He has usually been seen as a conservative. He criticized what he called "illness of partyization" (bệnh đảng hoá), meaning that the Party controls everything. Phiêu was a protégé of his predecessor, Đỗ Mười.
He was elevated to the Political Bureau in the early 1990s.
He served in the Vietnam People"s Army during the First and Second Indochina Wars, join in Cambodian war, the head of the General political Department of the People"s Army. However, this categorization has been challenged by historian Martin Gainsborough, who notes that Phiêu made some remarkably outspoken comments about problems in the party before the Tenth Party Congress.
