In response to this perceived growing threat against the regime, on 2 December 1980 the Vietnamese Communist Party Politburo issued Resolution 31-NQ/TW on maintaining internal political security and law and order in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with a specific focus on increasing the power and the responsibilities of Vietnam’s Public Security and Police forces, which were subordinate to the Ministry of Interior. 

This resolution on combatting “ideological sabotage” lumps Chinese ideological propaganda, Western propaganda operations, international human rights and humanitarian relief activities, and religious radio broadcasts and religious missionary activities all together with the spreading influence of Western culture and music in Vietnam as part of a vast, insidious effort by Vietnam’s enemies designed to corrupt Vietnam’s society and to weaken its “revolutionary” spirit in order to cause the overthrow or collapse of the Vietnamese Communist Party and government. 

The over-the-top rhetoric used in this resolution illustrates the widespread paranoia that infected the upper ranks of Vietnam’s Party and security apparatus during this period of the Cold War.  It was not until six years later, in December 1986, that the pressures of growing internal dissension (even within the Party), the country’s desperate economic situation, and reductions in Soviet military and economic to Vietnam resulted in the decision by the Communist Party’s 6th Party Congress to shift to a policy of reforms, called “Renovation” [Đổi Mới] reforms and to new Vietnamese efforts to normalize relations with China and the United States.

In 1988 a classified Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security’s in-house professional journal published this article offering ideas on how to utilize the “psychological characteristics” of the ethnic Chinese in the interrogation of suspected “Chinese spies”.  At the time the article was published, the once-close alliance between the Vietnamese and Chinese Communist Parties, which Mao Zedong described in 1967 as being “as close as between lips and teeth”, had deteriorated into a vicious military and political conflict between the two former allies.  Chinese efforts to collect intelligence on and to foment internal opposition against the leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party were of special concern to Vietnam’s security service, and ethnic Chinese residents of Vietnam naturally became a primary focus of Vietnam’s counter-espionage efforts.

This article, published in a classified Vietnamese Ministry of Interior publication, asserted that Vietnam’s economy required international cooperation and support, saying “no country can close its doors and still expect to be able to develop and make progress.” The article also states that the Ministry was now gradually allowing identified “spies” to enter Vietnam so that their activities could be covertly surveilled by the Ministry’s counter-espionage officers

In 1971, North Vietnam’s Public Security Service (the North Vietnamese equivalent of the former Soviet KGB, known at the time as the Ministry of Interior) held a national conference to review the status of the Service’s efforts targeted against the Vietnamese Catholic Church over the past decade and a half and to formulate plans and policies for its future operations directed against the Church. In this speech given at the opening of the conference, Party Politburo Member and Minister of Public Security General Tran Quoc Hoan [Trần Quốc Hoàn], outlined the successes that he said had been achieved in gaining the sympathy and support of the Catholic “masses” and in combatting what he called “reactionaries exploiting the Catholic religion”.

VWP Party Politburo Member and Minister of Public Security General Trần Quốc Hoàn's comments about "transforming" the Catholic Church in Vietnam.