Parallel Transformations, Converging Practice: The Politics of Justice in Vietnam’s Green and Digital Transformations

Vietnam is frequently portrayed as a climate governance frontrunner among Global South countries, having adopted an early Net Zero-emission-by-2050 pledge and multiple decarbonization policies. In parallel, the government has launched a digital transformation agenda with similarly bold ambitions. Although equity and inclusion language accompanies both agendas, they operate within a one-party political system marked by bureaucratic fragmentation and a strong economic development emphasis. This article examines how justice is articulated in Vietnam’s green and digital transformations and identifies factors shaping these outcomes. It analyzes key policy documents and leadership speeches through a three-dimensional framework, encompassing recognition, distributive, and procedural justice, complemented by expert interviews. The findings indicate that while the green transformation is slightly more vulnerability-sensitive than the digital transformation, both ultimately follow similar structural patterns. While early green strategies are more people-centered and attentive to disadvantaged groups, these features are diluted in implementation and converge toward the digital agenda’s consistently managerial-developmentalist pattern. Across both agendas, welfare-enhancing measures risk imposing adjustment burdens, while participation remains largely passive and symbolic. These uncoordinated agendas converge under shared structural constraints: policy integration limits, leadership influence, and international reputational-financial dynamics. The article develops this as the parallel transformation concept, an alternative to the twin transformation model, which associates such justice limitations with the market-oriented conditions of Global North liberal democracies and looks to departures from these conditions for a remedy. That they recur in Vietnam, a near-antipode of these settings, suggests their presence is not the cause of weak transformational justice, nor their absence its cure.