In modern usage, the four pillars refer to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, President, Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Assembly.
[3] Similar to China, there does not exist an official order of precedence for political leaders and rather they are inferred in a de facto fashion.
This division of power is formed prevent dictatorial rule and preserve consensus-based leadership, which is officially called by the Vietnamese Communist Party as "democratic centralism".
The only exceptions are: Hồ Chí Minh (1951–69), Trường Chinh (1986), Nguyễn Phú Trọng (2018–21), and Tô Lâm (briefly in 2024).
Thus, the Party General Secretaries rarely hold offices that are nominally within the Vietnamese state apparatus except their parliament memberships, however is still managed to be the practical highest leader in the politics of Vietnam and is ideologically the highest commander of the People's Army of Vietnam, due to the ex officio occupation of the Secretaryship of the Party Central Military Commission.