To Lam, the most powerful Vietnamese leader in decades, arrives in New Zealand today – the latest effort by both sides to diversify partnerships and hedge against an increasingly fractured world order.

This is the first state visit to New Zealand by a Vietnamese president since 2007, and comes after New Zealand and Vietnam last year marked 50 years of diplomatic relations by elevating the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. They’re expected to sign agreements on education, agriculture, trade and sustainable development.

Lam’s arrival, after first visiting Australia, is also a sign of Vietnam’s ambitions in the world under the leadership of a man unlike any the Communist state has promoted before: He spent his career in the police force and is now a four-star general in Vietnam’s powerful Ministry of Public Security, and has a doctorate in jurisprudence from the security services’ university.

But he’s also a pro-business reformer who’s reportedly partial to fine wine and schmaltzy saxophonist Kenny G. Unusually in a Communist system with Confucian roots – and like his counterpart in Beijing – he’s divorced from his first wife, and he has four children – double the number allowed at the time.

Lam is a new kind of leader who is charting a bold new path for Vietnam, which is still a Communist, one-party state. Here’s what to know about him, his ambitions, and New Zealand’s relations with Vietnam.

Who is To Lam?

To Lam, who is now 69, became general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam in August 2024, then in April this year became president – a sharp change in the Vietnamese system, which has traditionally favoured collective leadership. This is the first time in four decades that one person has held both top posts.

Lam has declared that his task is to “act – and act correctly, decisively, and effectively.”

He has overhauled the way the Communist machinery operates, resulting in more than 100,000 civil service jobs being cut. His supporters say this has removed red tape and inefficiency, but critics accuse him of an unprecedented consolidation of personal power, including by stacking top positions with loyalists.

Since taking power, Lam also has embarked on a “blazing furnace” anti-corruption campaign, which has seen thousands of people prosecuted, including some 5,000 this year alone. (In China, Xi Jinping did the same thing – partly to deal with endemic corruption, partly to get rid of political rivals.)

Vietnam’s ranking in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index has shot up from 113 in 2016 to 81 last year.

Human rights organisations have criticised Lam as having autocratic tendencies, saying he’s concentrating power, and stamping out dissent, independent journalism and civil society organisations.

Vietnam is in 174th place out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. The group notes that independent reporters and bloggers are often jailed, making Vietnam one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists.

Vietnam’s political ambitions

Vietnam’s economy has been completely transformed since Vietnam’s Communist Party launched its “Doi Moi” economic and political reforms of 1986, laying out a plan to turn the country into a “socialist-oriented market economy”.

It had spectacular success: Vietnam has gone from one of the world’s poorest countries to a dynamic middle-income economy in a single generation, according to the World Bank.

Vietnam’s economy grew a phenomenal 47% between 2020 and 2025, and the Politburo has set a target of at least 10% annual growth over the next five years.

Lam has laid out ambitious economic plans for Vietnam, including for it to reach high-income status by 2045.

Many of his modernisation plans are reminiscent of those that powered China’s transformation into a cut-throat market economy. The Politburo wants to increase the private sector’s role in the economy, partly by encouraging large, globally competitive “national champions”.

Lam has also championed technology as the “golden key” to Vietnamese prosperity, hoping to make sure the digital economy comprises 30% of GDP by 2030 and half by 2045.

What about Vietnam’s relations with the world?

Lam is a history buff who likes to recount tales of Vietnamese generals defeating China and Mongolia a millennium ago, the New York Times says.

On foreign policy, he has expanded Vietnam’s long-standing “bamboo diplomacy” – the idea that its diplomacy is flexible and emphasises multilateralism, avoiding firm alliances with any single power.

When he gave the keynote address at the Shangri-La Defence Dialogue in Singapore in May, where China’s increasingly assertive role in the Asia-Pacific region was top of mind, Lam urged neighbours to “safeguard peace” amid uncertainty.

“While all nations continue to speak of peace, stability and co-operation, the strategic environment is marked by a growing lack of trust, fragmentation and unchecked competition,” he said.

He has proven adept at walking the geopolitical tightrope between China and the US.

Lam visited China within two weeks of becoming general secretary in 2024, but then went to the US the following month, attending the UN General Assembly, meeting with president Joe Biden as well as leaders of tech companies including Meta and Google.

Vietnam became a founding member of US president Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” to support post-war reconstruction in Gaza. Lam attended its inaugural meeting in Washington in February.

But he has also expanded ties with countries across the Asia-Pacific, visiting China, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand this year alone. The leaders of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, China and Russia have all beaten a path to Hanoi since Lam rose to power.

Vietnam signed a comprehensive strategic partnership with Australia in 2024, and a similar agreement with New Zealand last year.

These agreements are part of a multidirectional foreign policy through which Vietnam seeks to diversify its network of partnerships to reduce reliance on any one country, wrote Hunter Marston, director of the Southeast Asia program at the Lowy Institute.

“Strategic autonomy is the goal,” Marston wrote in a recent note. “Hanoi is averse to alliances and will continue to prioritise its relationship with China, with whom it shares a border and a complicated history.”