed the Worker's Party of Vietnam. At the same time, the Viet Minh merged with other progressive forces to create Lien Viet.
Vietnam War (1955–1975)
At the second party congress in 1951, it was decided that the ICP would be split into three; one party for each nation of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. However, in an official note it said that the "Vietnamese party reserves the right to supervise the activities of its fraternal parties in Cambodia and Laos".
The Khmer People's Revolutionary Party was established in 1951 and the Lao People's Party was formed four years later in 1955. The third party congress, held in Hanoi in 1960, formalized the tasks of constructing socialism in North Vietnam, and committed the party to the "liberation" of southern Vietnam.
In the south, the United States supported an anti-communist state, the Republic of Vietnam, successor of the State of Vietnam, established in October 1955. In 1960, North Vietnam established a political front in the south called the National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam.
The Vietnam War was a critical Cold War flashpoint fought between two opposing coalitions. On one side was the socialist alliance of North Vietnam and the NLF; on the other was the anti-communist South Vietnam, heavily supported by the United States, Australia, South Korea, and Thailand.
The north Vietnamese received support from the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. As the war expanded regionally, Cambodia and Laos were pulled into their own civil conflicts. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge and GRUNK fought to overthrow the pro-American Khmer Republic, while in Laos, the communist Pathet Lao battled the U.S.-backed Kingdom of Laos.
The Cambodian and Laotian communists received training and support from the North Vietnam and NLF. During the war the Worker's Party of Vietnam also established its sub-branch in the south called the People's Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam, which aimed to lead the NLF.
After the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam and later the collapse of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975, Vietnam was de facto unified under the leadership of the revolutionaries and the south was under the leadership of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG), leading to formal reunification under the Socialist Republic on 2 July 1976.
Ruling party (1976–present)
The fourth party congress comprised 1,008 delegates who represented 1,553,500 party members, an estimated three % of the Vietnamese population. A new line for socialist construction was approved at the congress, the Second Five-Year Plan (1976–1980) was approved and several amendments were made to the party's constitution. The party's new line emphasized building socialism domestically and supported socialist expansion internationally.
The party's economic goal was to build a strong and prosperous socialist country in 20 years. The economic goals set for the Second Five-Year Plan failed to be implemented, and a heated debate about economic reform took place between the fourth and fifth party congresses.
The first was at the sixth CC plenum of the fourth party congress in September 1979, but the most revealing one occurred at the tenth CC plenum of the fourth party congress which lasted from 9 October to 3 November 1981. The plenum adopted a reformist line but was forced to moderate its position when several grassroot party chapters rebelled against its resolution. At the fifth party congress, held in March 1982, General Secretary Lê Duẩn said the party had to strive to reach two goals; to construct socialism and to protect Vietnam from Chinese aggression, but priority was given to socialist construction.
The party leadership acknowledged the failures of the Second Five-Year Plan, claiming that their failure to grasp the economic and social conditions aggravated the country's economic problems. The Third Five-Year Plan (1981–1985) emphasized the need to improve living conditions and the need for more industrial construction, but agriculture was given top priority. Other points were to improve the deficiencies in central planning, improve economic trade relations with the COMECON countries, Laos and Kampuchea.
While Lê Duẩn continued to believe in the goals set in the Third Five-Year Plan, leading members within the Communist Party were losing their trust in the system. It was in this mood that the 1985 price reform was introduced—market prices were introduced, which led to a sudden increase in inflation. By 1985, it became apparent that the Third Five-Year Plan had failed miserably.
Attacks against the interests of the well-to-do were part of the Marxist ideas of class struggle. The majority of the educated came from well-off families, and the middle and upper classes held education and abilities that were critical to the country's prosperity, but the Communist Party's attitude toward those groups has frequently hampered their effective use of their education and skills. As a result, Vietnam's most pressing needs, such as the rebuilding of a shattered economy and the establishment of long-term economic development, had largely gone unfulfilled. The Communist Party's personnel lacked the skills to tackle these issues, and the communists' monopolization of power made it impossible for those who did have the skills to put them to use in the decade following the war's end. Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world during Lê Duẩn's rule.
Organization
National Congress
The National Congress is the party's highest organ, and is held once every five years. Delegates decide the direction of the party and the Government at the National Congress. The CC is elected, delegates vote on policies and candidates are elected to posts within the central party leadership.
After decisions taken at the National Congress are ratified, the congress is dissolved. The CC implements the decisions of the National Congress during the five-year period between congresses. When the CC is not in session, the Politburo implements the policies of the National Congress.
Central Committee
The CC is the CPV's most powerful institution. It delegates some of its powers to the Secretariat and the Politburo when it is not in session. When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the Vietnamese leadership, led by Lê Duẩn, began to centralize power. This policy continued until the sixth National Congress, when Nguyễn Văn Linh took power. Linh pursued a policy of economic and political decentralization.
The party and state bureaucracy opposed Linh's reform initiatives; because of this, Linh tried to win the support of provincial leaders, causing the powers of the provincial chapters of the CPV to increase in the 1990s. The CPV lost its power to appoint or dismiss provincial-level officials in the 1990s; Võ Văn Kiệt tried to wrestle this power back to the centre during the 1990s without success.
Because of these changes, power in Vietnam has become increasingly devolved. The number of CC members with a provincial background increased from 15.6% in 1982 to 41% in 2001. Because of the devolution of power, the powers of the CC have increased substantially; for example, when a two-thirds majority of the Politburo voted in favour of retaining Lê Khả Phiêu as General Secretary, the CC voted against the Politburo's motion and voted unanimously in favour of removing him from his post of General Secretary.
The CC did this because most of its members had a provincial background, or were working in the provinces. These members were the first to be affected when the economy began to stagnate during Lê Khả Phiêu's rule. The CC elects the Politburo in the aftermath of the Party Congress.
The General Secretary of the CC is the highest office within the Communist Party, is elected by the CC, and can remain in post for two five-year terms. The general secretary presides over the work of the CC, the Politburo, the Secretariat, is responsible for issues such as defence, security and foreign affairs, and chairs meetings with important leaders. The general secretary holds the post of Secretary of the Central Military Commission, the party's highest military affairs organ.
Before 1991, there was significantly greater concentration of power in the General Secretary. After the revised constitution was adopted in 1992, power was practically more distributed between the General Secretary, the President, and the Prime Minister, under a semi-codified leadership collectivity system known as the Four Pillars.
Ideology
Vietnam is a socialist republic with a one-party system led by the Communist Party. The CPV espouses Marxism–Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought, the ideologies of Ho Chi Minh.
The two ideologies serve as guidance for the activities of the party and state. According to the Constitution, Vietnam is in a period of transition to socialism. Marxism–Leninism was introduced to Vietnam in the 1920s and 1930s, and Vietnamese culture has been led under the banners of patriotism and Marxism–Leninism.
Ho Chi Minh's beliefs were not systematized during his life, nor did this occur quickly following his death. Trường Chinh's 1973 biography of Ho Chi Minh emphasized his revolutionary policies. The thoughts of Ho Chi Minh were systematized in 1989 under the leadership of Nguyễn Văn Linh. Ho Chi Minh Thought and Marxism–Leninism became the official ideologies of the CPV and the state in 1991.
The CPV's claim to legitimacy was retained after the collapse of communism elsewhere in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 by its commitment to the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh, according to Sophie Quinn-Judge. According to Pierre Brocheux, the current state ideology is Ho Chi Minh Thought, with Marxism–Leninism playing a secondary role.
Some claim that Ho Chi Minh Thought is used as a veil for a party leadership that has stopped believing in communism, but others rule this out on the basis that Ho Chi Minh was an avid supporter of Vladimir Lenin and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Still others see Ho Chi Minh Thought as a political umbrella term whose main function is to introduce non-socialist ideas and policies without challenging socialist legality.
Marxism–Leninism has lost its ideological stronghold in Vietnamese politics since the introduction of a mixed economy in the late 1980s and 1990s. Because of the Đổi Mới reforms, the party could not base its rule on defending only the workers and the peasants, which was officially referred to as the "working class-peasant alliance".
In the constitution introduced in 1992, the State represented the "workers, peasants and intellectuals". In recent years, the party has stopped representing a specific class, but instead the "interests of the entire people", which includes entrepreneurs. The final class barrier was removed in 2006, when party members were allowed to engage in private activities.
Transition to socialism
Characters of a new social regime were formed in Ho Chi Minh's thoughts through, first of all, the method of transforming features of old regime into its contrary facets. It was the dialectical thinking method. According to this method, the process of formulating the people's democratic regime in reality was considered the process of wiping out comprehensively fundamental features of colonial-feudal regime.
According to Ho Chi Minh, before it becomes socialist, a society must evolve through national liberation and the construction of a people's democratic regime. While national liberation is the means of taking power, the establishment of a people's democratic regime requires the total destruction of the feudalist, colonialist and imperialist society.
Only through this destruction can Vietnam transit to socialism. Lai Quoc Khanh, a journalist in the theoretical Tạp chí Cộng Sản wrote: "The people's democratic regime is an objective necessity in the development course of Vietnamese society". A people's democratic regime, however, is not a socialist regime. For instance, in a people's democratic regime private ownership still exists, while in a communist stage of development, ownership does not exist. Vietnamese communists consider the distribution of land during Ho Chi Minh's early rule as an example of people's democracy.
However, this is not the only difference. The logic is that difference in the ownership of productions lead to different modes of production. Ho Chi Minh said that the basic economic tenets of a people's democratic regime was state ownership of certain segments of production—considered socialist since the state belongs to the people, cooperatives, which were half-socialist in nature but would develop into fully socialist economic entities, and the personal economics of individual handicraft and peasantry, which would later develop into cooperatives, private capitalism and state capitalism, where the state shares capital with capitalists to develop the country further.
Since these economic basics relied on different types of ownership, the economy of the people's democratic regime cannot be considered socialist, hence the regime is not socialist. For example, in the socialist-oriented market economy, the state-owned sector will be the dominant sector, hence the socialist character of the economy dominates. The political platform of the second party congress held in 1951 stated: "The people's democratic revolution is neither an old-type capitalist democratic revolution nor socialist revolution, it is a new-type capitalist democratic revolution which will evolve into socialist revolution without experiencing a revolutionary civil war."
"Superiority of socialism"
There has never been a scientific and revolutionary theory than Marxism–Leninism. It is a 'comprehensively and logically tight theory which gives people a total world view' and a theory that not only aims at 'understanding the world, but also changing it'. ... Capitalism will certainly be replaced by socialism, because that is the law of human history, which no one can deny.
The Communist Party believes that socialism is superior to other ideologies and state systems. According to Marxism–Leninism, socialism is the second-to-last stage of socio-economic development before the classless, stateless and moneyless society that is communism.
To build a socialist society, communists revolutionaries have to imagine, outline and study society. The party believes that socialism leads to human liberation from every oppressive relations, exploitation and injustice. While the founders of Marxism–Leninism forecasted the main characteristics of a socialist society, the founders are not considered by the party to hold the whole truth. The main outline of this ideology is upheld by the party, that is, a social mode superior and more advanced:
The highest goal of socialism is to liberate the people from every yoke of exploitation and economic slavery of the spirit, enabling holistic human development.
The material base of socialism are the forces generated by modern advanced production.
Socialism is the gradual abolition of private property and capitalism and the transformation of the means of production to the working class.
Socialism creates labor organizations and a new form laborer with high discipline and productivity.
Socialism means the implementation of the principle of each according to his contribution.
State socialism is a new kind of democracy, reflecting the nature of the working class and representing the interests, power and will of the working people.
Socialist-oriented market economy
Proponents of the socialist-oriented market economy claim that the system is neither socialist nor capitalist, but that it is "socialist-oriented". The Communist Party rejects the view that a market economy has to be a capitalist invention. According to the party, "a socialist market-oriented economy is a multi-sectoral commodity economy, which operates in accordance with market mechanisms and a socialist orientation".
According to Nguyễn Phú Trọng, "it is a new type of market economy in the history of the market economy's development. It is a kind of economic organization which abides by market economy rules but is based on, led by, and governed by the principles and nature of socialism reflected in its three aspects – ownership, organization, and distribution – for the goal of a prosperous people in a strong nation characterized by democracy, fairness, and civilization".
There are multiple forms of ownership in a socialist-oriented market economy. Economic sectors operate in accordance with the law and are equal under the law in the interest of co-existence, cooperation and healthy competition. Nguyễn Phú Trọng said:
The state economy plays a key role; the collective economy is constantly consolidated and developed; the private economy is one of the driving forces of the collective economy; multiple ownership, especially joint-stock enterprises, is encouraged; the state and collective economies provide a firm foundation for the national economy. The relations of distribution ensure fairness, create momentum for growth, and operate a distribution mechanism based on work results, economic efficiency, contributions by other resources, and distribution through the social security and welfare system. The State manages the economy through laws, strategies, plans, policies, and mechanisms to steer, regulate, and stimulate socio-economic development.
Unlike in capitalist countries, a socialist-oriented market economy does not "wait for the economy to reach a high level of development before implementing social progress and fairness, nor 'sacrifice' social progress and fairness to the pursuit of mere economic growth". Policies are enacted for the sole purpose of improving the people's standard of living.
Role of Marxism
Classical Marxist texts still play a prominent role in the Communist Party's ideological development. The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is considered an "immortal work". According to the party, the real value of The Communist Manifesto is not that it can provide answers to present revolutionary problems, but the way it explains the gradual liberation of the working class and laborers. It functions as a basis for the most basic theoretical beliefs upheld by the party.
According to Tô Huy Rứa, currently a member of the 11th Politburo: "By participating in the process of globalization complete with its opportunities and challenges, as was predicted by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto, the Vietnamese Communist Party and people will further find guidelines for a precious world outlook and methodologies. Sustainable values of this immortal theoretical work and political platform will remain forever". Trần Bạch Đằng wrote:
The reality of Vietnam after the revolution is different from what I imagined when I joined the party ... Life has shown us that it is much more complicated. The thing is, we received Marxism in a theoretical sense, not in a full sense, and the information was not very precise. Marxism came to Vietnam through the interpretation of Stalin and Mao. It was simplified to a great extent. And now we read the classic works of Marx and other founders, and we find that things were not so simple. Though the social conditions under which Marx wrote his works are not the same as now, the principles are the same. Yet those principles were not interpreted precisely correctly.
Stance on nationalism
The Communist Party of Vietnam was founded in 1930, competing with nationalist parties. In 1941, it established the Viet Minh as a coalition front. Amid the Indochina wars and the broader Cold War, anti-communist nationalists claimed that the communists had betrayed genuine nationalists, insisting that Vietnamese communism and Vietnamese nationalism were mutually exclusive. The communists revolutionaries, however, have portrayed themselves as the sole legitimate leaders of Vietnamese nationalism to legitimize the authority of the Communist Party.
Ho Chi Minh rejected the "traditional conservative Vietnamese nationalist course". He also rejected selfish nationalism and rather advocated for patriotism, besides that he still saw nationalism as a driving force against colonized states. While seeing it as a driving force, Ho and the Viet Minh fought against "short-sighted nationalism and great-power chauvinism." According to Ho, however, "genuine patriotism" could "never be separated from proletarian internationalism". Ho's Vietnamese nationalism was for multiculturalism. The CPV and its government supports socialist patriotism.
Analysis
The CPV's ideology has been criticized from the left for its supposed departure from Marxist principles. Critics have argued that the socialist-oriented market economy is a re-capitalized system which allows massive capitalist markets, enriches the bourgeoisie, and increases foreign direct investment, at the cost of expanding economic inequality and social unrest. Leftist dissident Bui Tin opined that "the Communist Party [of Vietnam] is full of opportunists and privileged elites. The morality is lost. All is the search for dollars."
Party-to-party relations
In a resolution of the 10th National Party Congress, it was decided to renovate and strengthen the party's foreign policy. As of 2010, the CC's Commission for External Relations has good relations with 222 political parties in 115 countries. According to the party, this is an "important contributions to accelerating the renovation process, industrialization and modernization of Vietnam".
The party does not only have foreign relations with communist parties; relations with non-communist parties have been established because their countries are economically important to Vietnam. Relations with other communist and workers' parties are very important and built on "solidarity, friendship, mutual support in the struggle for socialism in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and pure internationalism of the working class".
It exchanges views with such parties on theoretical and practical issues regarding socialist construction, party building and current problems. The CPV is active in international communist and workers party gatherings, such as the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties.
The CPV currently maintains relations with over 100 communist and workers' parties. The party has emphasized the importance of relations with the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and the Cambodian People's Party, as all three parties are the spiritual incarnations of the Indochinese Communist Party. It also maintains good relations with the Chinese Communist Party, the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Workers' Party of Korea. The CPV sent delegations to the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 2008, the 5th Congress of the Party of Italian Communists in 2008, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of India in 2008, the 9th Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2008, the 18th Congress of Communist Party of Greece in 2009, the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of Denmark in 2009, the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of Spain in 2009, the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist–Leninist) in 2009, the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Brazil in 2009 and that of the Peruvian Communist Party in 2010.
The CPV maintains also friendly relations with Latin American left-wing political parties. A delegation from the CPV participated in the 22nd Meeting of Foro de São Paulo in El Salvador in June 2016.