On Nov. 16, 2008, two of Vietnam's new entrepreneurs were married in the Caravelle, Ho Chi Minh City's first luxury hotel, once home to journalists covering the "American War." The groom was 36-year-old Nguyen Bao Hoang, managing general partner of an investment firm, IDG Ventures Vietnam, and his bride was 27-year-old Nguyen Thanh Phuong, chairperson of another investment firm, VietCapital. Between them, their two companies controlled around $150 million of investments in Vietnam.

But the wedding wasn't just another story about new money in Vietnam. Nguyen Thanh Phuong isn't just an investment banker -- she's the daughter of the prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung. The man she was marrying is an American citizen, the child of parents who fled Vietnam in 1975 to escape the communists -- now returned to wed the daughter of one of them.

Their union encapsulates many elements of the new Vietnam where, despite an influx of new wealth, the Communist Party still dominates both the public and private sectors. Many "private" businesses are either former state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or still have some state ownership, and most are still run by party members. Most of the controllers of the commanding heights of the private sector are party appointees, their family, or their friends. The Communist Party elite are turning Vietnamese capitalism into a family business. And if this week's conviction of four pro-democracy activists on subversion charges is any sign, the consolidation of party power is a very frightening development for Vietnam's future.

There are many examples of the family relationship between money and power in today's Vietnam: One of Vietnam's richest men, Truong Gia Binh, is chairman of the country's biggest indigenous IT firm, FPT. He's also the only man in Vietnam routinely referred to with the prefix "former son-in-law" because he was once married to the daughter of Vo Nguyen Giap -- war hero, retired army commander, and former deputy prime minister. During the 1990s, if a business needed contacts in the army's extensive array of companies, or in construction or communications, Giap was the man to see.

Another example is Dinh Thi Hoa, Vietnam's first Harvard University MBA graduate. In the early 1990s, when the World Bank wanted to stimulate private-sector development in Vietnam, it awarded many scholarships to young people, including Hoa. On her return, Hoa used her newfound knowledge to found a company called Galaxy that now owns a PR agency, most of the good Western-style restaurant chains in the country, a big cinema in Ho Chi Minh City, and a film production company. In many ways it's a model of private-sector success. But Galaxy didn't just spring up out of nowhere. It's one of the many firms created by the children of the party elite. When the World Bank chose Hoa for the scholarship, her father was deputy foreign minister.

The story of Vietnam's economic liberalization has been, to quote Ho Chi Minh on national unity, "success, success, great success." In 1993, according to government figures, almost 60 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. By 2004 that figure was down to 20 percent. The country has met most of its Millennium Development Goals, development targets set by the United Nations, escaping the ranks of the poorest countries to join the group of "middle-income states." People's living standards are soaring, their horizons are widening, and their ambitions are growing.

But the state's control over Vietnam's expansion is troublesome. The marriage between party and private interest is distorting the economy toward the wants of the few rather than the needs of the many. And networks of crony socialism are becoming a threat to Vietnam's future stability. Vietnam risks the fate of many of the World Bank's previous poster children -- boom followed by bust.