As mentioned earlier, the anti-bauxite environmental movement in Vietnam in 2007 has been understood in various ways, including as an example of Vietnamese people speaking out about an environmental issue they care about in a socialist authoritarian context, and an instance where bottom-up community pressures had limited success in addressing the status quo. Another way it has been made sense of is as a new mode of political contestation and compromise between the environmental movement and the party-state. Although historians generally agree that the movement may not have had much success in stopping bauxite mining in the Central Highlands, it did manage to resist the attempted repressions of public discourse about the mining projects.
