Despite an increase in the number of district-level land use plans and provincial-level land pricing frameworks available online on local government portals in 2022 compared to 2021 as well as local authorities’ better response to citizen requests for land information, provincial and district authorities should do more to meet the mandate of disclosing information online.

Access to local land use plans remains limited on a national scale despite the provisions of the 2013 Land Law and the 2016 Law on Access to Information which mandate the posting of local land use master plans and annual land use plans for public view in various forms, including on digital platforms. According to the 2021 PAPI survey, only one-fifth of respondents nationwide said they were aware of local land use plans since 2011.

This article takes initial steps in understanding causes and effects of land conflicts in Vietnam after the effect of the 2003 Land Law and its subsequent amendments. It examines institutional arrangements that govern land rights security but may have created biases toward different land users upon conflicting land use purposes. The analysis also examines the values of the two available large sample surveys in Vietnam (the citizen perception-based Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) and the firm perception-based Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI)) in informing potential different treatments toward citizens and firms as land users.

Under Vietnam’s Ly dynasty, the relations between Dai Viet (now Vietnam) and feudal China under the Song dynasty witnessed many ups and downs with good neighborly ties through high-level state visits and Vietnamese feudalists’ submission and payment of tributes to Chinese emperors and numerous land conflicts.