What Takaichi’s Hanoi Visit Reveals About Vietnam’s Critical Minerals Strategy |
ASEAN Beat | Diplomacy | Southeast Asia
What Takaichi’s Hanoi Visit Reveals About Vietnam’s Critical Minerals Strategy
Vietnam’s critical minerals strategy applies the doctrine of strategic autonomy to a new sector. The visit by Japan’s PM shows what that approach can deliver and where it falls short.
Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae meets with Vietnam’s President and Communist Party chief To Lam, in Hanoi, Vietnam, May 2, 2026.
When Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae arrived in Hanoi on May 1, she was driven from Noi Bai airport in a VinFast Lac Hong 900 LX. The car’s name evokes a mythical bird from Vietnamese tradition, while its design draws on the Dong Son bronze drum and bamboo groves, blending modern industry with cultural heritage.
Over the next three days, Takaichi and Vietnam’s Prime Minister Le Minh Hung signed six cooperation documents, launched the first project under Japan’s POWERR Asia Initiative, and identified “economic security including energy, critical minerals, semiconductors, AI, and space as new priority areas” in bilateral relations. The joint statement committed both sides to strengthening supply chains including rare earths in Vietnam.
Viewed through the lens of the Takaichi visit, Vietnam’s critical minerals strategy emerges as an effort to apply the country’s doctrine of strategic autonomy to the sector at the heart of global competition. Strategic autonomy was reaffirmed as central to long-term development at the Communist Party of Vietnam’s January 2026 congress.
The Domestic Architecture
Vietnam’s mineral governance is undergoing significant change. On January 1, 2026, the amended Law on Geology and Minerals took effect, classifying rare earths as a special strategic mineral, banning the export of unprocessed rare earth ore, and restricting exploration, mining, and processing rights to state-designated or state-approved enterprises. A separate national strategy on rare earths is due to be submitted to the relevant authorities in early 2026.
By deciding who extracts, what leaves, and on what terms, Hanoi is turning minerals into state-directed strategic assets. That shift lets Vietnam seek processing partnerships instead of just exporting raw ore.
The legal changes are partly a response to illegal rare earth extraction and smuggling networks. Between October 2023 and July 2024, the Ministry of Public Security arrested 14 people linked to illegal extraction at the Yen Phu mine in Yen Bai province, including the chairmen of two major firms. The investigation expanded to include a former deputy minister of natural resources and environment, the former head of the General Department of Geology and Minerals, and senior provincial officials. Defendants were charged with extracting and selling more than 291,000 tons of rare earth and iron ore, with a portion smuggled to China through falsified customs documents. The crackdown made clear that rare earths are now treated as a national security matter.
The critical minerals push sits within a wider restructuring of Vietnam’s energy and resource strategy. The revised Eighth National Power Development Plan, approved in 2025, scales up renewable and nuclear capacity to meet the electricity demands of a heavily industrializing economy, with Russian and South Korean cooperation now central to the two planned nuclear sites.
Together, these moves signal Hanoi’s intent to fold minerals and energy into a broader framework of strategic autonomy to ensure that resource governance, energy security, and industrial policy are aligned under state direction.
When Strategic Autonomy Meets Great Power Rivalry
Critical minerals competition has tightened sharply since 2023. China processes between 85 and 100 percent of global rare earth refining and dominates downstream segments of the battery and electric vehicle (EV) value chains. In a 2020 essay, Xi Jinping wrote that China should “tighten international production chains’ dependence on China”........