 The leader of Vietnam's Communist Party has died. He was 80 years old. Michael Sullivan has details. Vietnam has no official paramount leader, but the job of party chief has long been the most powerful in the country, one the 80-year-old Nguyen Pha Trung held since 2011. He was an old-school Leninist educated in the Soviet Union, a political hardliner who paradoxically oversaw much of Vietnam's transition to a market economy.