In just 17 months as general secretary of the ruling Communist Party he has swept aside rivals and centralised authority in an aggressive reform drive, and is seeking more power at a party congress next week.
Diplomats and analysts describe the 68-year-old as a skilled political operator and calculated risk-taker whose biggest bets have paid off.
Elevated to party chief in August 2024 after the death of his predecessor, he accelerated a sweeping anti-corruption drive that ensnared thousands of officials.
Analysts say it removed many of his opponents, leaving him as the most dominant leader in decades — and potentially paving the way for him to assume a powerful dual role as party chief and president akin to Xi Jinping in neighbouring China.
Lam has ripped up bureaucratic red tape and empowered the private sector, but also tightened media restrictions and squashed dissent.
He has “streamlined everything”, said Vietnam expert Carl Thayer, adding he would be “absolutely dominant” whether he takes the presidency or not.
“I don’t want to call him the Trump of Vietnam, but he’s a leader who is trying to consolidate power to make swift and quick decisions,” Thayer said.
Security man
Born in 1957 in Hung Yen, then part of communist North Vietnam, Lam graduated from the police academy in 1979 and joined the secretive public security ministry.
He rose steadily through the ranks, spending four decades in the department that monitors and surveils critics of the one-party state.
Vietnam ranked 158th out of 193 countries in the most recent “Freedom in the World” report by the US think-tank Freedom House, with a score of 20 out of 100, putting it in the “not free” category.
As public security minister, Lam was accused of helping organise the Cold-War-style 2017 kidnapping of a fugitive Vietnamese executive from a park in Germany.
Hanoi denied orchestrating the plot, but it soured relations with Berlin for years.
As public security minister he weaponised the anti-graft drive known as “blazing furnace” initiated by then-General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.
Lam used investigations to “systematically take down rivals in the politburo who were eligible to become general secretary”, said Zachary Abuza, a Vietnam expert at the National War College in Washington.
But he has made one notable misstep: a video of him eating a gold-leaf-covered steak at the London restaurant of Nusret Gokce, better known as Salt Bae, sparked a social media firestorm in 2021, with the dish reportedly costing more than US$1,000 — above Vietnam’s median monthly income.
One noodle seller, dubbed “Onion Bae” for his ostentatious presentation of sliced scallions, was jailed after posting a parody of the Lam video.
Radical reforms
Lam was named president — considered the second-highest role in Vietnamese politics — in May 2024, after his predecessor was felled by the anti-graft campaign.
Less than two months later Trong died and Lam succeeded him as general secretary.
He shocked the country with rapid administrative reforms to streamline bureaucracy and boost the economy, cutting the number of government ministries and agencies from 30 to 22 and nearly halving provincial and city administrations, from 63 to 34.
Roughly 147,000 people have been made redundant or taken early retirement so far.
Lam, who as security minister approved construction of a major Hanoi opera house, also pushed ambitious infrastructure projects, including transport and energy.
He is “decisive, impatient with drift”, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, adding that has “sped up decision-making”.
Lam also reacted rapidly to Donald Trump’s announcement of 46% tariffs by the US, its top trading partner, in April.
Less than two months later, Vietnam approved a US$1.5 billion proposal for a Trump Organization golf course, and soon afterwards the tariff rate was negotiated down to 20% for most goods.
Announcing the deal in July, Trump hailed Lam on his Truth Social platform: “Dealing with General Secretary To Lam, which I did personally, was an absolute pleasure.”