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Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357

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On-line with the people in line: Internet development

and flexible control of the net in Vietnam
Björn Surborg
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

Received 27 November 2006; received in revised form 12 July 2007

Abstract

Information and communication technologies in general and the internet in particular are often praised as a means for enhancing
democracy and providing new spaces for the development of an egalitarian civil society, in which all members of society can participate
equally. However, there are various possibilities to monitor, manipulate and control cyberspace, of which the internet is an essential part.
This paper examines the efforts of the Vietnamese government and the Vietnamese Communist Party to control cyberspace as well as the
physical spaces through which the virtual world is accessed. There are attempts to control the internet in a similar fashion as the tradi-
tional print and broadcast media. Any such control is neither absolute nor without effect. Instead control is exercised in a highly flexible
manner, allowing for some officially unwanted or illegal activity to occur. At the same time authorities can apply internet regulations, if it
serves their political objectives as for example strengthening the Party’s official monopoly on political power. The paper traces the devel-
opment of the internet as well as the regulatory environment surrounding it and analyses the inconsistent enforcement of regulations. The
analysis is framed in the theoretical works of Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas.
Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Vietnam; Internet; Cyberspace; Political economy – Vietnam; Vietnamese Communist Party; ICTs

1. Introduction
Since the introduction of the doi moi (renovation)
reforms in Vietnam there have been profound changes in
the lives of the Vietnamese people, but also a considerable
level of continuity in the socio-economic and cultural life of
the country. There is some debate about how dramatic the
decisions to officially introduce doi moi at the sixth Party
Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) in
1986 were. While some observers consider the congress a
landmark event at which the Party introduced reforms that
were the starting point for the transformation from a cen-
trally planned economy to a market system, others view the
event as an official endorsement of changes that had taken
place before. There were profound changes in the economic
structure of the country, many of which took effect rapidly,
E-mail address: bsurborg@interchange.ubc.ca
but political reforms were relatively few. The VCP main-
tains its claim on the monopoly on political power and
exercises considerable influence and control over the insti-
tutions of the state and mass organisations. How much
control the party has exactly, remains equally subject to
debate as is the question of the Party’s role in initiating
reform.
The market reforms and the associated image of mod-
ernisation have been important for the Party to portray a
picture of progress regardless of growing inequalities and
many sacrifices by individuals. One part of this Vietnamese
modernisation project has been the internet and the use of
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
There has been some considerable growth of the internet
in Vietnam since the country officially connected to the
international network in 1997, but in this paper I argue
that the technology is a mechanism that is part of a larger
transformation enabling the Party to remain in power
while advancing economic market reforms without

0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.07.008
 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
substantial political change. Contrary to the idea that the
internet will automatically enhance democracy and plural-
ism, because of greater information flows, the VCP has
managed to implement measures of flexible control over
the internet that allow the internet to operate relatively
unrestricted for the most part, but enable powerful ele-
ments in the state bureaucracy to restrict internet uses, if
they consider their hegemony under threat.
Cyberspace has often been considered a tool for enhanc-
ing democratic participation in society due to greater infor-
mation flows and access to communication. It has also
been considered a space through which the territorial
boundaries of physical spaces could be rendered obsolete,
because of the possibility of instantaneous communication
amongst many actors over large distances and across bor-
ders. However, for example the internet, as an essential
part of cyberspace, requires a substantial infrastructure
that is part of physical space and is always connected or
bound to specific places and territories. The volume of
communication on the internet makes it impossible for
the Vietnamese state to control all aspects of the net, but
there are measures in place that allow control over unde-
sired forms of communication within the territory of the
nation state. Yet, no form of control is permanent or uni-
versal, but applied flexibly when political policing seems
necessary to protect the hegemony and power of the gov-
erning Communist Party.
Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action and
his concept of an ethical discourse are applied in this paper
as a guide to examining the internet as a mechanism of a
free, fair and unrestricted public debate that will enhance
political participation and equal access to institutions in
society. Michel Foucault’s analysis of power and discourse
serves as a theoretical tool of analysis to examine the power
relations that shape the public debate and the governance
of the internet in Vietnam. The work of the two thinkers
is used to contrast what could be achieved through the
internet and what is happening in the specific instance of
Vietnam. While this paper is a case study of Vietnam, the
larger concepts may apply to various political contexts,
including liberal western democracies.
Following a review of the theories, the paper gives a
brief historical overview of Vietnam and the development
of the internet specifically. It then analyses policies regard-
ing internet infrastructure, content, diffusion and control.
This analysis is based on the review of policy documents,
including government decrees, as well as news stories
retrieved through a comprehensive search of English lan-
guage publications in Vietnam using the database Factiva.1
Some publications were included in the database for only a
short period of time. Articles from the Vietnam Courier, for
example, only appeared, if published during a two month
period in the spring of 1997 and only articles from the Viet-
nam Economic Times that were published between April
1
Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC.
345
1997 and January 1999 were included. The three publica-
tions that yielded the largest number of downloaded news
stories are therefore, the Vietnam Investment Review, Viet-
nam News Agency Bulletin and Vietnam News Brief Service.
All sources are published in Vietnam, which means they are
under the influence of the Vietnamese state and are likely
undergoing some form of censorship or at least editorial
control. Given their publication in English they are proba-
bly targeted towards a non-Vietnamese audience and pub-
lished, at least partly and certainly in the case of the
Vietnam Investment Review, with the intention of attracting
foreign investment as well as portraying Vietnam positively
in political terms. However, the Vietnam News Brief Service
provides a daily summary of domestic issues covered in the
Vietnamese press, focusing on banking, financing, invest-
ment and trade. Although the selection of stories from
the Vietnamese press is likely made with specific but not
stated intentions, this source covered some viewpoints
not given in the other publications. The Vietnam News
Agency Bulletin covers the ongoing news releases by the
country’s state-owned official news agency.2
2. Social theory
The theoretical treatments of discourse analysis and
power by both Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas
have been instrumental for many aspects of social science
research and have both been employed in research on
Information Systems, ICTs and Cyberspace (see e.g. Min-
gers and Willcocks, 2004; Dodge and Kitchin, 2005). There
is, however, a tension between the normative and the real,
i.e. between what should be and what is, in the combined
work of the two thinkers (Flyvbjerg, 1998).
Habermas’s work on The theory of communicative
Action suggests that members in a society should engage
in a rational and ethical discourse of all aspects of public
life to arrive at the best possible understanding and find
the best possible decisions in response to collective chal-
lenges. Habermas uses the word ‘discourse’, which in this
context needs to be interpreted as an open ended debate
(cf. Klein and Huynh, 2004, p. 187). The rules for this
discourse have to be provided by a higher authority for
which Habermas suggests the writing of constitutions.
With respect to process Habermas favours a top-down
approach, i.e. a normative provision of the rules for this
rational and ethical discourse in the form of a constitution
and laws. With respect to content, on the contrary, he sup-
ports bottom-up approaches, in which truth is not a given,
but emerges out of contributions by the participants in spe-
cific situations (Flyvbjerg, 1998, p. 214). Constitutions,
however, are without value for the formation of such a dis-
course, if citizens have not accustomed themselves to the
2
I spent 2 years in Vietnam from 2002 to 2004. During this time I lived
within Vietnamese society and worked with Vietnamese institutions, which
does not directly contribute to specific details of this paper, but is
invaluable in putting information into perspective.
346 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
values in the constitution and comprehend the constitution
as an attainment (Habermas, 1994a, p. 514). Habermas
emphasises the importance of institution building and con-
siders law the adequate instrument to authorise power,
whereas this must occur together with the sanctioning of
law by power, a point that contrasts with Foucault’s con-
ceptualisation of power (Flyvbjerg, 1998, p. 214).
For Foucault power is inescapable and manifested
through an omnipresent moral discourse and disciplinary
mechanisms of society, such as institutionalised rules of
behaviour. Foucault (1990) has traced the development
of what he calls bio-politics throughout the period of
industrialisation of Victorian England, where sexuality
was suppressed and confined to the spaces of the home,
i.e. the private realm, which highlights the modern tension
between private and public that emerges at the same time.
Dodge and Kitchin (2001, pp. 18–20) highlight the tension
between public and private domains in cyberspace. While
much of the internet is a public sphere, it is not an unreg-
ulated virtual public space. Many aspects of the internet
are subject to regulation, including the ‘‘point of entry’’,
which has to be via an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
The works of Foucault and Habermas emphasise the sepa-
ration of public and private as an important characteristic
of modernisation, and concepts of places for living, i.e.
home, and places for other activities have been fundamen-
tal in the organisational structure of western society for a
long time. Public spaces have been important in facilitating
debate in civil society and have included truly public
spaces, such as plazas and parks, as well as semi-public are-
nas, such as cafés and other businesses.
Foucault points to an omnipresent disciplinary power in
his book Discipline and Punish (Foucault, 1995). Using the
example of the modern prison, he analyses the role of the
panopticon in disciplining the inmates in their bodily
actions. The architecture of prisons would allow the per-
manent and complete observation (i.e. panopticon) of
inmates. But even if observation was not permanent, the
possibility thereof would be sufficient for self-discipline.
Other examples of such architecture include boarding
schools or manufacturing workshops. Although Habermas
(1994b) agrees that Foucault’s analysis of the panopticon is
correct in individual instances, he rejects it in its generality.
The disciplining power of the panopticon applied in the
modern penal system is not characteristic of modern soci-
ety as a whole. The analysis is also oblivious to the devel-
opment of law and the granting of constitutional rights
(Habermas, 1994b).
One of the conditions for successful communicative
action and achieving mutual agreement based on an open
discourse is that all participants are expressing their inten-
tions openly and clearly in order not to mislead the other
parties (Habermas, 1984, p. 99). However, this pre-condi-
tion limits the practical application of the theory, because
rarely will a discourse be completely open and without hid-
den intentions. What appears to be communicative action
with the noble goal of achieving consensus, may in fact
be covert strategic action, if one party has already decided
that it will not negotiate (Klein and Huynh, 2004, p. 187).
Due to its impersonalised forms of interaction, cyberspace
may therefore be no better locus for overcoming this chal-
lenge to the theory than any other space.
In one of the earliest critical evaluations of the internet
and cyberspace more generally Julian Stellabrass, notes
that uneven technological development, pricing structure
and technical skills are restricting access to cyberspace
for a wider public (Stellabrass, 1995), thus cyberspace
could not be considered a truly public space. An open anar-
chic culture was prevalent on the net in its early years of
development, because participation was limited to certain
individuals with technical skills and resources and thus
forming a virtual community of equals. However, for soci-
ety at large cyberspace would be of little advantage for cre-
ating Habermas’s utopian society in which agreement
would be achieved through a reasoned and radical dis-
course. Bulletin Board Systems, for example, are often
dominated by a few active suppliers of information that
dominate themes and jargon, while the majority consists
of quiet receivers of information of this quasi broadcasting
technology. Interactive possibilities are largely underuti-
lised due to social manifestations in cyberspace (Stella-
brass, 1995).
In spite of these limitations, the internet provides poten-
tially new forms of communication. Through the potential
of downloading (receiving) information from the internet
and uploading (providing) information modernist struc-
tures of communication are blurred. The roles of broad-
caster and listener, producer and consumer of
information can potentially be combined and therefore
change the structure of modern communication. Such
interactive practices can be facilitated for instance through
chat rooms, Bulletin Boards or web-sites (Dodge and
Kitchin, 2001, p. 20). More recently blogs should be
included in this list. However, these potential uses of cyber-
space must always be viewed in the context of access to
infrastructure, cultural and language barriers and power
relations within cyberspace.
The above discussion highlights the tensions between
possibilities (the normative approach) and reality that is
characteristic in the works of Foucault and Habermas.
On one hand there is potential for change towards a more
democratic and open society through the internet; but any
analysis, on the other hand, cannot be conducted without
consideration of the current power relations, such as polit-
ical control of the net.
3. Liberalisation in Vietnam
A common contemporary perception of Vietnam,
including that of the United States State Department, is
still one of a Communist one-party state with all political
power in the hands of the Party (Koh, 2001b, p. 533). How-
ever, in spite of official statements regarding the monopoly
on political power by the VCP, decision making in Vietnam
 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
is a highly complex process of negotiation and power strug-
gle between various factions of the state and the Party.
Official reforms are often introduced after local actors have
broken existing rules that are retroactively legitimised by
the reforms and then labelled pilot projects (see e.g. Kolko,
1997, 2001; Koh, 2001a,b; Heng, 2001; Gainsborough,
2003; Rigg, 2003; Painter, 2005).
Although doi moi remains an ongoing project and an
overall liberalisation of the economy as well as some polit-
ical reforms have occurred over the past 20 years, this pro-
cess followed by no means a linear pattern and political
and economic changes continue to take a zigzag course.
Many observers consider the first few years of doi moi
the by far most liberal period. The events of collapsing
communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, however,
made many leading officials in the Party critical of the
reforms, fearing that the VCP would suffer the same fate
as the regimes in Eastern Europe. After the sixth Party
Congress in 1986 the Vietnamese press had been given rel-
atively far reaching freedoms and was to some extent
allowed to conduct investigative journalism even into the
affairs of the state and the Party. At the seventh Party Con-
gress in 1991, however, measures were taken to slow down
political liberalisation and the official statement of the
monopoly on political power by the Party was reaffirmed
by the delegates. Since 1992, the year of the establishment
of the first international computer network in Vietnam, the
People’s Army is constitutionally responsible, aside from
the defence of the country, for the protection of the Party’s
monopoly on political power (Abuza, 2001, pp. 18–19;
Heng, 2001).
Although political liberalisation proceeded more slowly
after 1989, there is a culture of debate within the Party and
the mass organisations, and political decisions are not
made by a single individual. However, debates are not usu-
ally carried out openly and often proceed cautiously (cf.
Kerkvliet, 2001). Consensus within the Party is usually
reached through a compromise by several factions. As in
any political process alliances amongst different actors
and factions are established in the background to gather
support for important decisions, such as opening the coun-
try to the internet. The establishment of such alliances and
the exchange of arguments may be a long and drawn out
process. Nonetheless, in spite of these debates substantial
political power in Vietnam remains in the Central Commit-
tee and particularly the Politburo, which became evident
after 1989 when high ranking officials, including the num-
ber 13 in the Politburo, were expelled from the Party for
making critical remarks (Kolko, 1997, pp. 126–127).
Issues related to the press law and freedom of expression
continue to be amongst the most contentious in Vietnam.
Between 1986 and 1989 a number of unlicensed newspaper
and magazines appeared and unlicensed books were pub-
lished. About two-fifth of all books published in 1987 were
unlicensed (Kolko, 1997, p. 128). Although the press was
allowed greater freedom throughout the 1990s than during
the pre-doi moi period, it did not return to the levels of the
347
late 1980s. On the one hand, the Party explicitly allowed
the reporting of corruption scandals amongst lower rank-
ing officials (see Thomas and Drummond, 2003; Kerkvliet,
2001; Heng, 1998, 2001; Sidel, 1998), on the other, editors
of press outlets continue to attend weekly meetings with the
Ideology Department of the VCP, where they are briefed
on what is expected from the press. It is clear that this is
not an open debate, but an exchange between two unequal
parties (Heng, 2001).
The level of control the VCP currently has and had in
the past is a debatable issue, but state–society relations
are changing with economic reforms. Kerkvliet (2001)
examines three interpretations of the political system in
Vietnam. First, the ‘‘dominating state’’ interpretation sug-
gests that the Communist Party is in overall control of the
state and remains the dominating force in all aspects of
society. Second, ‘‘mobilisational corporatism’’ is an inter-
pretation that considers the Communist Party at the centre
of political, economic and cultural affairs, but sees consid-
erable leverage for a wide range of factions in the Party-
state apparatus, such as mass organisations and specialised
government agencies, to influence the public policy agenda.
A third interpretation suggests that the VCP has relatively
little real power and that state–society relations are primar-
ily shaped by actions of individuals, many at the local level
and with vastly different results of policy implementation
locally.
This history of the liberalisation process and the inter-
pretations of state–society relations in Vietnam are impor-
tant for the interpretation of the regulatory environment of
computer networks and specifically the internet since the
early 1990s, as the concerns about loss of political control
are reflected in the non-linear development of the internet
and its regulatory environment. While the establishment
of the internet in Vietnam may support aspects of any of
the three interpretations of state–society relations, this case
study will highlight that the VCP is not a sole product of
the actions of its leadership, but many individual actors
that shape the Party through their own actions. Moreover,
although the VCP continues to hold substantial political
power, decision making processes are dispersed and influ-
enced by other actors.
4. The beginnings of electronic networking in Vietnam
In 1986, the year of the sixth Party Congress of the VCP
and the official beginning of doi moi, Vietnam’s telecommu-
nication sector was in a desolate state and international
connections were few. Two years later the country saw its
first cooperation with a western telecommunications firm.
When Telstra of Australia began this cooperation with
the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Corporation
(VNPT), the business arm of the then Department General
of Post and Telecommunication (DGPT), only a few thou-
sand minutes of international telephone calls were placed
per year (Thu, 2005). Just a few years before the internet
was released from its military and research environment
348 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
in the United States and increasingly used for non-military
and commercial purposes world wide (Castells, 2001, p.
12), Vietnam had virtually no network capabilities. How-
ever, within the overall reform process the government cre-
ated policies that would allow for the development of the
sector. At the same time this development was influenced
by various factors that led to a rather inconsistent path.
Mai Liem Truc, a former general director of the DGPT
and later Deputy Minister of Post and Telecommunica-
tions, points out in an interview with the Vietnam Invest-
ment Review that the country was embargoed in the
1980s and early 1990s and international cooperation was
thus difficult to achieve. In addition, there was internal
opposition to these kinds of reform within the Party. Once
the cooperation with Telstra proved successful, interna-
tional cooperation increased (Thu, 2005).
Domestically the development of intranets and later the
internet in Vietnam was not unlike the development that
took place previously in the United States. The first inter-
national connections were established by the Institute of
Information Technology (IOIT) in Hanoi in 1992 through
a dial-up connection to the Coombs Computing Unit at the
Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. The
institute, which belonged to the National Centre of Natural
Science, was interested in setting up local and wide area
networks and followed the development of ARPANet
(Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) (Dang
Hoang-Giang, 2002, p. 234). ARPANet was created by a
relatively small number of researchers mainly in the US
and its successful implementation and development is lar-
gely attributed to a high level of open cooperation amongst
the researchers, extensive freedoms provided to the
researchers and public funding (cf. Abbate, 1999; Castells,
2001).
In 1993 two country internal networks were set-up in
Vietnam. The IOIT established VARENet (Vietnam Aca-
demic Research and Educational Network), a network
intended for use by the country’s research community,
which was originally connected five times a day to a com-
puter at ANU in Canberra. Through the Canadian organi-
sation Coopération Internationale pour le Développement
et la Solidarité a second network, Netnam, was established
that served primarily the international community in Viet-
nam especially foreign Non-Governmental Organisations.
In April 1994 Prime Minister, Vo Van Kiet, sent an e-mail
to Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt (Dang Hoang-Giang,
2002, p. 236; see also Fortier, 1996). Through this act by
the Prime Minister e-mailing through networks had
become an officially recognised practise, but Vietnam was
still far from full connectivity to the internet.
The process of developing these networks was achieved
relatively independently of the direction of the state and its
main actor the VCP. Dang Hoang-Giang (2002, p. 243)
considers the development of intranets as ‘‘some kind of
a grass-roots project’’, while Fortier (1996, p. 30) claims
the National Centre for Natural Science had a relatively
independent position in the Vietnamese state apparatus.
Regardless of the exact status of these institutions, the very
first experiences with electronic networking in Vietnam
were limited to two groups of somewhat privileged status,
researchers and the foreign community. In spite of the sym-
bolic act by the Prime Minister even government offices
were largely off-line.
VARENet expanded and included about 1500 collective
and 4000 individual users by mid-1998, when Vietnam was
in its first year of full (i.e. international) internet connectiv-
ity. While 4000 individuals is a small number out of a pop-
ulation of 80 million, the inclusion of individuals signalled
a willingness to provide at least some network access out-
side the institutional realm. At the same time VARENet
was limited to the use of e-mailing based on its technology
(Unix to Unix CoPy protocols, UUCP). Netnam provided
more services, but was limited largely to foreign develop-
ment organisations, foreign corporate representatives and
expatriates living in Hanoi. By 1997 subscribers included
a few hundred Vietnamese professionals (Dang Hoang-
Giang, 2002, p. 236).
After 1994 a few other intranets were set-up. Amongst
them was VietNet by the Khanh Hoa Post Office, Vietnam
Wisdom by the Financing and Promotion of Technology
Corporation (FPT) under the Ministry of Science, Tech-
nology and Environment (MoSTE), VN-Mail by the
VNPT subsidiary Vietnam Data Communication Com-
pany (VDC), ViNet-Batin by the joint venture Batin, and
VitraNet by the Ministry of Trade (Vietnam Economic
Times, 1997a). With the exception of the Khanh Hoa Post
Office, which may be considered a more local entity but is
administratively under the control of the national DGPT,
all actors represent a specific community that had an early
interest in the development of the internet in Vietnam. It is
the mandate of the DGPT and VNPT to develop the sec-
tor. In addition, there is the research and technology sector
represented by the MoSTE, there are commercial interests
represented by the Ministry of Trade and international
business in the form of a joint venture.
In spite of the existence of networks in the country and
the world wide expansion of the internet, full access to the
internet took several more years. The largest of the nets,
VN-Mail had established link-up points with other net-
works and through them the internet in Australia, France,
the US and Singapore, but these were limited access ser-
vices mainly e-mail as well as some file transfers. In 1997
there were about 200 internet connections from the various
networks, but no single Internet Exchange Provider (IXP)3
that would facilitate large data exchanges with the rest of
the internet (Vietnam Courier, 1997). It was not until
March 20th, 1997 that government Decree 21/CP on new
regulations relating to the management, installation and
3
An Internet Exchange Provider is a point (with physical computing
infrastructure) at which different Internet Service Providers exchange
internet data traffic from and to their respective networks. IXPs are a
means to reduce costs, provide faster service and use overall bandwidth
more efficiently.
 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
use of the Internet in Vietnam took effect. Only in Novem-
ber of 1997 was the internet fully operational in Vietnam.
Given the growth of ‘independent’ networks and the con-
nections to nodes on foreign territory, the government
was given little choice, but to retroactively sanction these
developments and facilitate full internet access to Vietnam.
5. Full internet access
By mid-1995 VNPT recognised the commercial potential
of the internet and became highly protective of its monop-
oly as a data carrier. However, neither VNPT nor the IOIT
were allowed to provide general internet access until a deci-
sion was reached by the Politburo and the Prime Minister’s
Office (Dang Hoang-Giang, 2002, p. 238). This decision
was Decree 21/CP, which served two purposes for the gov-
ernment. On one level it provided a regulatory environ-
ment that allowed full access to the internet and thus
boosts investor confidence and facilitates commercial flows
for much needed and even more so desired Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI). On another level the Decree was the
framework for setting up infrastructure that would allow
virtually full control over electronic information flows
through various state actors controlled by the VCP.
The 1997 piece of legislation required all international
connections to go through one of two gateways in Hanoi
and Ho Chi Minh City, which were operated by VDC.
VDC as a subsidiary of VNPT was under the control of
the DGPT, a major actor in establishing internet regula-
tion. Control over international data traffic was thus given
to the government agency responsible for communication
infrastructure and interested in its economic proceeds.
Although pioneers in networking technology in Vietnam
neither FPT under the MoSTE nor IOIT were licensed to
provide international connectivity.
The state did not hide its intention to control internet
content and Mai Liem Truc, general director of the DGPT
and deputy chief of the National Internet Board in 1997
confirms this in an interview with the Vietnam Economic
Times: ‘‘In principle, the government will control the infor-
mation transmitted’’ (Vietnam Economic Times, 1997b). In
choosing VDC, which was ultimately under the direction, if
not control of Mai Liem Truc, over the somewhat more
independently operating organisations from the research
sector, the state had a trusted agent in place through which
it could monitor its international data traffic and by rout-
ing all traffic through two gateways the technological abil-
ity to do so. Such a structure of communication is of course
contrary to the conditions, which would allow Habermas’s
ethical and rational discourse. Neither does the state’s con-
trol over information on the internet facilitate a bottom-up
approach to content, nor does the state exercise its power
to provide appropriate rules for a public discourse, so that
all members of society can participate equally in any
debate.
In addition to controlling the gateways, the regulation
provided relatively effective control over the internet by
349
holding ISPs, the organisations dealing directly with the
end-user, responsible for the content accessed by its users
and requiring the ISPs, which had to be licensed by the
state, to eliminate inappropriate uses, which include por-
nography and anti-state material. When Decree 21/CP
came into effect only three ISPs fulfilled, according to
Mai Liem Truc, the ‘‘technical’’ requirements to provide
internet service. These were VNPT, the Saigon Post and
Telecom Services joint stock company and Viettel, the
Army Telecommunications Electronics Company. FPT
was not on Mai Liem Truc’s list, but became one of four
ISPs early on (Tu, 2001; Vietnam Courier, 1997; Vietnam
Economic Times, 1997b,c,d,e). The Vietnam Economic
Times refers to a power struggle between DGPT and the
National Centre of Natural Sciences and Technology,
which includes pioneer IOIT, over the control over the
internet in April 1997 (Vietnam Economic Times, 1997c),
which appears to have been won by the technocratic pro-
viders of infrastructure rather than the creative minds that
pioneered network technology in Vietnam. The control
over internet content was further enhanced by requiring
Internet Content Providers (ICPs), i.e. organisations host-
ing web-sites or other content as e.g. file transfer protocol
sites, to keep their servers in Vietnam and receive a licence
for hosting such services. By holding ISPs responsible for
the content accessed by its users, the decree created a vir-
tual panopticon. Even if end-users are not explicitly aware
at any time that the web-sites or other internet content they
are accessing is being monitored by the ISP, there is the
underlying impression of a still omnipresent state. Again,
such practices are contrary to the conditions outlined by
Habermas for successful communicative action.
In addition to the DGPT and the MoSTE Decree 21/CP
brings two other major actors into the internet regime. The
Ministry of Culture and Information (MoCI) is responsible
for establishing guidelines regarding appropriate content
on the internet and licensing ICPs, and the Ministry of
the Interior is effectively responsible for policing the net
and implementing adequate technology to do so. The
DGPT’s task is to provide adequate infrastructure, while
the MoSTE is responsible for research and development.
The time frame of establishing the internet in Vietnam
and the resulting power sharing arrangement between four
major ministries or departments reflects the considerable
internal division of the Party and the insecurity of the state.
For three years after the Prime Minister sent his first e-mail
neither VNPT nor IOIT, both organisations within the
state apparatus, were allowed to provide full internet con-
nectivity. Development was practically put on hold, while
the Politburo and the Prime Minister’s Office engaged in
consultations. Kolko (1997, pp. 80–81) describes growing
opposition to the reforms in the period between the sixth
and the eighth Party Congress by some Party members.
The development of the internet may have been viewed
by more orthodox factions within the Party as part of a fur-
ther integration into the capitalist west. Such struggles may
have greatly influenced the discourse around national secu-
350 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
rity and social evils (discussed in greater detail below), and
may be part of the reasons why the Ministry of the Interior,
essentially responsible for policing the internet, and the
MoCI, responsible for content, received a relatively strong
role. While the regulation strengthens the role of the state
politically, it is also a considerable success for the reform-
ers, because commercial use of the internet is virtually not
restricted. At the same time the Politburo and the Prime
Minister’s Office distributed the control over the internet
over enough trusted agencies to avoid potentially destruc-
tive power accumulation in a single agency and thus
secured political control over the net by the Party, espe-
cially the Politburo and the Prime Minister’s Office, while
maintaining commercial openness. With the implementa-
tion of Decree 21/CP the government seized the opportu-
nity to implement rather stringent regulation of the
internet. Especially in the beginning the Vietnamese gov-
ernment has taken very small steps with very limited risks
to its own position involved. In the following years, these
steps have become much bigger, but the risk has increased
only marginally, if at all.
6. Market principles and political control
A major step in the development of the internet in Viet-
nam was Decree 55/2001/ND-CP (see Socialist Republic of
Vietnam, 2001) on The Management, Provision and Use of
Internet Services in August 2001, which replaced the 1997
provisional Decree 21/CP that had been the legal frame-
work for the internet for four years. The new regulation
was an important step in the development of the internet,
because of its partial liberalisation of the internet market
on one side and its more stringent emphasis on government
management and licensing requirements on the other.
Since 1997 the state has been under pressure from the
business community and consumers to provide cheaper
and better internet access (Tu, 2001), and the legal changes
would allow the DGPT to licence more ISPs and IXPs, a
term used in the new decree for internet gateways, which
were formerly the monopoly of VDC. VDC also owned
all transmission lines, which other ISPs had to lease from
it. In May 2002 FPT and the army owned company Viettel
were licensed as additional IXPs (Hong, 2002). In February
2002 licenses for five new ISPs were granted, of which one
licensee is a private ISP and can thus provide services only
to a limited constituency, such as members of the organisa-
tion or for example a business park (Vietnam Investment
Review, 2002).
In spite of the increased competition, which was
intended to introduce greater (although limited) market
principles and lower prices for internet use, the state had
to give up little of its control over the net. Ownership of
network infrastructure is hierarchically organised. IXPs
must be state owned or joint stock companies that are
dominated by the state. ISPs can be enterprises of all eco-
nomic sectors and provide internet access to organisations
and individuals, while private ISPs can only provide inter-
net access to member organisations, for example within a
specific industrial park, and are not allowed to offer their
services on the open market and make a profit. As shown
in Fig. 1 IXPs are the only ones that are allowed to provide
connections to internet nodes outside Vietnam, i.e. the
international internet. ISPs are allowed to connect to other
ISPs, IXPs and consumers, but private ISPs are only
allowed to connect to ISPs and IXPs. Private ISPs are
not allowed to directly interconnect. Individual consumers
can receive internet services from Vietnamese ISPs, but not
private ISPs. It is also forbidden to connect to an interna-
tional ISP by direct international dialling (Socialist Repub-
lic of Vietnam, 2001).
By 2002 there were only three IXPs, nine ISPs and one
private ISP. Since all three IXPs also act as ISPs, there
are only nine organisations in the country that provide
nodes through which internet traffic can be routed. There
are only three that route international traffic. Although
highly regulated and somewhat oligopolistic these numbers
are probably large enough to operate the internet econom-
ically by market principles, but leave the authorities with
not too many organisations to control data flows, if neces-
sary. The Vietnam Internet Network Information Center
(2003) reports that there were five IXPs in Vietnam in
2003, all of which provided international connections.
International Internet (World)
Vietnam
IXP IXP
ISP ISP
Private Private
ISP ISP
Limited User Limited User
Community Community
Consumers / End Users
Illegal Connection
Legal Connection
Fig. 1. Legal and illegal connections in the Vietnamese Internet structure.
Source: Own graphic.
 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357 351

However, as Table 1 shows, VNPT, controlled by the Min- MoSTE is responsible for research and technology devel-
istry of Post and Telecommunications (MPT), the succes- opment related to the internet. The MoCI manages the
sor to the previous DGPT, has with approximately 87% content of the internet in Vietnam and the Ministry of Pub-
or 905 Mbps (Megabytes per second) by far the largest lic Security is responsible for the ‘‘safety’’ of internet activ-
share in international bandwidth and connections to the ities, including ‘‘national safety’’.
largest number of nodes. The army company Viettel has
connections to four nodes of international networks, but
only 38 Mbps bandwidth. FPT has a higher bandwidth, 7. Internet content
but only a single connection to one international network.
The remaining two companies have a combined bandwidth Although the internet is global in reach and Vietnam is
of 6 Mbps or 0.6% of the total bandwidth and two fully connected to the internet, all information has to be
connections. routed through at least one IXP of only five organisations,
The increase of licences for IXPs is another small step in as described above. It is thus relatively easy to block con-
liberalising the internet market, but the control of the net- tent that originates from a server outside Vietnam. The
work and its flows remain with the organisation that had a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported in
monopoly position since the government began to legislate November 2002 that ISPs confirmed that authorities have
the internet in 1997. The pioneers of the internet in Viet- blocked access to the Vietnamese language pages of its
nam, the relatively independent IOIT and Netnam, are web-site. The BBC reported the news in connection with
not providing services anymore. The high level of state a report on the detention of dissidents in Vietnam (BBC
ownership of the communication infrastructure maintains News, 2002). The organisation Reporters Without Borders
the Vietnamese state’s ability to use its legislative power reports that the ‘‘government blocks access to web-sites it
to provide the right conditions for an open and rational considers politically and morally ‘dangerous’, including
public debate, which would include free, fair and equal foreign news sites and those of human rights organisations
access to information and the ability of all individuals or set-up by Vietnamese abroad’’ (Reporters Without Bor-
groups in society to provide information on the net. How- ders, 2003, p. 133).
ever, given the regulatory environment of the internet in There are many human rights organisations that report
Vietnam, the creation of such conditions is unlikely. on Vietnam with a focus on specific infringements of
Four government ministries remain primarily responsi- human rights, such as freedom of speech. Other organisa-
ble for the control and management of the internet, tions, however, deny that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
although decree 55/2001/ND-CP also mentions explicitly is a legitimate state, and openly demand a return to a pre-
a fifth ministry, the Ministry of Finance as the responsible 1975 structure of the country with the goal of establishing
body for decisions on fiscal assistance, which gives priority an alternative regime to the current government in contem-
to party and state agencies in terms of the allocation of porary Vietnam.4 Some of these organisations have trace-
investment capital and application of financial assistance. able links to the Saigon Administration. Many of these
The MPT is mainly responsible for infrastructure. The sites are based in the United States, which has fought a
destructive war against Vietnam and its current regime,
which led the North Vietnamese army in the American
Table 1 war. Thus the long history of foreign involvement in Viet-
International bandwidth by IXP nam needs to be considered and the Vietnamese govern-
IXP– Connection Bandwidth Total ment is likely concerned that the internet serves as a
ISP (Mbps) (Mbps) medium for covert strategic action by some overseas Viet-
VNPT Kornet (Korea) 2 905 namese groups. The blocking of sites by the Vietnamese
Singtel (Singapore) 310 authorities is relatively selective and appears to be focused
Reach (Hongkong) 290 on Vietnamese language sites. For example, between 2002
KDD (Japan) 2
and 2004 and presumably at other times as well, it was pos-
China Telecom (China) 155
Fusion (USA) 145 sible to access the English language site of Amnesty Inter-
TrunghoaTelecom 1 national and western media from Vietnam.5
(Taiwan) Content that originates from servers outside Vietnam
Vietel Dacom (Hongkong) 2 38 can be and is blocked by Vietnamese authorities, but the
Singtel (Singapore) 4
Reach (Hongkong) 2 4
The organisation Government of a Free Vietnam, for example, openly
Intelsat (USA) 30
calls for an overthrow of the communist regime in Vietnam. Their web-site
FPT Reach (Hongkong) 89 89 can be accessed at: http://www.gfvn.org/index.asp; see specifically: http://
ETC Kornet (Korea) 2 2 www.gfvn.org/Open%20Letter/open_letter_Nguyen_Hoang_Dan.asp?
SPT Reach (Hongkong) 4 4 PVLID=904 (last accessed: 28 March 2007).
5
I lived in Vietnam during this period, using dial-up internet service
Total 1038
through pre-paid cards from VDC or FPT and was able to access such
Source: Vietnam Internet Network Information Center (2003). sites.
352 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
content of foreign sites as such cannot be controlled by the
authorities. There is, however, an attempt to control con-
tent that originates from servers within Vietnam. In addi-
tion, Vietnamese content can be blocked, although not at
the IXP level, over which the state has greatest control
and of which there are fewest, but at the ISP level, which
can interconnect directly within Vietnam. According to
Decree 55/2001/ND-CP organisations that provide inter-
net content, most likely in the form of web-site hosting,
require a licence from the MoCI. The licensing process is
in place and there are fines for providing content without
a licence or breaking the conditions stipulated in the
license. This provides the state with a dual strategy for con-
trolling domestically created internet content. Specific
internet addresses can be blocked at the ISP level under
the overall supervision of the MPT and web-services
should be licensed and approved by the MoCI prior to
starting operations.
On a generic level information circulated on the internet
must comply with the Press Law, Publication Law, Ordi-
nance on the Protection of State Secrets and other regula-
tions. While the government promotes the use of the
internet for news publishing, it attempts to maintain strict
control over the 73 e-newspapers that it licensed between
1997 and 2005. In consultation with the Central Ideology
and Cultural Committee the MoCI will set standards on
content for editors-in-chief of e-newspapers (Vietnam
News Brief Service, 2004d), thus employing the same mech-
anisms as for printed newspapers. It is expected from elec-
tronic news outlets that these will support a government set
agenda. The following announcement at a conference on
e-newspapers in central Hue City in October 2005 by Hong
Vinh, member of the Party Central Committee and deputy
head of the Committee’s Ideological and Cultural Commis-
sion illustrates this: ‘‘These newspapers have to stick to the
Party and country’s political tasks, promote the patriotic
emulation movement and help the country fulfill socio-eco-
nomic development tasks’’ (Vietnam News Brief Service,
2005a).
A major concern for the government of Vietnam is the
existence of ‘‘social evils’’ in the country. While social evils
are condemned regularly by high ranking officials and
police actions against establishments hosting any activities
related to social evils are well publicised, there is little indi-
cation in the Vietnamese press that such social evils are
declining. A major challenge is the inability of the state
to control local authorities and complex networks of busi-
ness-authority relations facilitate the distribution of por-
nography, prostitution, gambling and drug abuse through
corruption and cover-ups (see e.g. Koh, 2001a). The rise
of social evils is often associated with the open door policy
since doi moi and attributed to negative western influences
(see Gainsborough, 2003, p. 151). Interwoven into the
theme of social evils is a greater discourse on morals in gen-
eral and traditional Vietnamese values. The internet is
often identified as a major threat to these values, as exem-
plified by the deputy head of the investigation department
of the MoCI Vu Xuan Thanh in a 2004 interview: ‘‘It goes
against the good morals of Vietnamese if we allow our
young people to view sexual web-sites.’’ Decree 55/2001/
ND-CP (Article 3.1) states that the management of the
internet must be implemented in a way that prevents abuses
that have a negative impact on national security, national
morality and traditional fine customs. While these terms
leave a great deal of room for interpretation, there is gen-
erally a shift in government policy towards bourgeois val-
ues of nuclear families and individual responsibilities.
Nuclear families are now re-constructed as units of tradi-
tional Vietnamese values, marking a shift from the official
promotion of a more gender egalitarian, modern and non-
traditional society under ideological influence during the
period of strong Soviet influence (Drummond, 2000, p.
2385).
In 2004 the MoCI decided to coordinate with the MPT
and the Police to conduct regular surveillance of internet
content. In September 2005 the Vietnam News Agency
reported that ISPs in Vietnam ‘‘are likely to have network
security software installed free-of-charge to prevent users
from accessing harmful web-sites’’, relying on a statement
by Nguyen Tu Quang, director of the Internetwork Secu-
rity Centre at the Ha Noi University of Technology. The
software will provide ISPs with the possibility to circulate
‘‘domain names of unhealthy web-sites’’ to the centre. Once
a site is approved harmful it will be made inaccessible
(Vietnam News Agency, 2005). The creation of the dis-
course of social evils establishes norms for ‘‘appropriate’’
public behaviour that can be extended to the virtual world
of cyberspace, which becomes a quasi-public space and the
‘‘network security software’’ allows the policing of this
space.
8. Surveillance in virtual space
Although the state maintains considerable direct control
over the network infrastructure, it also downloads the
responsibility for monitoring and policing the data flow
on the internet in Vietnam to other organisations and indi-
viduals. Article 6.2 of Decree 55/2001/ND-CP states that
‘‘[o]rganizations, individuals providing and using Internet
services are responsible for information accessed, transmit-
ted on the Internet’’. On one level this clause puts the bur-
den of ‘‘responsible use’’ of the internet on the individual
user, but it also puts responsibility on ISPs, which are the
providers of any service.
Fines of various ranges can be levied against individuals
and organisations that break administrative rules related to
internet provision and use that do not constitute a criminal
offence. The highest fines are for providing internet service
without a licence or providing internet service contrary to
the terms stipulated in a licence. The enforcement of penal-
ties will be carried out by ‘‘[s]pecialised Inspectors and Peo-
ples’ Committee [sic] at all levels’’. This suggests that the
state is not intending to – and most likely would not be
able to – control all data flows on the internet. However,
 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
various state agencies and inspectors can selectively exer-
cise control over data flows on the basis of a decree issued
by the highest decision making organs in the state struc-
ture, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Politburo.
Given the possibility for fines and more importantly los-
ing the licence to a lucrative business, ISPs have a vested
self-interest to act within the regulations set out by the state
and thus monitor internet traffic. More importantly ‘‘Inter-
net abuse to oppose the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and
perturb safety and security and other serious violations’’
(Article 45) are criminal activities. While most internet traf-
fic does not appear to be permanently monitored, the state
exercises considerable power and is flexible with respect to
when, how and where to act, if this is deemed necessary. An
inspection of internet cafés in 2002 showed that most of the
computers stored the addresses of web-sites on a ‘‘black
list’’ (Vietnam News Brief Service, 2002b).
Following Foucault’s notion of the panopticon, users
and providers may well be engaging in acts of self-censor-
ship. Just as the architecture of the modern prison
described by Foucault gives the prison warden the poten-
tial to observe the inmates at any time without them know-
ing if they are actually being watched or not, the
architecture of the internet in Vietnam gives the Vietnam-
ese state the potential to monitor internet traffic at any
time, without internet users or providers knowing when
this is occurring.
9. The micro-spaces of internet diffusion and control
The setting up of internet cafés during the first year of
internet connectivity in Vietnam was ambiguous, not only
because it was a new field of business and prices were high,
but also because the legal basis for cyber cafés was uncer-
tain. The first internet café in Ho Chi Minh City was closed
by authorities based on allegations that ‘‘contaminated’’ e-
mails were sent from there, but in early 1998 other cafés
opened in the southern city and there were at least two in
Hanoi (Do, 1998).
By 2004 there were about 4000 Internet café owners in
Vietnam and the free access to information and the lack
of control over these spaces became a major concern for
the government, which pushed for increasing control. The
discourse surrounding the debate on greater control of
the internet was dominated by government statements on
social evils. Controlling the internet is difficult, because of
unclear regulations and a lack of staff and equipment. Vu
Xuan Thanh noted, however, that in China, for instance,
internet cafés are linked to a central agency, where the gov-
ernment monitors content and access and can ‘‘manage
each subscriber’’ (Vietnam Investment Review, 2004).
Since these concerns became more serious, a first step
towards greater control was a legally binding instruction
in August 2004 by the MoCI that internet café owners must
provide a list of all web-sites visited in their cafés over the
previous 30 days, if the Ministry requests such a list. More-
over, the café owners must also provide credit card or ID
353
card numbers of the customers that accessed such sites.
In addition, fines for internet café owners for hosting inap-
propriate web-sites was increased from 20 to 30 million
Vietnam Dong (VND) (approximately 1900 US$ at the
time) (Vietnam Investment Review, 2004).
These regulations were included in an inter-ministerial
circular by the Ministry of Public Security, MPT and the
MoCI in October 2004, and additional detail was added.
The circular took effect in July 2005, when the group of
ministries involved had been extended to include the pow-
erful Ministry of Planning and Investment, which is
responsible for attracting FDI, but had not previously been
given any jurisdiction over the internet. The circular was
designed to aid the implementation of government Decree
55/2001/ND-CP. The circular attempts to prevent the
access to ‘‘inappropriate’’ sites in internet cafés in two pri-
mary ways. First, there are minimum space requirements
set for each computer and each terminal must be in the
internet café owner’s view, thus the shop owner acts as a
control person in the micro-geographic space of the café.
In addition, opening hours are set for the time between
6:00 AM and midnight and children under the age of 14
must be accompanied by an adult (Hai, 2004; Vietnam
News Brief Service, 2005d; Vietnam News, 2005; Vietnam
Investment Review, 2005). The resemblance between Fou-
cault’s description of the modern prison, where each
inmate is within the warden’s view at any time, and the reg-
ulation of the internet cafés, where each terminal must be
within the owner’s view at any time, is obvious. However,
the second form of control is a technical one. Internet agen-
cies and cafés are required to install software that tracks
customers’ names and ID numbers. The software is to be
provided by the ISPs (Hai, 2004). Through these measures
the state has downloaded the responsibility for monitoring
the internet to another level below the ISP in an attempt to
effectively control all information. In the case of the popu-
lar internet cafés, the virtual panopticon created by elec-
tronic surveillance is aided by the more traditional
panopticon of the physical space of the internet café and
the shop owners’ responsibility to enforce the customers’
obligation to visit appropriate web-sites.
A critical point for the central government in the imple-
mentation of the inter-ministerial circular could be the reli-
ance on provincial authorities for enforcement.
Insubordination of local authorities weakens the effective-
ness of Vietnam’s state management (Koh, 2001a,b) and
thus provides room for unauthorised use of the internet.
The deputy head of the investigation department of the
MoCI Vu Xuan Thanh identified this phenomenon as a
challenge in the control of access to ‘‘inappropriate’’
web-sites less than a year before the circular took effect:
‘‘[Local authorities] are the most important sector to the
success of this campaign. But, they do not care much about
the problem at the moment’’ (Vietnam Investment Review,
2004). The internet can be policed effectively by the state,
but this policing needs to be carried out by human actors.
These actors are all integrated into the state apparatus in
354 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
various ways and have diverse individual interests and
motivations, which will affect how stringently regulations
will be applied. State influence over the internet can thus
never result in total control, but the state is flexible enough
to exercise control in particular ‘‘corners’’ of cyberspace, if
it considers it necessary.
Local insubordination and corruption is illustrated by
the detection of an internet café that provided virtually per-
manent access to porn movies for clients including many
children as young as 10. The café was found in the southern
city of Bien Hoa in Dong Nai province adjacent to Ho Chi
Minh City, but the operation was led by the General Police
Department in Hanoi, which acted after local residents had
lost confidence in local authorities and petitioned higher
levels of government. The owner of the café was the wife
of the head of the provincial police unit specialising in
the fight against ‘‘social evils’’ (Vietnam News Brief Ser-
vice, 2005b,c). According to police records between 1995
and 1998 two thirds of known customers in the sex industry
were government officials (McNally, 2003, p. 116).
In another move in June 2005 the People’s Committee in
Hanoi has explicitly given permission to mass media in the
city to publish names and position of people found guilty
of drug abuse or prostitution. According to Hanoi’s Mayor
Nguyen Quoc Trieun the move is intended to scare people
(Ngoc, 2005). In this case the media are encouraged to sup-
port the state’s agenda and are likely to fulfil this role,
because of the sensational connotation of drugs and pros-
titution, while on other topics reporting is restricted or dis-
couraged. Although the People’s Committee appears to be
extending freedom of the press, by allowing or even
encouraging the reporting of offenders in these social evil
type crimes, such action needs to be characterised as what
Habermas considers ‘‘covert strategic action’’, because
freedom of the press is deliberately extended to only one
aspect of public life and will thus not create the conditions
for a fair, equal and open debate.
10. Social evils or political control?
While prostitution, drug abuse and gambling, i.e. social
evils, are certainly existing problems with high social costs,
the government’s response appears ineffective. Kolko
(1997) claims that high levels of prostitution are the result
of economic liberalisation and the erosion of any effective
government social networks. ‘‘In 1996 there were more
prostitutes in Ho Chi Minh City than at the peak of the
[American] war’’ (1997, p. 108). The level of prostitution
remains high and is a visible feature of cities and towns
(cf. McNally, 2003).
There is legitimate concern that the internet provides a
means to distribute and promote pornographic materials
and prostitution. Internet chat rooms, for example, are
used by prostitutes to make initial contact with potential
clients and private ‘‘VIP’’ rooms with web-cameras and
head-sets in internet cafés are popular with some females
who seek an income in the sex trade (Vietnam News Brief
Service, 2004b,c). However, cyberspace is likely only a
small part of the sex trade and prostitution is taking place
in more traditional spaces such as Karaoke shops, hotels,
bars, night clubs, massage parlours, hair salons, public
parks, streets and back alleys (cf. Koh, 2001a; McNally,
2003).
Another major concern, and one that receives the atten-
tion of the authorities, is political material circulated on the
internet. Decree 55/2001/ND-CP states in Article 11 (3)
that it ‘‘shall be strictly prohibited [. . . to . . .] take advanta-
ges of the Internet to do hostile actions against the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam or cause security unrest, violate
morality and good customs and other laws and regula-
tions’’. The state has created a legal basis to take action
against political activity on the internet, if it is deemed to
be violating this clause. However, the wording is vague
and open to interpretation, while there appears to be no
additional clarifying instruction or regulation by a specific
ministry or the Prime Minister’s Office.
In December 2002, the Minister of Information and
Culture and member of the VCP’s Central Committee,
Pham Quang Nghi, defended in a newspaper article the
monopoly on political power by the VCP arguing for the
‘‘implementation of real democracy in Vietnam under the
leadership of the VCP’’ (Vietnam News Brief Service,
2002a). The article reaffirms a policy of allowing open
debates on particular issues without undermining the dom-
inant position of the Party. Nghi’s article came less than a
month after a Hanoi court sentenced dissident Le Chi
Quang to four years in prison for distributing anti-state
documents on the internet, without revealing the content
of the documents (Vietnam News Brief Service, 2002a,
2003c). Another month later Nguyen Khac Toan, a former
military officer, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and
subsequent three years probation by a Hanoi court for
espionage. Toan had sent 24 e-mails and two floppy disks
to an overseas group. He also used his cell phone to trans-
mit information (Vietnam News Brief Service, 2003b,c). In
March 2003 Ho Chi Minh City physician, Nguyen Dan
Que, was arrested for sending documents with content that
‘‘runs against the state’’ to the US-based ‘‘High Tide
Humanist Movement’’ from an internet café. The original
charges against him under the criminal code could have
carried between 12 years imprisonment and the death pen-
alty (Vietnam News Brief Service, 2003c). He was con-
victed of undermining the state and sentenced to two and
a half years in prison by the Ho Chi Minh City People’s
Court more than a year later (Vietnam News Brief Service,
2004a). In yet another case a Hanoi court sentenced Pham
Hong Son to 13 years in prison for distribution of ‘‘false’’
information about the Vietnamese government on the
internet. Again the case was linked to organisations of
exiled Vietnamese activists (Vietnam News Brief Service,
2003b). Son’s term was later reduced to five years (Vietnam
News Brief Service, 2003a). Vietnam regularly grants mass
amnesties to prisoners and dissidents have been amongst
those released in the past.
 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
The arrests and convictions of dissidents that used the
internet for their activities happened only about a year
before the MoCI in cooperation with other ministries tight-
ened the controls over the internet through additional
instructions, regulations and circulars. While these regula-
tions were generally framed as pieces of legislation to pre-
vent ‘‘social evils’’, they will certainly be useful for tracking
dissidents that are using the internet for their purposes. The
Vietnamese state still reacts with its full force, for example
in form of persistent prosecution and long prison terms, if
it considers the dominance of the Party threatened, espe-
cially if foreign organisations and overseas Vietnamese
groups are involved in any actions. It also reacts to the
emergence of domestic debates and criticism, if these are
not authorised. In 2002 for example the MoCI closed down
a popular web-site that served as an on-line discussion
forum for young people. The site had almost 60 000 regis-
tered members, when it was closed down. According to
the ministry, it had not obtained a license and some of
the published information was inaccurate. The fact that
the site had reached such a large membership before being
closed down indicates some limited freedom in Vietnamese
cyberspace, as long as it remains on a relatively small scale.
This freedom may be either quietly granted or the activities
may simply not be recognised by the authorities. Regard-
less of which case applies, it suggests that there are oppor-
tunities for subverting the panoptical strategies by the
state. However, the state authorities react and exercise their
flexible control, if the matter becomes serious to them.
The degree of freedom for explicit or implicit political
acts in cyberspace is similar to that in physical space. While
there is more activity in public space today than in the early
1980s (Drummond, 2000, p. 2382) and the authorities toler-
ate some degree of crowd formations in public space, large
crowds, as for example around football (soccer) matches or
other events of popular culture, have become a major con-
cern for the state, which will act to disperse these crowds, if
it considers it necessary. There have even been reports of
massing of army personal in city barracks before the 1998
football World Cup final (Thomas, 2001, pp. 310–311). Just
as in physical space, state authorities have a degree of toler-
ance in cyberspace, but act if considered necessary.
While the Vietnamese state reacts with its state power
when it is under threat, especially from outside sources, it
carefully intertwines such actions with a discourse on social
evils to justify control mechanisms and force. Relying on
its power position the state has undermined the basis for
Habermas’s establishment of communicative action.
Although the state uses its power to provide laws that
are regulating the internet, these laws contrast with Haber-
mas’s vision of constitutionalism, since they are not the
result of a democratic process.
11. Conclusion
Considering the low network capabilities in 1988 the
development of the internet in Vietnam has been rapid.
355
However, this development was also a process of carefully
authorised steps that ensured political control over the
internet by the Party and the state. Cyberspace in Vietnam
has proven to be a problematic space for providing a forum
for free, fair and unrestricted public debates. Neither has
the internet become a space for unrestricted cross-border
communication, that easily escapes national censorship
regimes. With the growth of the internet, the state imple-
mented legislation that would download responsibility for
controlling the internet to ISPs and internet café owners.
It justified measures for controlling internet content with
a discourse on the prevention of social evils and the protec-
tion of traditional Vietnamese customs. At the same time
the state took decisive action against dissidents distributing
political information over the internet.
If Habermas’s theory of communicative action is
applied as the standard for an open public debate that
would lead to rational decision making in society, cyber-
space is a no more suitable space for achieving this stan-
dard in the Vietnamese context than any other space.
Cyberspace, or more specifically the internet, has not
become an level communication terrain, where current
power relations in contemporary states could easily be
overcome. By 1997 the Vietnamese state had established
a regulatory environment through which it would gain con-
trol over the network and the information transmitted.
However, this control is not absolute. This means, the state
cannot monitor all communication on the internet at all
times, but the established mechanisms of control allow
the government to be flexible to act in specific instances,
when it considers the monopoly on political power by the
VCP to be under threat. The responsibility for monitoring
communication flows on the internet has been widespread
and includes state inspectors, bureaucrats providing
licenses, internet café owners, corporate entities such as
ISPs and the individual end-user. Given this web of control
mechanisms, the power of the state is not total, but practi-
cally inescapable, because internet communication can be
subject to monitoring and control at any time in the virtual
panopticon of cyberspace and the physical panopticon of,
for instance, an internet café. The term flexible control
therefore refers to a disciplinary system, which reacts to sit-
uations that may threaten the state’s political control
rather than a proactive form of controlling all internet con-
tent that would likely exceed the resources of the censor-
ship regime. Moreover, jurisdiction over the internet has
been distributed over several ministries and departments,
which avoids accumulation of power over the net in a sin-
gle institution.
The need for internet monitoring is justified by a dis-
course on social evils and threats to traditional Vietnamese
customs. Social evils appear to have been only poorly con-
tained so far. Considering the decisive action against dissi-
dents and the lax fight against prostitution, drug abuse and
gambling, the creation of a discourse on social evils by the
state, should be considered covert strategic action rather
than an ethical discourse (Klein and Huynh, 2004,
356 B. Surborg / Geoforum 39 (2008) 344–357
p. 187). According to Habermas this would be a case of
‘‘systematically distorted communication’’ (Habermas,
1982, p. 264 cited in Klein and Huynh, 2004, p. 187).
The combination of this official discourse, a regulatory
environment that favours state control and the download-
ing of disciplinary responsibility to a widespread web of
actors, create the kind of power relations described by Fou-
cault and give the Vietnamese authorities the power to
exercise flexible control over the net, which is applied effec-
tively with respect to political information, but less strin-
gently regarding the so called social evils.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jim Glassman and Elvin Wyly for their
constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. I
would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers and
editor Katie Willis for their constructive and helpful com-
ments. All errros remain my own.
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