These children being adopted internationally are, for all intents and purposes, orphans. It is the sleazey media who dregs up their birth families and causes problems.
The boy is an orphan under Vietnamese law, period.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
The mother abandoned him at birth, the grandparents became legal guardians, and they put him into orphanage with an adoption waiver (probably age and poverty).
The mother never showed her face. Not once.
There are some bad apples in the VN regional and local governments. But when it come to little kids and babies they generally want to the right thing, as most people would (this is my personal observation and experience).
Their communist government still sucks.