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Reform in Vietnam: Backwards Towards the Future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Brantly Womack
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Extract

If There is any teaching of MARX from which the leadership of Vietnam might bitterly demur, it would be his claim that society raises only such problems as it is ready to solve. Although this magisterial myth provided solace to generations of revolutionaries (who could conclude from it, 'We are, therefore we will prevail'), the Communist Party of Vietnam has been buffeted since its victorious national reunification of 1975 – 76 by challenges from within and without for which it was not prepared. As a result, the politics of Vietnam for the past fifteen years has been more a response to crisis rather than the execution of a political vision. Reform and international openness have become essential parts of these efforts at coping with crisis, but they have been strongly tethered to the need to preserve order and to prevent larger crises.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1992 , pp. 177 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1992

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References

1 This is a thinly-veiled ideological obeisance to the Chinese ‘four fundamental principles that must be upheld’ enunciated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. The Chinese principles are: the socialist path, the role of the Chinese Communist Party, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and Marxist-Leninist Mao Zedong Thought. ‘Marxist-Leninist Ho Chi Minh Thought’ is a new formulation.

2 ‘To Continue Taking the Renewal Cause Forward Along the Socialist Path’, Report of the Part Central Committee to the Seventh Party Congress, Vietnam Courier, No. 21, July 1991, p. 4.

3 ‘On the Draft Admendments to the 1980 Constitution’, Vietnam Courier, No. 22, August 1991, p. 2.

4 For extensive discussions of some of the personnel changes see Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, 16 August 1991.

5 The theatre in Prague where Vaclav Havel and his associates gathered during the demonstrations against the government in autumn 1989.

6 In 1985–86, 10–15 per cent of children aged 1–5 suffered from severe malnutrition, and 40 per cent from moderate malnutrition. Among large Asian countries only Bangladesh has worse nutrition per capita. Vietnam: Agricultural and Food Production Sector Review (Draft Mission Report of the State Planning Committee of Vietnam, the United Nations Development Program, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Bank, 1989), pp. 6–7.

7 For contrast, Brazil, which has a per capita income of US$1500, has a life expectancy of 65, an infant mortality rate of 70, and an adult literacy rate of 76 per cent.

8 Calculated from United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 1991, New York, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 120–21. All communist (and former communist) countries except Romania have a higher HDI ranking than their GNP per capita, with China and Vietnam showing the greatest disparities. For a fuller discussion see Brandy Womack, ‘Asian Communism: Enigma Variations’, paper presented at the Conference on Reform in the Socialist World, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, November 21–22, 1991.

9 Calculated from Nian Giom Thong Ke (Statistical Yearbook) 1976, pp. 39, 40; 1986, pp. 208, 209; So Lieu Thong Ke (Statistical Data), 1978, 1980, 1982, 1989.

10 Beyme, Klaus von, ‘Transition to Democracy—or Anschluss? The Two Germanies and Europe’, Government and Opposition, Volume 25, No. 2, Spring 1990, pp. 170–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 These differences are analysed at length in Womack, ‘Asian Communism’, and in Womack, ‘Political Change and Political Structural Reform in Communist Countries: Implications for Vietnam’, forthcoming in William Turley (ed.), Reform under Socialism in Vietnam: Comparative Perspectives, Armonk, M. E. Sharpe, 1992.

12 See Womack, ‘Asian Communism’.

13 The most interesting and eloquent statement of the Vietnamese attitude is Nguyen Khac Vien, ‘Marxism and Confucianism,’ in his Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam, Berkeley; Indochina Resource Center, 1974, pp. 15–74.

14 General Vo Nguyen Giap, for instance, learned to oppose the French at his mandarin father’s knee. As Giap put it, ‘When you think of the old days, you never forget the shame of having lost your country’. See Neil, and Sheehan, Susan, ‘In Vietnam’, New Yorker, Vol. 67, No. 39, 18 11 1991, pp. 54–78, esp. pp. 55–58.Google Scholar

15 Jowitt, Ken, ‘Soviet Neo-Traditionalism: The Political Corruption of a Leninist State’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3, 07 1983, pp. 275–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 This point is elaborated in Womack, Brantly, ‘Transfigured Community: Neo-Traditionalism and Work Unit Socialism in China’, China Quarterly, No. 126, 06 1991, pp. 313–32.Google Scholar See also Fewsmith, Joseph, ‘The Dengist Reforms in Historical Perspective’, in Womack, Brantly (ed.), Contemporary Chinese Politics in Historical Perspective, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar

17 This is well described in Fforde, Adam and Paine, Suzanne, The Limits of National Liberation, London, Croom Helm, 1987.Google Scholar

18 Nghi, Huynh, ‘Moi quan he kinh te voi nuouc ngoai cua nguoi hoa’ (Economic relationships of the Hoa with foreign countries), Tap chi khoa hoc xa hoi (Studies in social sciences), Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer 1989, pp. 63–68, esp. p. 65Google Scholar.

19 See Alexander Woodside’s magnificently erudite Vietnam and the Chinese Model, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1971.

20 See Thai Quang Trung, Collective Leadership and Factionalism in Vietnam, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1985.

21 Purely by chance, the hexagram of three unbroken and three broken lines is pi, stagnation, stoppage.