Enacting Anticorruption: The Reconfiguration of Audit Regimes in Contemporary Vietnam

Enacting Anticorruption:
The Reconguration of Audit Regimes in Contemporary Vietnam

Ken MacLean
1he most general term or .ao/o (//.a o/o) in \ietnamese combines
two words, ...- and /..a-o/. Although the terms precise etymology
is not accurately known, the pairing suggests an origin in Buddhist philoso-
phy, which identines desire, along with hatred and delusion, as one o the
three main causes o suering.
J
Greed is, ater all, a maniestation o desire,
an aective state that inevitably returns to torment its victim no matter how
many times it is ed. 1his perhaps explains why acts o corruption are closely
linked to eating in \ietnam: corrupt oncials are said to eat bribes (o / /)
or, more bluntly, to eat money (o /o) itsel. In this regard, corrupt oncials
are not unlike the hungry ghosts that haunt the popular imagination. Both
are insatiable, moreover, the ailure to eed them similarly invites their mali-
cious intererence in ones aairs.
But these metaphysical associations, while they reveal why corruption is
o/o .c:. uoi c../c68- 8.
Copyright .c. by Duke University Press
positions 20:2 Spring 2012 596
so dincult to eradicate, obscure other interpretations, such as those that take
into account the situational ethics that state socialism ostered in \ietnam. As
was the case in other socialist states, redirecting material goods and granting
bureaucratic avors that could be recalled in the uture became a common
way to manage uncertainty in the ace o the chronic shortages the centrally
planned economy produced even though these inormal quid pro quo
arrangements exacerbated the very problem they were meant to mitigate.
!
In recent years, however, it has become much more dincult or govern-
ment oncials to ;ustiy their eorts to capture rents since the living condi-
tions, administrative structures, and legal rameworks that once made such
il/licit exchanges necessary have changed dramatically.
!
Indeed, ongoing
reorms, collectively known as Renovation (D a), have cut poverty
rates rom over c percent to less than .c percent and have helped \ietnam
become one o the worlds astest- growing economies.
In theory, the reorms, which began in 86, should have constrained the
previous ability o government oncials to arbitrarily make law (/.a /a/)
on their own. 1his practice, however, remains widespread and acilitates
the deliberate misuse o public power or private gain, the most inclusive
rendering o the twelve orms o misconduct denned as corruption under
\ietnamese law.
!
Unortunately, Renovation has not reduced the need to
eed these oncials so much as it has stimulated their appetites. Indeed,
they have become so insatiable that growing numbers o \ietnamese are
now willing to submit ormal written denunciations o corrupt oncials to
investigatory bodies even though such action makes them vulnerable to
extralegal retaliation.
1hese trends have helped corruption scandals to become a privileged site

or (trans- ) national debates over accountability in contemporary \ietnam
and the notions o power, privilege, and obligation to which they are linked.
1he debates take many orms, however, their primary ocus is upon current
eorts to denne, measure, and enorce greater accountability in a context in
which the Communist Party maintains that the socialist- oriented market
economy is not an end unto itsel but the means or the countrys eventual
transition to socialism.
6
No dennitive answers have yet emerged. Nonethe-
less, close attention to the orm, content, and timing o the anticorruption
measures taken to date, I argue, clarines why the dierent regulatory regimes
MacLean R Enacting Anticorruption 597
used to audit the nnancial- moral conduct o government oncials have grown
not only more complex and diverse over time but less distinct as well. 1his
is because Renovation did not replace one regulatory regime with another,
instead, the economic, administrative, and legal reorms implemented since
86 have introduced a range o new auditing procedures but let others intact
and contributed to recombinant ones in still others.
As a consequence, it has
become quite dincult to determine where socialist techniques to promote
compliance with existing ethical guidelines and legal requirements end and
neoliberal ones begin, as each approach, although premised on dramati-
cally dierent assumptions, exhibits some o the eatures thought to denne
the other. 1his unexpected outcome underscores why historically inormed
and ethnographically nuanced studies o government (i.e., the specinc prac-
tices that make it possible to guide the conduct o onesel and others toward
desired ends) are needed to better understand how local contexts enable,
contest, and rework global modes o regulation.
Contexts
Oncial as well as popular concern over corruption is not new in \ietnam.
1he mass media, although still under direct and indirect orms o state man-
agement, has reported on scandals, especially cases involving low- and mid-
level oncials, or years. However, nearly all my inormants ound the cover-
age o a .cc6 corruption scandal to be unprecedented in investigative scope
and detail.
8
1his was particularly unusual since the scandal in question
the countrys largest to date involved an extremely sensitive topic: the
criminal misuse o overseas development assistance (ODA) by high- ranking
government personnel, many o whom were also prominent Communist
Party members.
During the spring o .cc6, ;ournalists gradually revealed that oncials
based in Pro;ect Management Unit 8 (PMU- 8), which oversees the dis-
tribution o ODA or transportation pro;ects across northern \ietnam,
had embe..led nearly US3 million the previous year to pay or dierent
social evils (/ oo s /), that is, practices the party/state deems harmul
to the moral and cultural well- being o the nation. In this instance, the evils
included the misappropriation o oreign aid to cover substantial gambling
debts, the services o high- end sex workers, the cost o expensive drinking
sessions, as well as the steady stream o bribes needed to keep these and
other criminal activities secret.
1he controversy reached its initial peak in early April o .cc6, shortly
beore the 1enth National Congress o the Communist Party. In the weeks
that ollowed, high- ranking party members issued do.ens o oncial state-
ments, portions o which were eatured in hundreds o articles that appeared
in the mass media and other speciali.ed publications regarding the causes
o corruption in contemporary \ietnam and the actions proposed to eradi-
cate them.
1he oncial responses were unoncially augmented by e- mail

threads, chat room discussions, Web blogs, political cartoons, and lengthy
essays \ietnamese posted on digital archives, both inside and outside the
country. 1aken together, these disparate materials, although not analy.ed
here, ormed a vast distributed archive, and their hyperlinked contents oer
intriguing insights into how digiti.ed artiacts are (mis- ) used by others,
on- and o- line, to produce multiple and oten contradictory truths about
the nature o actually existing government in \ietnam.
J0
1he signincance o
this, especially or comparative studies o how neoliberal models o govern-
ment are understood, calculated, and acted upon in nonliberal settings, is
several- old.
JJ
Iirst, a substantial percentage o the \ietnamese- authored accounts draw
upon their own para- ethnographic expertise, either as oncials within
dierent agencies or as people who regularly interact with them, to ash-
ion competing representations o the party/state, its inner workings, and
the encacy o the methods currently used to audit the conduct o govern-
ment personnel.
J!
Close attention to how these authors construct their own
authority makes it possible to explore the dierent ways credibility is dem-
onstrated and evidence presented in a context in which acts are more
oten ashioned than ound. Second, the anecdotes these accounts contain
also provide insights into how government oncials redirect capital, goods,
and services through as well as around state institutions. 1his practice has
its origins in asking- giving (so- ./) relations, the nexible interagency bar-
gaining arrangements the centrally planned economy made necessary by
virtue o its innexibility. However, their continued use in the present sug-
gests the categories currently used to distinguish the state rom the nonstate,
the licit rom the illicit, and the ormal rom the inormal are inadequate, i
not also misleading, given the considerable discretionary power many on-
cials still en;oy within the socialist- oriented market economy.
J!
1hird and
most relevantly here, eorts by current and retired party leaders to man-
age public perceptions o the PMU- 8 scandal did not produce a unined or
coherent position, instead, connicting viewpoints emerged. 1his outcome
renects long- standing tensions within dierent segments o the party/state
over the nature, direction, and pace o the reorm process. But it also signals
high- level disagreements over whether it is possible to harness the positive
aspects o capitalism and discard the negative ones, as some theoreticians
claim.
Fvidence o both concerns quickly disappeared ater the .cc6 National
Congress, but then reappeared in August o .cc when, ollowing a brie
and contentious trial, the Hanoi Peoples Court sentenced nine oncials
implicated in the PMU- 8 scandal to lengthy prison terms. (Approximately
two hundred more oncials, rom seventeen dierent agencies, connected to
the case received disciplinary punishments o various kinds.) 1he sentences
were less than hal o what was originally recommended by the Supreme
Peoples Court o Investigation, which monitored the trial on behal o the
National Assembly, the countrys highest representative body. 1he ensu-
ing controversy over whether innuential ngures had intervened behind
the scenes on their behal renewed debates over the encacy o initiatives
that dierent segments o the party/state had instituted between .cc and
.cc to nght corruption (./o //.a o/o). 1hese initiatives, which on-
cially asserted the continued relevance o socialist approaches as they also
adopted neoliberal ones, are discussed below.
However, the emphasis is on the eects these initiatives have had on insti-
tutional arrangements rather than the content o critical commentary that
now exists on the scandal. 1his ocus, which considers the material conse-
quences o dierent discursive positions, reveals a curious paradox. Namely,
each approach denned the primary source o bureaucratic corruption and
thus the orms o intervention best suited or its reduction in terms that
are most oten associated with the other. Socialist approaches, which are
conventionally thought to rely upon techno- scientinc and administrative
modes o regulation, also called or external perormance audits and other
business- management techniques to provide greater incentives or indi-
viduals to engage in ethical orms o sel- regulation, whereas neoliberal
approaches, which normally abhor regulatory mechanisms, recommended
the reintroduction o centrali.ed command- and- control measures to limit
the ability o government oncials to abuse their public positions or private
gain.
J!
1his outcome suggests that both regulatory regimes may have more
in common than is commonly thought and also raises the possibility that
recombinant orms exist.
Audit Cultures
1he reasons or this unexpected overlap stem rom the partial reconngu-
ration o dierent audit cultures in \ietnam. 1he concept comes rom
Marilyn Strathern, who employed it to describe how the procedures origi-
nally designed to promote nscal accountability within corporations have
coloni.ed other domains o public as well as private lie.
J
1he neoliberal
turn, she notes, has dramatically accelerated this trend, especially in public
institutions in which the demand or greater economic enciency as well as
accountability has transormed how medical, legal, and educational bod-
ies provide services to their consumers. Although Strathern was keenly
interested in the eects auditing procedures have on knowledge production
within the academy, her observations remain extremely relevant to other
areas o lie in which the nnancial and the moral are presumed to meet.
Michael Power, a proessor o economics and a proessional accountant,
has evocatively dubbed these increasingly ubiquitous mechanisms or audit-
ing behavior and thus enacting government at a distance as rituals o veri-
ncation.
J6
Such rituals, which renect distrust and inequality between the
principal and the agent, are nowhere more apparent than in the neld o
international development in which a range o multi- and bilateral nnancial
institutions and innuential nongovernmental organi.ations (e.g., 1ranspar-
ency International) increasingly require states to implement anticorruption
measures as a precondition to urther grants and loans. 1he global proliera-
tion o these interventions, usually conducted in the name o good gover-
nance, oer one important means to examine the statelike eects nonstate
entities now produce in dierent contexts.
J
Yet, despite the considerable amount o scholarly attention currently given
to neoliberalism, the vast ma;ority o studies conducted to date remain his-
torically as well as ethnographically thin.
J8
Some critics have attributed
this outcome to Nikolas Roses innuential reading o Michel Ioucaults
essays on governmentality, which has ostered a preoccupation with shits
in political reason at the analytical expense o other concerns, such as the
conduct o conduct in settings that are neither Western nor liberal.
J
How-
ever, these preoccupations also renect a broader ailure to provinciali.e
neoliberalism, which, like capitalism, is oten assumed to operate according
to a universal logic that transorms everything in its wake.
!0
Consequently,
we have little sense o how the intended targets o perormance audits
actually understand and respond to these interventions, i at all.
!J
1he paucity o studies on this topic is surprising, as perormance audits
are not a recent phenomenon. A range o secular as well as religious institu-
tions have long employed auditing practices o their own to promote particu-
lar orms o personhood and sociality. Ior this reason, it is ar more accurate
to speak o audit culture in the plural rather than the singular. Moreover,
these alternate ormulations, which link the nnancial to the moral in a
variety o ways, have not necessarily disappeared with the passage o time.
Instead, these alternate ormulations continue to inorm how people seek to
govern themselves and others, even in contexts in which neoliberal ideolo-
gies are dominant.
!!
Attention to how these multiple and oten overlapping
orms o accountability are denned, measured, and deployed in specinc set-
tings thus oers an important i underutili.ed means to explore the ways in
which dierent audit cultures coexist, challenge, or become counter- woven
with one another.
Such accounts are particularly needed in contemporary \ietnam where
the party/state publicly maintains that the socialist- oriented market econ-
omy is not an end unto itsel but the means to make the eventual transition
to socialism. 1his outcome is possible, according to the countrys leading
theoreticians, because capitalism possesses modular qualities that permit
the countrys technocrats to harness its positive eatures namely, ones that
advance oncial interests and to discard its negative ones.
!!
Irom this per-
spective, the Renovation process was not supposed to be a transition rom
one distinct order to another, at least not in the sense that the term was
widely misapplied to the momentous changes in many parts o Furope ater
state socialism collapsed.
!!
Instead, oncial discourse portrays the reorm
process as the strategic revision and renewal o eorts to build socialism in
\ietnam though many o the government personnel I have spoken with
on this issue will privately admit that this outcome is neither easible nor
desired at this point.
!
Nonetheless, oncial assertions that this transition
will occur at some unspecined moment in the uture continue to be made
on a regular basis. 1his makes it dincult or advocates o dierent regula-
tory approaches to reach a consensus on what rituals o verincation are
presently needed to promote greater transparency and accountability, given
the hybrid nature o the socialist- oriented market economy and the ongoing
process o reorms.
1hese tensions prompt a series o questions that a signincant body o
research to date has ailed to answer. In what ways, or example, has the shit
rom a centrally planned economy to a predominantly market- driven one
in \ietnam aected how the practice and ob;ects o government are actu-
ally understood, calculated, and acted upon Do the momentous changes
that have occurred over the past two decades actually signiy the retreat
o the party/state in the ace o market pressures and, as a consequence,
grant greater space or ordinary \ietnamese to govern themselves Or do
the new regulatory regimes put in place over this same period instead mark
the reconnguration and redeployment o the party/states claims to moral
authority in new areas o public and private lie as well as old ones
Again, it is not yet possible to dennitively answer these questions. But a
growing body o work on socialist orms o governmentality, much o it set
in the Peoples Republic o China, has emerged in recent years. 1hese stud-
ies indicate that Ioucaults theoretical insights can travel, provided the
categories, concepts, and genealogies that inorm it are modined (sometimes
signincantly) in the process. While a critical review o this scholarship is
beyond the scope o this discussion, much o it shares two crucial eatures.
1he nrst is the continued emphasis on techno- scientinc and administrative
reasoning, which has its ideological roots in Marxism- Leninism and, more
generally, the orms o High Modernism that prooundly shaped the practice
o government during the twentieth century. 1he second stresses the contin-
ued need or the party/state to act as the primary agent o national develop-
ment and in a manner that strengthens not only the country as a whole but
the overall quality o all its inhabitants. Hence there is a renewed interest
in mass campaigns as a cost- eective way to promote civility, civili.a-
tion, and cultural levels as well as address long- standing bio- political
concerns regarding the physical si.e, health, and intelligence o dierent
populations.
!6
1ogether, these socialist continuities mean oncial regulations rather
than market incentives still serve as the primary mechanism through which
the party/state seeks to denne dierent kinds o sub;ects and to guide their
conduct toward specinc ends, even as reorms have greatly expanded the
scope or individuals as well as groups to engage in seemingly autonomous
behavior. 1his interace, where at least two dierent orms o political ratio-
nality meet, crucially inorms Chinas experiment with a socialist- oriented
market economy what Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong term socialism rom
aar and makes the country such ertile terrain or those interested in
comparative studies o governmentality.
!
1he same argument applies to the Socialist Republic o \ietnam, which
liberally borrowed rom Maoist as well as Soviet models o political the-
ory and practice or much o the twentieth century, in addition to Irench
ones rom the colonial era. 1he reorms implemented in \ietnam over the
past two decades have also closely emulated those pioneered in the Peoples
Republic o China. 1hese broad similarities are urther reinorced by more
than three millennia o political, economic, and cultural interactions that
help ensure that oncial dennitions o what it means to be properly \iet-
namese continue to be ormed in complicated relation to their counterparts
in the north. 1his is not to suggest that \ietnam can be accurately under-
stood to be an extension or derivative o China. Rather, it is to note that
dierent modes o governmentality similarly exist in \ietnam, though their
specinc orm and content remain almost entirely unexplored.
!8
1oward this end, the remainder o my discussion ocuses critical atten-
tion on an issue in which two ostensibly distinct political rationalities one
labeled socialist and the other neoliberal collide and recombine in
ways that make visible how the practice o government and its ob;ects are
being reworked in the present around the problem o corruption. 1o sup-
port my contentions, I discuss some o the rituals o verincation used prior
to Renovation, which closely resemble those ound in other (ormer) social-
ist states. I then turn to oncial eorts over the past decade to investigate
and thus delimit the scale and scope o corruption in contemporary \iet-
nam. Interwoven throughout are urther details concerning the PMU- 8
scandal, as they help contextuali.e the rapid implementation o new laws,
policies, and procedures and the revival o older ones between .cc and
.cc to promote neoliberal orms o transparency and accountability in
government institutions. 1he interplay o these purportedly dierent audit
cultures shows how each has contributed to the partial reconnguration o
the other.
Pre-Renovation Audit Practices
1he misuse o public power or private gain is not a new problem, it emerged
at the very moment the nrst premodern state appeared. Moreover, since such
orms o oncial misconduct are made possible by bureaucracies rather than
particular modes o production, corruption did not disappear but instead
nourished in socialist settings. \ietnam was no exception. 1he Communist
Party historically regarded corruption as a dangerous disease (/ /o/) that
threatened its ability nrst to sei.e power and, ater , to govern, in part
owing to the enduring strength o relations based on blood. I one becomes
a Mandarin, then the entire lineage will benent (M/ o /.a ,a.o .
/ . o/), as one amous proverb bluntly put it. Hence the Communist
Partys repeated eorts to promote revolutionary ethics among its cad-
res, which redenned the basis o morality in nonkin- based terms: Industry,
thrit, incorruptibility, and righteousness.
!
1o help reali.e these ideals, the Communist Party regularly identined
model cadres (..o / o aa) or others to emulate and, through rep-
etition over time, become. Such practices commonly took two main orms.
Internally, the models served as templates or party members and state on-
cials, who were regularly required to participate in criticism/sel- criticism
sessions (o/- //o/// o/- //o/) with their colleagues during which their
respective shortcomings were publicly identined and plans made to rec-
tiy them. Fxternally, mass campaigns, known as emulation movements
( o/o /. // a.), ormed a regular eature o everyday lie and were
used to mobili.e the resources needed to reach oncial targets. While most
exhorted people to exceed these targets, others concentrated on cost reduc-
tion through thrit, which was intended to limit pronigate spending and
embe..lement, two problems the Communist Party acknowledged existed
at all levels o society. 1hese modes o surveillance were urther institution-
ali.ed through inspection teams ( .o /.. /a ./), which rom 6c
onwards traveled throughout the country to conduct perormance audits to
ensure ideological compliance with oncial policies, to authenticate produc-
tion quotas, and so on. 1ogether, these practices constituted the primary
rituals o verincation used in socialist \ietnam.
However, the countrys gradual shit rom a centrally planned economy
to an increasingly market- oriented one over the past two decades has rap-
idly overwhelmed socialist oversight and inspection mechanisms. By
the end o the nrst decade o Renovation (86 6), it was clear to most
observers that new as well as old orms o corruption were rapidly becom-
ing endemic though policy makers were divided over the reason or this
development. Some attributed it to isolated acts o individuals who chased
promotions and power and, because o their moral shortcomings, suc-
cumbed to temptation and illegally appropriated unds and property or
themselves and their children.
!0
Ior those who shared this view, stier pen-
alties, such as public trials and lengthy prison sentences, oered a tempting
solution to the increasing number and severity o corruption cases. Others
claimed the corruption was not due to the introduction o market reorms
per se, but it renected a broader societal problem that, like other social
evils, required urther moral education. Ior those who held this view, emu-
lation campaigns provided one way to improve culture standards (1o //)
and thus make corruption less socially acceptable.
!J
Still others conceded
corruption had already become a national calamity (,a. oo), one that
posed a serious threat to the Communist Partys legitimacy and its contin-
ued monopoly on political power. But they were careul to point out that
this problem was primarily a structural one owing to the endless possibilities
or collusion the current system part socialist, part capitalist oered,
hence their counter claims that the reorm process needed to be accelerated
to solve the problem.
!!
My inormants commonly attribute these connicting assessments to polit-
ical actions within the Communist Party, which are thought to range rom
ultra- conservatives, who still oppose the reorm process, to progressives, who
support greater civil and political liberties, including multiparty elections. In
reality, however, these opposed viewpoints are not mutually exclusive since
their agendas oten coincide on other topics. Moreover, many party elites
advocate two or more approaches to solving the problem, which, it should
be noted, began a decade ago.
!!
Public Administrative Reorms, cosponsored by the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) and the \ietnamese Once o Govern-
ment, nrst targeted the sources o bureaucratic corruption in . But these
eorts produced ew changes until when a series o massive protests
in 1hi Bnh Province required twelve hundred special police to suppress.
1he unrest, which involved several thousand armers, many o them war
veterans, sought to orce central- level oncials to take action ater their pro-
vincial counterparts had ailed to respond to repeated complaints about the
widespread involvement o local cadres in illegal land sei.ures, extralegal
taxation, and related abuses. Interestingly, large- scale protests also occurred
in the southern province o Dng Nai that same year, but the events in 1hi
Bnh were generally seen to be more worrisome or two reasons. Iirst, 1hi
Bnh Province is widely considered to be one o the cradles o the revolu-
tion, and its inhabitants have historically provided strong support or the
ob;ectives o the Communist Party. Second, the protests were a response to
the very orms o socioeconomic exploitation the party/state claimed to have
eradicated decades earlier. Ior these reasons, many observers interpreted the
protests and the oncial reaction to them as a direct indictment o the orms
o corruption that have accompanied Renovation.
!!
1he ear that events in 1hi Bnh could ignite urther unrest elsewhere
directly contributed to a number o new legislative measures: the Ordinance
on Anti- corruption (8), the Law on Complaints and Denunciations (8)
to protect whistleblowers, the Ordinance on Public Fmployees (8)
to require civil servants to declare connicts o interest where they existed,
and the Criminal Code (), which denned specinc orms o misconduct
as corruption crimes. But perhaps the most signincant measure was an
administrative one also passed in 8, popularly known as the Grassroots
Democracy Decree (GDD).
1he GDD was, in some respects, a return to the revolutionary past in that
it exhorted local oncials to take the people as the root (/, 1o /.a .),
that is, to seriously consider their interests and needs when making deci-
sions that aected their everyday lives. 1o encourage this, the GDD estab-
lished some general mechanisms or greater popular participation in local
administrative aairs. 1he intent behind the reorm, which was conveyed
in the oncial slogan that accompanied it 1he People Know, the People
Discuss, the People Do, the People Inspect did not radically transorm
how local oncials conducted their business, however. Instead, popular par-
ticipation, where it occurred, remained ormalistic in nature and restricted
to rituali.ed public meetings where the outcomes had been privately deter-
mined in advance.
!
Despite this obvious weakness, the GDD did set an
important precedent in that it created, i only on paper, the social space or
ordinary people to have some input into their governance.
Ior this reason, the GDD marks a notable departure rom the mass
activism that characteri.ed the prereorm era. Although such activism also
permitted particular expressions o agency, it typically privileged entire seg-
ments o the population (e.g., poor peasants or women), who collectively par-
ticipated in campaigns to achieve targets dierent segments o the party/state
set or them. 1he GDD, by contrast, shited the ocus to the individual
specincally, the policy- aware sub;ect who was now oncially authori.ed to
engage not only in dierent aspects regarding local aairs but on an ongo-
ing basis, albeit still in highly circumscribed ways. Again, this shit was
not designed to radically transorm how the practices o government are
enacted in rural areas at the commune level and below. Nonetheless, the
GDD, which was revised and expanded in .cc, has measurably contrib-
uted to popular demands or more meaningul orms o participation and
increased expectations o transparency and accountability.
!6
Ior this reason, current anticorruption eorts cannot be reduced to either
the PMU- 8 scandal (.cc .cc) or innghting among political elites, who
sought to use the controversy to promote their respective agendas both
beore and ater the 1enth National Congress o the Communist Party in
April .cc6. At the same time, as the sections below make clear, they cannot
be entirely separated either. 1hus close attention to how each event aected
the other reveals some o the ways socialist and neoliberal approaches
to government unexpectedly intersect around corruption a problem
that is simultaneously moral, political, legal, economic, and socio- cultural
in nature.
The Investigations
In late August o .cc, an anonymous denunciation arrived at the Ministry
o Public Security that identined Bi Quang Hng as the head o several
gambling rings. Because o the nature o the charges, a copy o the letter
was orwarded to the Lng Bin District o Hanoi where Hng, a ormer
member o the tranc police, lived, with a request that a preliminary investi-
gation be carried out. A month later, the police submitted their initial nnd-
ings to the ministry. 1he denunciation, they concluded, had a actual basis:
Hng and his business partner, Nguyn \n Hng, did in act manage two
si.eable gambling rings. 1he nrst consisted o heavy gamblers, who used
the Internet to place wagers ranging rom several thousand to several hun-
dred thousand dollars at a time with bookmakers in Russia, Hong Kong,
and Macau who placed bets on Furopean ootball matches.
!
1he second
enabled ordinary gamblers to place parallel bets on the daily outcome o the
state lottery an extremely popular but illegal pastime known as gam-
bling or un (./ ). In both cases, the report continued, most o the
customers were either current or ormer government oncials.
!8
1he nndings prompted the General Department o Police to initiate
a larger investigation, which began in late September o .cc. By mid-
December, investigators had gathered suncient evidence to move on Hng,
who they quietly arrested in the act o accepting bets in 1h L Park, next
to the National Zoo. A computer, sei.ed rom his home later that day, pro-
vided urther details on the direct involvement o high- ranking oncials,
including a hal do.en men connected to Pro;ect Management Unit 8
(PMU- 8) the state agency within the Ministry o 1ransport that over-
sees eorts to moderni.e the countrys inrastructure. 1hese connections
were o particular concern to investigators, as a substantial portion o this
agencys annual budget comes rom the World Bank, the Furopean Union,
and Japan in the orm o overseas development assistance (ODA).
1he ear that some ODA had been raudulently appropriated and
diverted toward illegal ends also proved true, though it is still not known
which donors were directly aected, as the unds were skimmed rom the
administrative ees PMU- 8 levied on construction pro;ects it managed.
According to media reports, PMU- 8 oncials siphoned o more than US3
million rom this revenue stream to engage in various illegal activities and
to pay bribes to hide them. At the center o the scandal was Bi 1in Dng,
the general director o PMU- 8, who had personally placed bets totaling
more than US3..6 million between September and December o .cc alone.
When asked why he risked his career and home, which he had mortgaged
to cover US3.c,ccc he lost on an Arsenal- Manchester United match shortly
beore his arrest, Dng explained that he was driven to gamble because
o an unhappy marital lie and to kill time due to boredom.
!
But the
scandal, which badly strained \ietnams relationship with some o its larg-
est donors and required dierent government bodies to devote considerable
resources to bring it to an oncial end, is noteworthy or reasons beyond
scale.
1he investigative limits normally placed on corruption scandals involv-
ing high- level oncials were relaxed, though only to a point and or a rela-
tively brie moment in time. Nonetheless, ;ournalists were able to exploit the
opportunity to devote considerable coverage to the PMU- 8 scandal, much
o it quite critical, including the unprecedented demand that a sitting min-
ister resign. 1he details leaked to the press also enabled experts some
recogni.ed, others sel- appointed to indirectly raise a question that has
yet to receive a direct answer: what, i any, relationship exists between the
\ietnamese Communist Party, its current model or national development,
and the perceived rise in corruption and other orms o misconduct by
oncials at all levels o government
Forts to answer this question were made more urgent by two other
events, which occurred shortly beore the PMU- 8 scandal broke and
inormed the commentary as well as the anticorruption initiatives that
ollowed. 1he nrst was the Anti- corruption Law passed by the National
Assembly in late November o .cc. 1he new law, which extended provi-
sions on corruption in the . constitution, was later named by I-/o.a
o-/, a leading online daily, as one o the top ten political developments o the
year. Covering twenty- our pages, the law promised sweeping changes that
would introduce new orms o transparency and accountability at all levels
o the bureaucracy. 1hese included the creation o a comprehensive system
to coordinate the sixteen anticorruption agencies already in existence and
the requirement that all government employees as well as their spouses and
children declare their respective assets and sources o income primarily
to avoid uture connicts o interest. Directors o dierent government agen-
cies were also inormed they would be held personally accountable or any
corrupt activities in their units. In short, the law signaled a shit in emphasis
rom nghting corruption ater the act to preventing it rom occurring
though precisely how this was to be achieved remains unclear.
1his shit toward prevention received urther emphasis three days later
when selected details rom a drat report by the Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Central Committee o
the Communist Party were disseminated in the state- controlled media. 1he
report, based on our years o research, constituted the nrst diagnostic sur-
vey on corruption ever carried out in \ietnam. Conducted between March
.cc. and November .cc, the study collected data rom ,c people rom
seven dierent provinces as well as three government ministries. In addition
to the basic survey o .cc questions, the investigators acilitated c discus-
sion workshops involving cadres, civil servants, employees in state- owned
enterprises, and ordinary citi.ens.
!0
Unortunately, the complete text o the
report is not available to the public and, given the ate o previous studies
on controversial topics, it may never be released. 1he details strategically
leaked to the public were nonetheless revealing.
More than two- thirds o those surveyed agreed that giving money to
oncials had become a common way to resolve problems, a response given
credence by the act that over one- third o the cadres and civil servants
in the study personally admitted to soliciting and accepting bribes. When
asked why this was the case, two- thirds o them claimed it was because o
inadequate monitoring and inspection mechanisms rather than low wages,
a problem long cited as the primary cause o corruption.
!J
Over 8 percent
o the cadres and civil servants and 8 percent o the employees in state-
owned enterprises urther explained that they do not actively implement
existing anticorruption measures owing to the ear o retribution rom their
colleagues.
!!
Given that black expenditures are said to constitute up to
c percent o the total operating costs within state- owned enterprises, it is
not surprising that many people have a vested interest in protecting these
extralegal revenue streams.
!!
But perhaps the most striking bit o inorma-
tion released by the Central Committee o the Communist Party was a
1op 1en List o the most corrupt government agencies. 1he top three,
as ranked by participants in the study, included the land administration
agency, import/export licensing authorities, and the tranc police. O those
surveyed, more than c percent claimed to personally know o instances in
which sta at these agencies had abused their oncial positions to obtain
money or gits.
!!
At nrst glance, the list oers ew surprises or those with nrst- hand
experience with government oncials in contemporary \ietnam, though
the rankings prompted vigorous debates over their relative accuracy that I
witnessed in other social spaces (Internet chat rooms, sidewalk beer halls,
and so on). But the decision to selectively disclose some o the unpublished
reports main nndings served other purposes as well. Iirst, by making vis-
ible what is normally invisible, the Central Committee o the Communist
Party sought to demonstrate there is nothing beyond its ability to know.
!

Second, the study provided some empirical proo o the scale o the problem,
even i it did not specincally answer the question o why corruption had
become endemic at all levels o government. 1hird, the timing o the leak,
almost immediately ater the National Assembly approved the new Law on
Anti- corruption, signaled the Central Committees intent to govern others
on the basis o this newly acquired knowledge through techno- scientinc and
administrative means in combination with older methods.
1he nrst sign o this intent was Decision No. c, which the prime min-
isters once issued in early Iebruary o .cc6. More commonly known
as the Action Plan, it outlined what secondary legal documents and
related mechanisms were needed or the implementation o the new Anti-
corruption Law, then scheduled to go into eect in June o .cc6. Observers
remain divided over whether the timing o the announcement shortly
ater the highly public arrest o PMU- 8 General Director Bi 1in Dng
in late January was intended to demonstrate to the public that political
elites were committed to making signincant changes to address the problem.
I so, the eort largely ailed, as the PMU- 8 scandal proceeded to dominate
the mass media or the next two months, with new details leaked almost
daily.
Curiously, the investigative reports primarily ocused the publics atten-
tion on two topics. 1he nrst concerned the rapid rise and all o Bi 1in
Dng, quickly named the millionaire gambler in the press. Readers
tended to emphasi.e his personal shortcomings and many described Dng
as drunk on ootball and{ addicted to gambling, while others compared
his transormation to that o Dorian Gray.
!6
Details o Dngs biography,
which again became important at his trial in August o .cc, were quickly
overshadowed by the second topic, a racketeering enterprise Dng and his
associates managed, which orced private contractors to pay innated prices
or over thirty vehicles that were later loaned to contacts in dierent govern-
ment agencies in exchange or preerential treatment on other matters. 1his
acet o the PMU- 8 scandal proved more interesting than Dngs personal
lie, as the breaking story revealed some o the networks o relationships that
acilitate such extralegal exchanges within, through, and around govern-
ment institutions. But again, clear i unstated limits were imposed on what
could be reported, as evidenced by the abrupt end to urther investigation
into these illicit arrangements ollowing the arrest o Nguyn \it 1in, the
party secretary or the Ministry o 1ransport and ormer general director o
PMU- 8, on the ourth o April or his involvement in the scandal.
Confessions
Public eorts to identiy and punish corrupt oncials took a dramatic turn
shortly aterward. Less than a week ater Nguyn \it 1ins arrest, more
than one hundred party members within PMU- 8 were ordered to partici-
pate in a meeting to count the points. Such meetings historically provided
the ramework or criticism/sel- criticism sessions a rituali.ed orm o
politico- moral auditing initially developed in the Soviet Union and then
diused throughout the socialist world to reinorce conormity, correct ide-
ological errors, and so on.
!
Most \ietnamese, especially those born ater
Renovation began, now regard such exercises, which require those involved
to coness their shortcomings as well as identiy those o their colleagues,
as being outdated, nonetheless, their use continues in oncial settings, espe-
cially when party elites nnd it politically expedient to discipline its members.
Not surprisingly, the decision to employ this socialist- era tactic raised
more questions than it answered. However, most o them could be reduced
to this: why were such a large group o corrupt oncials able to operate so
long without anyone else in PMU- 8 or the Ministry o 1ransport becoming
aware o their illegal activities and reporting them to the relevant authori-
ties Chat rooms, blogs, and other social spaces online provided digital
orums or individuals to post their own views as to why this was possible.
1he mass media, by contrast, reocused much o their collective attention on
another disgraced public ngure the minister o transport rather than
the broader structural actors that contributed to endemic corruption. Do
Dnh Bnh, the minister o transport, was asked to submit a letter o res-
ignation the same day as Nguyn \it 1ins arrest. But or unknown rea-
sons, his case required nine days o closed- door discussions beore the letter
was oncially accepted. While the precise details o these discussions remain
secret, there was considerable speculation that Bnh, who had been oncially
reprimanded our times since .cc. or nnancial irregularities, agreed to
resign his seats on the National Assembly and the Central Committee o the
Communist Party to avoid criminal charges.
!8
1he ollowing day, General \ Nguyn Gip presented a ma;or speech
the purpose o which, given its almost immediate appearance in newspapers
both on- and o- line, was to reorient public attention away rom the moral
ailings o specinc individuals and toward the problem o corruption more
generally. In it, the retired war hero noted that the sharp rise in the number
and severity o corruption scandals threatened the Communist Partys pres-
tige and thus the moral basis o its political legitimacy, in addition to the
countrys relationship with oreign donors. O these scandals, he continued,
the PMU- 8 case was the most alarming, but not simply because it was the
countrys largest to date and involved the criminal misuse o ODA. Nor was
it because the scandal exposed what he termed the debauched, decadent,
and degenerate behavior o the party members within a prominent govern-
ment agency. Rather, the PMU- 8 case was so alarming, the general argued,
because it was symptomatic o a much larger problem one that had trans-
ormed the Communist Party into a shield that some members used to hide
their corrupt activities.
!
1he Generals decision to ocus on the PMU- 8 case, which had already
dominated media headlines or months, was not surprising. Nor was his
timing unusual, immediately beore the oncial opening o the 1enth
National Congress (April 8 ., .cc6). Well- known party members re-
quently used the period prior to such events to publicly advance political
positions later decided behind closed doors. Rather, what made the speech
notable was the manner in which it sought to reinvigorate ideas and prac-
tices associated with the socialist past to manage those oten attributed to
the market- oriented present.
1his eort took several orms, nrst and oremost in the ngure o Gen-
eral Gip himsel. General Gip is the last surviving member o the party
elite whose personal involvement extends back in time to the revolutionary
struggles o the late colonial era. During his lietime o service, General
Gip has held many prominent military and political posts, including com-
mander o the Peoples Army o \ietnam, minister o interior, and politburo
member, among others. Yet, General Gip (like many others o his gen-
eration) is still widely perceived as having not accumulated any illicit per-
sonal wealth despite his place in the national order o things. 1his perhaps
explains why Phan Din, the politburos acting secretary, acknowledged in
a ma;or speech delivered earlier that day the need to nght corruption to
urther develop the country but let General Gip the task o publicly criti-
ci.ing those involved in the case.
General Gip did so, as noted above, in very blunt terms, using the
socialist- era count the points technique. 1o urther emphasi.e the pur-
pose o the exercise, he quoted H Ch Minhs well- known thoughts on the
sub;ect o sel- assessment: A Party that hides its own deects is a broken
Party. With that in mind, General Gip closed his speech by exhorting the
delegates slated to attend the 1enth National Congress to clearly and truth-
ully assess the problem corruption posed or both the Communist Party
and the country. Only by doing so, he concluded, would it be possible to har-
ness the socialist- oriented market economy in a manner that strengthened
rather than weakened the partys stated goal o creating a wealthy people,
strong country, and a ;ust, democratic, and civili.ed society.
0
New Accountabilities
During the week- long 1enth National Congress, many high- ranking on-
cials, including Nng Dc Mnh, the general secretary o the Communist
Party, publicly pledged to do everything necessary to eradicate corruption.
Ior those not inclined to place great weight on such pledges, the next six
months appeared to prove them correct, as there was nothing new in the
mass media about oncial anticorruption eorts. 1hen in late October, the
government announced Decree No. .c, which clarined many o the ques-
tions regarding the actual implementation o the Anti- corruption Law and
the Prime Ministers Action Plan.
Over the next six months, eleven ministries promulgated orty- seven
secondary legal documents regarding their anticorruption activities. 1he
prime ministers once also issued our instructions, which ranged rom new
guidelines or managing state budgets, assets, and personnel to the explicit
prohibition against using public unds or gits or parties. 1wenty- three
provinces and cities across the country also announced new procedures or
disclosing how state unds were annually budgeted within administrative
units under their control.
J
In practical terms, these mechanisms helped
establish (at least on paper) new norms o behavior within and between state
agencies as well as procedures or identiying, investigating, and prosecuting
corruption cases.
More developments ollowed. By August o .cc, on the eve o the PMU- 8
trial, the government and the prime ministers once had issued nty- two
urther regulatory documents regarding nnancial practices as well as cost
norms and standards. During this same period, ministries and local gov-
ernment agencies reviewed , regulatory documents, issued ,c new
ones, amended 8., and abolished 8 outdated or redundant ones. Nearly
c corruption cases were also identined, and administrative sanctions were
applied against c6 deendants or noncriminal orms o misconduct.
!
Ior
those amiliar with the representational practices o socialist states, the lists
o achievements and the statistical ngures that buttress them readily evoke
the rhetorical claims o the past. But it would be premature to dismiss these
assertions o progress on the problem o corruption, even i it is still much
too early to determine their actual eectiveness. Nonetheless, the manner
in which these reorms were planned and implemented behind closed
doors runs directly counter to their stated intent: greater transparency,
without which lines o accountability would remain dincult to determine.
1hese tensions were not limited to the regulatory measures instituted on the
eve o the trial, they also aected the ;udicial proceedings themselves.
1he trial, which began on the nrst o August, .cc, was brie. Over a
three- day period, lawyers or the prosecution presented evidence against
nine deendants, including three ormer government oncials, regarding
their involvement in organi.ed gambling. O the deendants, Bi 1in
Dng aced the most serious charges owing to the US3c,ccc bribe he alleg-
edly oered to Ma;or- General Cao Ngc Oanh and three other oncials to
orestall his arrest. Under \ietnamese law, the attempted bribe meant Dng
was eligible or the death penalty, whereas the other deendants named in
the case aced a maximum sentence o twenty years in prison each, i ound
guilty.
!
According to press reports, Presiding Judge Ng 1h Yn kept the
proceedings on schedule, so much so, that six o the ten deense lawyers
resigned in protest o the time constraints on them. On the morning o
the sixth day, ollowing the weekend recess, the Supreme Peoples Court
o Investigation announced all nine deendants had been ound guilty as
charged, it then provided sentence recommendations. Although less than
the maximum allowed under law, the sentences were heavy, especially or
Bi 1in Dng: twenty- two to twenty- nve years in prison, the oreiture
o his three homes, and the connscation o approximately US3,cc o
unknown origin ound therein.
!
In a surprise move the ollowing day, the Peoples Court o Hanoi reduced
the sentences or all nine men. 1he ull details, which required orty- nve
minutes to recite, noted their criminal conduct had caused public discon-
tent and a loss o the peoples aith in state agencies.
However, the court

also acknowledged the deendants had cooperated with security oncials
and conducted themselves well during the trial and thus deserved some
leniency. 1he court urther singled out Bi 1in Dng, whose sentence
was reduced by hal to six years in prison or gambling and seven years or
attempted bribery, because o two mitigating actors: a conession, and his
previous contributions to the country, which included nve decorations or
his service and numerous certincates o merit.
6
1he decision was greeted with considerable skepticism by many observ-
ers, particularly given Dngs rapid rise within the Ministry o 1ransport
ollowing a short stint in the army. In a mere nve years, Dng had moved
rom an entry- level position in PMU- 8 to becoming its director, a posi-
tion he held rom September o 8 until his arrest in January o .cc.
Ior this reason, some commentators online pointed out that Dngs past
achievements were less relevant here than those o his ather, Bi B Bng, a
well- known revolutionary who had earned seventeen medals over the course
o his distinguished military career and retired rom the Peoples Army o
\ietnam with the rank o ma;or- general.
Although no one claimed Dngs

elderly ather had directly intervened in the case, they asserted the sentence
was reduced in recognition o his athers ar more signincant contributions
to the party/state.
8
Others disagreed and argued the sentence reduction had nothing to do
with his athers past service to the revolutionary cause, instead, they sug-
gested the move was designed to buy the silence o those headed to prison.
1o buttress their position, they pointed out that the son- in- law o the gen-
eral secretary o the Communist Party o \ietnam had been implicated in
the scandal as well as several people in the prime ministers once, who were
then still under investigation. In their view, very high- ranking oncials (i
not the highest) had quietly brokered a deal behind the scenes to abruptly
end the scandal with the arrest o Nguyn \it 1in, the party secretary
or the Ministry o 1ransport and ormer general director o PMU- 8, to
prevent urther embarrassment and possible legal action.
Still others dismissed these rumors o a cover- up. In their view, the scandal
was instead a deliberate attempt by the Communist Party to demonstrate its
power and benevolence in a highly public ashion. As evidence, they noted
that the initial arrests occurred immediately prior to the 1enth National Con-
gress, which meant details o the police investigation could slowly be leaked
to the press to make visible the Communist Partys eorts to punish corrupt
oncials and implement new anticorruption measures.
60
(Indeed, investigators
in the Ministry o Public Security were reputed to be the primary source o
the leaks.) 1hus the oncial response to the scandal did not in their view
represent a genuine shit but was instead a rituali.ed political perormance
designed to promote unity o purpose at the party congress.
6J
Dennitive answers as to why the PMU- 8 trial ended as it did are unlikely.
What is perhaps more important here are the terms o the debate, as they
reveal the diversity o views on the tactics, mechanisms, and technologies
through which authority is actually constituted and rule accomplished in
contemporary \ietnam. As the outcome o the case makes clear, dierent
sets o norms continue to exist, moreover, the political rationalities that help
guide a persons conduct are not entirely reducible to that o ideology or
economics, be they socialist or neoliberal in orientation.
Conclusion
Stories related to the PMU- 8 scandal quickly disappeared ater the trial.
1hey were replaced by yet more news items about new anticorruption
measures, such as the continued spread o one- stop shop, a program or
accelerating business registration procedures to reduce corruption associated
with multiple, nontransparent contacts between entrepreneurs and state
oncials across multiple agencies. 1his was ollowed by an announcement
that sixteen ministries as well as thirty- three provinces and municipalities
had completed their own anticorruption action plans.
6!
Soon ater, the mass
media reported that nve ministries as well as the State Bank o \ietnam had
issued proessional moral codes o conduct or their sta. Ater which, the
Central Steering Committee on Anti- corruption proclaimed that it had ;ust
concluded its assessment o orty- eight provinces and cities regarding the
implementation o the .cc Law on Anti- corruption.
6!
So in the end, what are we to make o this constant reiteration o oncial
progress in the nght against corruption 1he PMU- 8 scandal, like those
that preceded it, clearly oered the Communist Party the opportunity to
represent and speak or the people as a unitary social body.
6!
But, in
sharp contrast to previous crises, competing views emerged on the primary
causes and solutions to bureaucratic corruption. Despite concerted eorts to
suppress these disagreements at the 1enth National Congress, no integrated
approach to anticorruption materiali.ed aterward. Instead, the number
o approaches currently in use continues to grow as dierent ministries,
provinces, cities, and cross- sectoral bodies (e.g., the State Audit o \ietnam)
carry out their own anticorruption initiatives in addition to participating in
nationally sponsored ones. Some o these initiatives are clearly sel- interested
and sel- serving. Others are implemented at the behest o innuential actors,
such as international nnancial institutions, bilateral aid agencies, and or-
eign business lobbies. Still others are carried out in collaboration with
them.
6
Consequently, ongoing eorts to more accurately denne, measure,
and enorce accountability in contemporary \ietnam have not replaced one
regulatory regime with another, rather, they have resulted in overlapping,
nested, and hybrid mechanisms or auditing the nnancial- moral conduct o
party/state oncials, which makes it dincult to determine where socialist
techniques end and neoliberal ones begin, especially as each oten exhibits
some eatures associated with the other.
Calls or greater accountability continue to have their limits in \ietnam
as well. In May .cc, security oncials arrested two investigative ;ournal-
ists, Nguyn \n Hi and Nguyn \it Chin, or their past coverage o
the PMU- 8 scandal. Both men had published reports during the height o
the scandal that contained reerences to statements the director o PMU- 8
made that orty other senior oncials had accepted bribes to remain silent
about his criminal activities prior to his arrest. 1his explosive accusation,
which was not pursued at Dngs .cc trial, later enabled prosecutors to nle
criminal charges against the two reporters or abusing democratic reedoms
to inringe upon the interest o the State and{ the legitimate rights and
interests o organi.ations and/or citi.ens.
66
Both men spent nve months in
detention prior to their trial in late .cc8. During the trial Hi changed his
plea to guilty, a decision that reduced his sentence to two years o noncusto-
dial reeducation. Chin, however, reused to renounce his story and because
o his continued denance received two years in prison.
1hese divergent responses to the PMU- 8 scandal, including the backlash
against the ;ournalists who used inormation strategically leaked to the
press, suggest that it has become much harder or the Communist Party
to present a unined position on the nature o the relationship between the
socialist- oriented market economy and the popular view that corruption
is now endemic at all levels o government. 1his inability renects several
important shits, two o which I mention here to conclude my discussion.
Iirst, it has long ceased to be possible or the party/state to spatially
restrict the market rom the social body in the orm o special eco-
nomic .ones, as was largely the case during the nrst decade o Renovation
(c. 86 6).
6
1his approach has since been replaced with a hybrid one,
which seeks to unleash the entrepreneurial skills and energies o individu-
als, yet contain them at the same time so as to balance the egalitarian ideals
o the revolutionary past with the orms o socioeconomic inequality and
division that have reemerged in the more commerciali.ed present.
68
Close
attention to eorts to manage the contradictions this approach inevitably
creates helps oreground the ways the socialist- oriented market economy has
and, importantly, has not been liberali.ed to date. Private entrepreneurs, or
example, remain heavily dependent upon personal contacts in the public
sector to obtain inormation, capital, contracts, and materials.
6
But more
importantly here, it is clear that the gradual adoption o market mechanisms
over the past two decades cannot be equated with the gradual adoption o
neoliberal values and practices, especially as the latter, when understood as a
mode o governmentality, presupposes particular relationships between the
state, markets, and the individual that at present still have limited purchase
in \ietnam.
0
Second, these same contradictions have increased rather than decreased
the opportunities as well as incentives or government personnel to engage
in practices now legally denned as corrupt. Ior this reason, eorts to
cleanse the party/state to make pure and upright as one theoretician
put it through the periodic purge o corrupt oncials remain important,
i only to visibly assert leadership in the very area that threatens its moral
legitimacy.
J
However, political elites are increasingly willing to augment
these and other socialist audit mechanisms with a range o neoliberal
ones drawn rom the best practices now circulating globally.
!
Since this
supplemental approach is quite recent, it is still too early to assess what long-
term impacts the prolieration o regulatory regimes and the rituals o
verincation that accompany them will have on actual practices or, or that
matter, the kinds o political sub;ectivities anticorruption initiatives may
make possible. Nonetheless, the ongoing reconnguration o who and what is
audited and by whom promises to provide urther opportunities to critically
explore how values and practices ostensibly drawn rom socialist and neo-
liberal models shape and reshape one another in contemporary \ietnam.
Notes
I would like to thank Ann Marie Leshkowich and Christina Schwenkel, they envisioned
this special issue, and their insightul comments greatly improved my contribution toward
it.
. Bhikku Bodhi, 1/- coo-./-1 D.a- / //- Ba11/. + 1.o/./o / //- 3.a,a//. N/.,.
(Boston: Wisdom Publications, .ccc), c. , n. ..
.. Ken MacLean, 1he Rehabilitation o an Uncomortable Past: Remembering the Fveryday
in \ietnam during the Subsidy Period ( 86), H/, .o1 +o//o/, , no.
(.cc8): .8 c.
. John Gillespie, Sel- Interest and Ideology: Bureaucratic Corruption in \ietnam, +.o
L.u fao./ , no. (.cc): 6, Martin Gainsborough, Corruption and the Politics o
Fconomic Decentrali.ation in \ietnam, fao./ / co/-ao., +. , no. (.cc):
6 8.
. Article , Anti- corruption Law, National Assembly o the Socialist Republic o \ietnam,
th Legislature, November ., .cc.
. PM Leads Conerence on Corruption, I-/o.ao-/, December ., .cc, english.vietnam-
net.vn/politics/.cc/./6c8/.
6. Neither the party nor the state can be accurately understood as unined, coherent entities
that think or act like people. Nonetheless, I employ the terms here, including their unortho-
dox combined orm (party/state), as strategic essentialisms since a nuanced discussion o
their internal dierences is not crucial to my argument, except where noted. 1he ocus is
instead upon instances in which institutional unity is privileged over disunity or political
reasons.
. David Stark, Recombinant Property in Fast Furopean Capitalism, in R-/a./ao N-/-
u/ o I/- 3../a, ed. Gernot Grabher and David Stark (Oxord: Oxord University
Press, ), 6.
8. I interviewed more than three do.en proessionals in Hanoi and online during .cc. 1heir
views are summari.ed in the text.
. Catherine McKinley, M-1. .o1 cao/o Hu H. I-/o.a Io/ M-1. c--1 c-
ao/o .o1 Hu c.o c-.- B- 3/-o//-o-1 (Hanoi: United Nations Development Pro-
gram, .cc), 8.
c. 1hese generali.ations are based on my survey o newspapers and ;ournals directly managed
by the Communist Party, state- run media agencies that published investigative reports on
the scandal (e.g., 1a / a//{, L. o L./{, and I-/o.ao-/), and overseas sites (e.g.,
/-oo-/ Ooooo-/{ and BBcI-/o.a--.a). Ior urther methodological discussion, see
Ken MacLean, In Search o Kilometer Zero: Digital Archives, 1echnological Revisionism,
and the Sino- \ietnamese Border, cao../- 3/a1- o 3.-/, .o1 H/, c, no. (.cc8):
8c .
. Gary Sigley, Chinese Governmentalities: Government, Governance, and the Socialist Mar-
ket Fconomy, L.oa, .o1 3.-/, , no. (.cc6): 8.
.. Akhil Gupta, Blurred Boundaries: 1he Discourse o Corruption, the Culture o Politics,
and the Imagined State, +a-..o L//o// .., no. . (): c., Douglas Holmes
and George Marcus, Iast- Capitalism: Para- Fthnography and the Rise o the Symbolic
Analyst, in Io/- / c.o/./ L//o.o/. R-/-./o o //- N-u L.oa,, ed. Greg
Downey and Melissa Iisher (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, .cc6), .
. Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows and Sovereigns, 1/-, ca//a- .o1 3.-/, , no. (.ccc):
6, .
. Sren Davidsen et al., Iao/-a-o/./o +-a-o/ / //- +o/- .ao/o L.u Hu I.
H. I-/o.a ca- (Hanoi: Fmbassy o Denmark, .cc8), 8 , Dang Ngoc Dinh, +o/-
.ao/o o I-/o.a 1/- 3/a./o .//- 1u -. / Iao/-a-o/./o / //- L.u (Hanoi:
CFCODFS, .cc8).
. Marilyn Strathern, New Accountabilities, in +a1/ ca//a- +o//o/../ 3/a1- o
+..ao/.///, L//. .o1 //- +..1-a,, ed. Marilyn Strathern (London: Routledge, .cc),
8.
6. Michael Power, 1/- +a1/ 3.-/, R/a./ / I-/../o (Oxord: Oxord University Press,
).
. James Ierguson and Akhil Gupta, Spatiali.ing States: 1oward an Fthnography o Neolib-
eral Governmentality, +a-..o L//o// ., no. (.cc.): 8 cc..
8. Sherry Ortner, Resistance and the Problem o Fthnographic Reusal, cao../- 3/a1-
o 3.-/, .o1 H/, , no. (): .
. Andrew Barry, 1homas Osbourne, and Nikolas Rose, eds., Ia..a// .o1 I//../ R-.o
L/-./a N-//-./a .o1 R./o.//- / C-oa-o/ (Chicago: University o Chicago
Press, 6), 6, Dean Mitchell, C-oa-o/.//, Iu- .o1 Ra/- o M1-o 3.-/,
(London: Sage, ), 8.
.c. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Io../.o Lao- H/../ 1/a// .o1 I/./o./ D//--o.-
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, .ccc).
.. Donald Nonini, Is China Becoming Neoliberal c/,a- / +o//o/, .8, no. . (.cc):
.
... Andrew Kipnis, Neoliberal Governmentality, Socialist Legacy, or 1echnologies o Govern-
ing +a-..o L//o// , no. . (.cc8): . 8, Daromir Rudnycky;, Spiritual Fcono-
mies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia, ca//a./ +o//o/, ., no.
(.cc): c .
.. L Hu Ngha, 1he 1enth National Party Congress and Awareness o the Path towards
Socialism in \ietnam, N/o 1o (I-o/-), July , .cc6, www.nhandan.com.vn/english/
news/ccc6/domestic_tenth.htm.
.. Michael Burawoy and Katherine \erdery, eds., Io.-/.o 1.o/o L//o.o/- /
c/.o- o //- I/..// I/1 (New York: Rowman and Littleneld, ).
.. Iield notes (.cc, .cc6).
.6. Sigley, Chinese Governmentalities, Kipnis, Neoliberal Governmentality, .8 , Susan
Greenhalgh with Fdwin Winckler, C-oo c/o. Ioa/./o Ia L-oo/ / N-//-
-./ Bo//. (Stanord, CA: Stanord University Press, .cc).
.. Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong, eds., I./.o c/o. 3../a /a +/. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, .cc8).
.8. Ior an exception, see Nguyn- v 1hu- hng, 1/- Io- / I--1a 3-s ca//a- .o1 N--
//-./ C-o.o.- o I-/o.a (Seattle: University o Washington Press, .cc8).
.. Shaun Malarney, Culture, \irtue, and Political 1ransormation in Contemporary North-
ern \ietnam, fao./ / +.o 3/a1- 6, no. (): c 8.
c. Dnh 1h Minh 1uyt and Nguyn Dc Mnh, 1ip cn mt s gii php phong, chng
tham nhng (Reaching Some Solutions to Prevent and to Iight Corruption), 1o .//
co o (caaao/ fao./) (.cc).
. Phi xem cng tc kim tra Dng l yu t sng ca Dng (Seeing to the Oncial 1ask
o Inspections Is an Fssential Flement o the Party), 1o .// /a /. (Ioo-./o D-/)
(.cc).
.. Nguyn Dc Bnh, Xy dng Dng ta tht vng mnh (Building a 1ruly Stable and
Strong Party), N/o 1o (I-o/-), Iebruary ., .cc6.
. Dng S Lc, Dy mnh cuc u tranh phong, chng tham nhng (Strengthening the
Iight against Corruption), 1o .// s, 1o Do (Ba/1o //- I./,) (.cc).
. Human Rights Watch, Ra./ Io-/ o I-/o.a (New York: Human Rights Watch, ).
. Dau Hoan Do and SIDA, + 3/a1, o //- Iao/-a-o/./o / C.- R/ D-a...,
fao- fa/, .,,, (Hanoi: SIDA and Government Committee on Organi.ation and Person-
nel, unpublished drat), on nle with author.
6. United Nations Development Program, D--o-oo D-a..., .o1 Io.-.o Ioa/. I.-
/.o./o o I-/o.a (Hanoi: United Nations Development Program, .cc6).
. 1o place these bets in context, the per capita income in \ietnam was US3,c. (.cc8 ng-
ures).
8. Minh Quang, Nhn din con bc Bi 1in Dng (Identiying Bui 1ien Dung the Gam-
bler), 1a / (a//), August , .cc6, tuoitre.vn/Chinh- tri- xa- hoi/Phap- luat/6/
Nhan- dien- con- bac- Bui- 1ien- Dung/C./Ac/C./Ac.html.
. \ietnam Oncial Jailed in PMU- 8 Gambling, Bribery Scandal, 1/.o/ o-o (a//),
August ., .cc.
c. 1ham nhng ang tr thnh chuyn thng ngy (Corruption Is Becoming an Fvery
Day Story ), 1a / (a//), December , .cc, tuoitre.vn/Chinh- tri- Xa- hoi/./
1ham- nhung- dang- tro- thanh- /F./8c/Cchuyen- thuong- ngay/F./8c/D.html.
. 1ransparency International, N./o./ Io/-/, 3,/-a cao/, 3/a1, R-o/ I-/o.a :cco
(Berlin: 1ransparency International, .cc6), .
.. Hi tho v kt qa iu tra tnh hnh tham nhng v chng tham nhng (Conerence
and Results o the Inspection into the Corruption and Anti- corruption Situation), 1o
o/o (Io--), November c, .cc.
. 1ham nhng ph bin nht lnh vc a chnh nh t (Corruption Is Most Wide-
spread in the Land Administration Once) I/ /. (I-/ D./,), November c, .cc.
. \ng H, c C quan tham nhng ph bin nht (1he 1en Agencies Where Corrup-
tion Is the Most Widespread), L. o (L./), November c, .cc, www.dantri.com.vn/
c./s.c c86c/c co- quan- tham- nhung- pho- bien- nhat.htm.
. Sigley, Chinese Governmentalities, .
6. 1uyn n phin x con bc triu (1he Hearing and Sentence o the Millionaire
Gambler ), BBcI-/o.a--.a, August , .cc, www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/vietnam/
story/.cc/c8/cc8c_btdverdict.shtml.
. Oleg Kharkhordin, 1/- c//-./- .o1 //- Io11a./ o Ra. + 3/a1, / I../.- (Berkeley:
University o Caliornia Press, ).
8. See \ietnam 1ransport Minister to Resign over Dereliction o Duty, 1/.o/ o-o April
, .cc6.
. \ Nguyn Gip, Kim im v PMU- 8 v bo co Di Hi X (Counting the Points:
1he PMU- 8 Case and the Report to the 1enth Congress), 1a / (a//), April , .cc6.
c. Ibid.
. Davidsen et al., Iao/-a-o/./o +-a-o/, .
.. Ibid., 8.
. 1hay i trong ban chuyn n PMU- 8 (Changes to the Committee or the PMU- 8
Case), BBcI-/o.a--.a, April 6, .cc6, www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/vietnam/story/.cc6/
c/c6cc6_investigation_update.shtml.
. Khi t Bi 1in Dng ti tham (Opening Charges against Bui 1ien Dung on the
Crime o Corruption), BBcI-/o.a--.a, August , .cc, www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/
vietnam/story/.cc/c8/cc8_btdung_update.shtml.
. An t cho ng tng PMU- 8 gim mt na (Prison Sentence or PMU- 8 Director
Cut in Hal), INLso-.a, August 6, .cc, www.vnexpress.net/gl/phap- luat/.cc/c8/
b8eb/.
6. Lut S Ng Ngc 1hy: Bi 1in Dng ch chy n ch khng a hi l (Lawyer
Ngo Ngoc 1huy: Bui 1ien Dung Was Only Avoiding a Sentence Not Oering a Bribe ),
1/.o/ o-o, August , .cc, www.thanhnien.com.vn/news/Pages/.cc/.c.8.aspx.
. Cng 1in, \ PMU- 8 v ni bun ngy 1t ca v tng (PMU- 8 Case and a Sad
New Years Day or the General), I1c N-u, Iebruary , .cc.
8. Lng K, personal communication, September ., .cc.
. 1ng Duy and Phng Sng, 1ng gim c PMU- 8: Con bc triu (PMU- 8
Director: 1he Millionaire Gambler), 1o o/o (Io--), January 8, .cc6, www.tien-
phong.vn/Phap- Luat/8/1ong- Giam- doc- PMU8--- Con- bac- trieu- do.html.
6c. Bill Hayton, personal communication, April 6, .cc.
6. Hong Dng, Bo ch \it Nam trc Di Hi X (\ietnamese Dailies beore the
1enth Congress), BBc I/1 3-.-, April , .cc6, www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/vietnam/
story/.cc6/c/c6c_vietpress_precongress.shtml.
6.. Davidsen et al., Iao/-a-o/./o +-a-o/, 8.
6. Ibid., 8.
6. Ann Anagnost, 1he Politici.ed Body, in B1, 3a/-./ .o1 Iu- o c/o., ed. 1. Barlow
and A. Zito (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, ), 6.
6. Global Advice Network, \ietnam Country Pronle, Business Anti- corruption Portal,
www.business- anti- corruption.com/country- proiles/east- asia- the- paciic/vietnam/snap
shot/ (accessed January ., .cc8).
66. Article .8, \ietnam Penal Code.
6. Aihwa Ong, Graduated Sovereignty in South- Fast Asia, 1/-, ca//a- .o1 3.-/, ,
no. (.ccc): .
68. MacLean, Rehabilitation, .8 86.
6. Nguyn- v, Io- / I--1a, .
c. Nonini, Is China Becoming Neoliberal .
. 1rng \nh 1rng, 1ng cng lch s lnh o ca Dng, y mnh cuc u tranh
phong, chng tham nhng, lng ph (Strengthening the Historical Leadership o the
Party, Stepping Up the Struggle to Prevent and to Resist Corruption and Wasteul Spend-
ing), 1o .// co o (caaao/ fao./), (.cc).
.. L, 1enth National Congress.

Enacting Anticorruption: The Reconfiguration of Audit Regimes in Contemporary Vietnam

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Enacting Anticorruption: The Reconfiguration of Audit Regimes in Contemporary Vietnam

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Enacting Anticorruption:

The Reconguration of Audit Regimes in Contemporary Vietnam

1hese trends have helped corruption scandals to become a privileged site

1he oncial responses were unoncially augmented by e- mail

However, the court

Although no one claimed Dngs

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