Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism

Doi Moi In Comparative Perspective

William S Turley, Mark Selden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000309553
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique asiatique

This book presents a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives on the problematic of reform in Vietnam. It explores the Vietnam's reforms in relation to those taking place in other countries of the socialist world, comparing doi moi with restructuring in other socialist states.

Part One
Origins and Dilemmas

1
Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective

David Wurfel

Among senior bureaucrats at the 19th century imperial capital in Hue there was often the hope that study of the latest shipment of Chinese statutes from Beijing would lead to the solution of their own administrative problems (Woodside 1971,112). Fierce Vietnamese pride, of course, rules out admission of similar behavior today, but attention to policy changes in China is much greater in Hanoi than could be learned by the ordinary visitor. In fact, several research institutes have had units quietly monitoring internal Chinese developments.

Nor are the spectacular changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe unimportant to Vietnam. Hundreds of Vietnamese students and many thousands of workers have studied and worked there, communicating their observations to friends and family at home. In addition there have been frequent high level missions of both party and government traveling between Hanoi and COMECON capitals. Soviet TV news is rebroadcast in Vietnam. Given the closeness of the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance it is not surprising that Nguyen Van Linh himself should say that the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in December 1986 which "brought into play the sense of renovation" was "inspired by the 27th CPSU Congress and the restructuring in the Soviet Union" (Nguyen Van Linh 1988, 130). In fact, Vietnamese officials and researchers had also been closely watching reforms in Hungary and Poland much earlier.

Nevertheless, despite the proliferation of foreign models and even the pressure from allies, it is probably fair to say that the timing and sequence of Vietnamese reforms was derived primarily from Vietnamese experience. The content of policies was similar to some of those in other command economies largely because the problems they faced and the institutional frameworks in which they worked were so much alike. There may have been some direct borrowing as well. But Vietnamese officials in Hanoi often spoke of "learning from the South;" in fact, many of the ideas and the policy models for reform did come from southern Vietnam--which had experienced a capitalist economy more recently than any region in other Communist-ruled states.

Before we describe doi moi (renovation) and try to compare it with restructuring in other socialist states we must remember that Vietnam is unique in a number of ways. The uniqueness of Vietnamese experience can best be summarized in four categories.

First, the recency of the revolution is probably the most far reaching in its implications. But like the other factors this one has both positive and negative consequences for doi moi. As already noted this has meant that in the South there is a large reservoir of entrepreneurial experience which, unlike in the Soviet Union, reformers can unleash, quickly benefiting from the skills and the energy that are eager to grasp new opportunities. Furthermore, the recency of the revolutionary struggle that won, under the leadership of the party--as the party itself is quick to point out-both independence and national unity, actually contributes to the legitimacy, and thus the stability of the regime, at least when compared with the situation of parties in Eastern Europe, placed in power by Soviet troops (except, of course, Yugoslavia). This also means that nationalism, in contrast to the Soviet Union, serves to strengthen the central government.

Despite these advantages there are also some noticeable handicaps that derive from the recency of the revolution. For one, in the immediate aftermath the bureaucracy became filled with "heroic fighters" who felt, with some justification, that they had made their sacrifices and that the time had come to reap their rewards. They were good at command, but lacked technical or administrative skills, and many became corrupt. Another handicap is the legacy of a war damaged economy, though not emphasized by the party leadership (see Kolko 1988,473). For instance, transportation infrastructure in the North has never been fully restored. Perhaps even more significant is the psychological exhaustion (Elliott 1987, 223) that became so evident in the first decade after the achievement of reunification. The high expectations of peace and welfare that was to follow were not realized; in fact, in some respects conditions got worse.

This worsening was due in part to a second unique factor: the result of Chinese efforts to bring to heel an overly independent Vietnam through support of Pol Pot, leading to the "Third Indochina War." This included a Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Kampuchea and a Chinese invasion of Vietnam. With some reluctance a new generation of troops was drafted to go to Kampuchea, but this effort did help rekindle anti-Chinese nationalism as a source of regime legitimacy, just when it was sagging. On the other hand, the negative consequences of this new struggle were substantial. A US embargo of trade and investment in Vietnam linked to Vietnam's Kampuchean occupation, in which Japan and most Western powers, at least in part, concurred, closed off economic resources and opportunities for growth which at the same time China was beginning to enjoy. Though expanded Soviet aid compensated in a major way for diminished economic contact with the West, it also propped up a command economy which was in desperate need of broad reform despite the fact that it had already taken some steps in the late 1970s. Implementation of more fundamental reforms was thus delayed to the late 1980s.

The recency of the nationalist struggle against the US, revived in the Kampuchean setting with US backing for Pol Pot and other anti-Vietnamese factions, provided still another negative legacy for Vietnam, which helped block political reform. The US never stopped backing opposition in Vietnam. After 1975 it not only maintained contact with internal dissidents but found new opportunities for cooperation with a growing overseas Vietnamese community largely hostile to Hanoi. This reality helped sustain a siege mentality among the more conservative elements in the Hanoi elite, who perceived an even more insidious American role, and thus helped justify a relatively hard line against anything like glasnost even before Tiananmen or the upheavals in Eastern Europe.

The hint of factionalism--even though not clearly defined--within the ruling elite, was indeed intended. The influence of reformers and conservatives within the party Central Committee and the Politburo seems to have been fairly evenly balanced in the last decade, with appointments and policy decisions sometimes revealing the strength of one group and sometimes that of the other, though there has been a broadening over the years of awareness of the necessity for rather sweeping economic restructuring. Factional struggles are, of course, inevitable in any elite. But what is unique about Vietnam is the degree to which, among Communist-led states, the principle of collective leadership has actually been followed. Again this has had advantages and disadvantages for reform.

For instance, there has been no strong leader--either charismatic figure or senior manipulator, as in the Soviet Union or China--to push reform. Nguyen Van Linh got out in front as the champion of reform in 1987, but this role lasted little more than a year. Certainly the impatient reformers are looking for a champion, but the system has not allowed it. Important decisions have been delayed by intense factional infighting. Yet in one respect this may be seen as an advantage. Vietnam has not suffered the sharp swings in policy that China has. And from the standpoint of economic progress, stability is crucial.

The maintenance of collective leadership, even though flawed by factionalism, has often been explained in terms of the survival of the comraderie among old revolutionaries. And in 1986 all the top-echelon leaders were indeed among those who had joined the anti-colonial movement as students and were founding members of the Indochina Communist Party under Ho Chi Minh (Khanh 1986). But old revolutionaries do die, and the remarkable thing in Vietnam is the smoothness with which generational transition has been handled. There has been a consistent pattern of leadership turnover since the Fourth Party Congress in 1976. Approximately forty-five percent of the Central Committee have been retained at each Congress (Thayer in Marr and White 1988, 183). By the Sixth Party Congress in 1986 ninety-two percent of the Central Committee had held office for ten years or less, less experienced than the US Senate. At the same time new blood has been brought in, and many at the top have retired. Six members of the Politburo resigned in 1986, while in 1991 nine resigned (Elliott 1991).

In our opening paragraphs we noted the extent to which Vietnam was attentive to and influenced by events in both China and the Soviet Union. This is symptomatic of the last unique characteristic that needs mention. No other Communist-led state has been as open to the impact of events both in China and in what was, until recently, called the Soviet bloc. While the divergence of these models may help fuel debates between factions in the Politburo, on balance this situation is probably to Vietnam's benefit, if we recognize that it gives Vietnam the option to learn from the mistakes of others, a marvelous advantage if the lessons learned are the right ones.

It was thought useful first to call attention to the unique aspects of Vietnam's situation before launching into a history of its reform, and the subsequent international comparisons. We will return to the broader implications of some of these points in the conclusion.

Economic and Political Reform in Vietnam

The First Period: 1979-81

The commitment to Marxism-Leninism, shaped by both Stalinism and Maoism, was great enough that it took a rude collision with reality to bump Vietnam off the rails of the command economy. Economic necessity was the mother of reformist invention (See de Vylder & Forde 1988, ch. 3; Kimura 1989, ch. 2).

The economic crisis of 1979 had both domestic and foreign causes. On the one hand, Vietnam suffered from unusually bad luck with weather, cutting agricultural output, and from the overhasty socialist transformation of the South which depressed industrial, and commercial as well as agricultural activity. Chinese merchants were hurt in the state takeover of private enterprise, but so also were Vietnamese entrepreneurs and middle peasants. In the North also collective agriculture exhibited declining productivity. During the Second Five Year Plan, 1976-1980, the growth of national income averaged only 0.4 percent per annum, meaning a sharp decline in per capita terms (de Vylder & Fforde 1988, 61). There was a sudden fall in the delivery of staple foods to the state in 1978 and 1979. So in 1979 the drive to collectivize agriculture in the Mekong was temporarily abandoned.

At the same time the conflict with China was brewing. After the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea in late December 1978, most Western and all Chinese aid and trade was cut off--though a number of European countries did not adhere to the American embargo. By 1982 imports from capitalist countries had dropped to forty-eight percent of their 1979 value, while imports from socialist countries had risen from fifty-two percent to eighty-one percent of Vietnam's total. Overall imports dropped fourteen percent in 1980, thus cutting supplies to state enterprises.

Since political leadership did not respond rapidly or creatively enough to these changes, the first steps to adjust to the new economic conditions were "spontaneous bottom-up reforms" (de Vylder and Forde 1988, 62). They took place in both industry and agriculture. The innovation in agriculture was first, leading eventually to party endorsement of the "output contract" (khoan san pham) (de Vyler and Forde 1988, 69-71; Kimura 1989, 36-38). The essential characteristic of this contract was that the cooperative, which had its own production quota, agreed with farm families on quotas for set pieces of land, to be delivered at the state price, with the family free to sell any excess over the quota on the open market. These assignments of family plots originally lasted only three years, but were subsequently extended. Obviously, families had greater incentive than ever to increase production. On contract land output typically rose by thirty percent in the first couple of years.

The output contract had its earliest, and abortive, origins in Vinh Phu province in 1966, when the provincial party head was subject to house arrest for his innovative effort to raise production. The experiment reemerged at a time of declining production in Do Son district of Haiphong City. The district party secretary discovered that one cooperative had been secretly practicing output contracting from 1977. But since land preparation and water control, as well as lesser functions, remained the responsibility of the cooperative, the secretary decided that it was not contrary to the party line. In fact, since it was such a successful system for raising production, it was implemented throughout the province in 1980. On January 13, 1981, the party Central Committee in Hanoi issued Instruction 100 CT/TU making the contract system national policy; in December the policy was specifically extended to the South, thus reducing opposition to the further collectivization of the land.

Bottom-up reform in industry may have begun as early as 1977, but there are no recorded instances. The term "fence-breaking" (pha rao) came to be applied to the efforts of individual factories to break through the constraints of the central planning system. For instance, when materials were short, goods could be sold in the open market to raise cash to buy supplies, or perhaps to pay bonuses to workers and thus raise productivity (de Vylder & Fforde 1988, 68). Though largely illegal, these initiatives became more and more widespread. Thus the first key reform decree for state industry in January 1981 required factories to register all activities they conducted outside the plan at the same time that it allowed them to acquire and dispose of resources as needed to increase their supply of inputs. State factories were also allowed to diversify their products outside the plan as long as they met their quotas.

These relatively cautious reforms helped to trigger a fairly rapid economic recovery in the early 1980s. The index of gross agricultural output jumped from 101 in 1979 to 120 in 1982, while gross industrial output rose even more rapidly from 100 in 1980 to 143 in 1982 (Kimura 1989, 11). But with renewed economic growth, the urgency of reform declined.

Furthermore, the reforms themselves produced a new problem, inflation. The contract system raised agricultural production and expanded the range of products on the free market; greater autonomy for state enterprises also led to a larger percentage of sales at market prices. But demand grew more rapidly than supply. Thus inflation in 1979 nearly doubled to forty-three percent and by 1982 had reached eightythree percent (ninety-six percent in grain and food prices) (Kimura 1989, 42). The gains from a series of wage and salary increases were wiped out. And alongside inflation were the so-called "negative phenomena," speculation, smuggling and various forms of corruption. In the eyes of many leaders in Hanoi, "negative phenomena" were especially associated with Ho Chi Minh City which by 1982 had captured thirty-seven percent of the nation's gross industrial product, compared with only seventeen percent in 1976 (Kimura 1989, 51). Already in September 1981 a Council of Ministers resolution moved to limit the free market activities of state enterprises, which fell most heavily on Ho Chi Minh City.

Second Period: 1982-1985

It is thus not surprising that the Fifth Party Congress in March 1982 veered away from the reformist tendency. This was symbolized in the removal of Nguyen Van Linh, party secretary in Ho Chi ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE Origins and Dilemmas
• PART TWO Economy
• PART THREE Agriculture
• PART FOUR Politics
• PART FIVE Society
• About the Contributors
• Index