Vietnam: The Politics of Bureaucratic Socialism 9781501738906

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hi, fa SU

.P*7

VIETNAM

Z-S

Politics

and

International Relations of Southeast Asia

The Army and Politics by Harold Crouch

GENERAL EDITOR George McT. Kahin

in Indonesia

Thailand: Society and Politics

by John L.

S.

Girling

Vietnam: The Politics of Bureaucratic Socialism by Gareth Porter Filipino Politics: Development

by David Wurfel

and Decay

VIETNAM The

Politics of Bureaucratic Socialism

GARETH PORTER

Cornell University Press

ithaca and london

VVQKLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL LIBRARY 312 QUTTBR STREET SAN FRANCISCO. CA S4l£a

Copyright

©

1993 by Cornell University

All rights reserved.

Except for brief quotations

in a review, this

book, or parts thereof,

must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First

published 1993 by Cornell University Press.

International Standard

Book Number 0-8014-2168-3

Library of Congress Catalog Card

Number 92-54976

Printed in the United States of America Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information

appears on the

last

page of

the book.

® The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences

Permanence of Paper

for Printed Library Materials,

ANSI

Z39.48-1984.

To Mark and Avis Porter with love

and

gratitude

Contents

Foreword,

by

George McT. Kahin

ix

Preface

xiii

Abbreviations

xix

1.

The Making of an

2.

The Socioeconomic

3.

Political Institutions: Party, State,

4.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

101

5.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

128

6.

Political Participation

7.

Vietnamese Foreign

Authoritarian Regime

31

Setting

and

Human

Policy:

1

and Mass Organizations

Rights

Ideology and Constraints

64

152 185

Glossary

217

Index

221

Foreword

That broad area lying between China and India which since World War II has generally been known as Southeast Asia is one of the most heterogeneous in the world.

Though

it

is

generally re-

ferred to as a region, the principal basis for this designation the geographic propinquity of collectively they

subcontinent.

its

component

occupy the territory

The fundamental

is

simply

and the fact that between China and the Indian

strata

states

of the traditional cultures of

numerous peoples of Southeast Asia do set them apart from those of India and China. Beyond that, however, there are few common denominators among the states that currently make up the area except for roughly similar climate conditions and agricultures. nearly

all

The

the

political

systems presently governing the

lives

of Southeast

on considerably different cultures; the religious component alone embraces Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. Except in the case of Thailand, the politics of all these countries have been conditioned by periods of colonial rule ranging from little more than half a century to approximately four each of which has had a distinctive character and political legacy. Even the nature of the Japanese warAsia's

400 million inhabitants have been

—

built

—

time occupation, which covered the entire area, varied considerably

among

countries and

had different political conseindependence followed by these states diverged widely. Only through revolutionary anticolonial wars were two of the most populous, Indonesia and Vietnam, able to assert their independence. Although the others followed routes that were peaceful, they were not all necessarily smooth, and the time involved varied by as much as a decade. Moreover, subsequent to independence the political and economic

quences.

the

several

And

after Japan's defeat, the courses to

character of these states has continued to be significantly affected by a wide range of relationships with outside powers. In a few cases

x

Foreword

these have been largely harmonious, attended by only relatively

minor external

efforts to influence the course of local policital devel-

opments. However, most of these countries have been the objects of particularly the interventions, covert and overt, by outside powers United States which have been calculated to shape their political life in accordance with external interests. Thus, the range of contemporary political systems in Southeast Asia is strikingly varied, encompassing a spectrum quite as broad as the differing cultures and divergent historical conditionings that have so profoundly influenced their character. This series, "Politics and International Relations of Southeast Asia," stems from an earlier effort to treat the nature of government and politics in the states of Southeast Asia in a single volume. Since the second, revised edition of that book, Governments and Politics of Southeast Asia, was published in 1964, interest in these countries has grown, for understandable reasons, especially in the United States. This wider public concern, together with a greater disposition of academics to draw on the political experience of these countries in their teaching, has suggested the need for a more substantial treatment of their politics and governments than could be subsumed within the covers of a single book. The series therefore aims to devote separate volumes to each of the larger Southeast Asian states. Presumably one no longer needs to observe, as was the case in 1964, that the countries treated "are likely to be strange to many of our readers." But even though the increased American interaction with most of the countries has clearly obviated that proposition, many readers are still likely to be unacquainted with their earlier histories and the extent to which their pasts have affected the development of their recent and contemporary political character. Thus all these volumes include substantial historical sections as well as descriptions of the salient features of the present social and economic setting. In order to provide as much similarity of treatment as is compatible with the range of cultures and political systems presented by these states, the authors follow a broadly similar pattern of organization and analysis of their political history, dynamics, and processes. This effort to achieve some basis of comparability may appear rather modest, but to have attempted any greater degree of uniformity would have militated against the latitude and flexibility required to do justice to the differing characteristics of the political systems described. All the books are written by political scientists who have lived and carried out research in one or more of the countries for a considerable period and who have previously pub-

—

—

lished scholarly studies

on

their internal politics.

Foreword In this book Gareth Porter brings to bear

more than

xi

a quarter

century of his research and writing on Vietnam, involving numerous periods of fieldwork there of up to a year in duration. In this undertaking he has been the recipient of awards for research in Vietnam

from the

Social Science Research Council,

American Philosophical

Reynolds Foundation, and Cornell University's London-Cornell and International Relations of East Asia projects. Society, Christopher

Having held professorial positions at American University, the New York, and Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, Dr. Porter is currently director of International Programs for the Washington-based Environmental and Energy Study Institute. He has also served on the staffs of members of Congress, was from 1975 to 1976 staff consultant to the House Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia, and for the two preceding years was co-director of Washington's IndoCity University of

china Resource Center.

Author of A Peace Denied: The United States and the Paris Agreement and editor of Vietnam: A History in Documents as well as the major documentary collection on the Vietnam War, the two-volume Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation of Human Decisions, he has also written chapters on Vietnam in seven books and more than a dozen articles.

The present volume well reflects Gareth Porter's unusually wide range of study and experience concerning Vietnam and the international environment that has so markedly affected its modern economic and political development. George McT. Kahin Ithaca,

New

York

Preface

The

Republic of Vietnam (SRV, 1976 to the present) and its predecessor, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, 19451976), have shown a remarkable capacity for mobilizing human and material resources for a series of protracted conflicts with foreign enemies. They have also proved well adapted to maintaining political stability under tremendous pressures. But as the decades-long struggle over Vietnam has receded, the basic deformities of the Vietnamese political system have become increasingly clear. All those deSocialist

formities originated in the unrestricted

monopoly on

political

power

enjoyed by the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) and its predecessors, the Vietnam Workers' Party (VWP, 1951-1976) and the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP, 1930-1951). In this book I aim to describe and analyze the inner workings of the Vietnamese

Communist

political system.

The VCP's

political

mo-

nopoly affects every aspect of Vietnamese politics from policy-making and policy implementation to popular participation and human rights. Although I trace the broad outlines of the evolution of the Vietnamese political system from the founding of the Communist regime in 1945, I focus mainly on political structure and process in the SRV between the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and 1990, with special attention to the economic reforms of the 1986-1990 period. Until the latter half of the 1980s, scholars could do little more than describe the formal-legal outlines of the Vietnamese Communist

system. Vietnamese media, with few exceptions, suppressed any-

thing but the most self-congratulatory information about the

regime and Vietnam's

SRV

and economic development. It was difficult to analyze the links between the SRV's authoritarian system of policy-making and the evolution of Vietnamese society. And scholars seldom addressed the subject. But beginning in 1986, an unprecesocial

xiv

Preface

dented outpouring of critical reportage and commentary in the officially approved Vietnamese media revealed political, economic, and social realities that previously could be perceived only dimly. I have drawn heavily on that documentation in writing this book. I have chosen the term bureaucratic socialism to designate the type of political system that the SRV shares with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and other Communist states. In the context of analysis of the SRV, "bureaucratic" has two different meanings that reinforce each other: one derived from the field of comparative politics, the other from the Vietnamese Communist leadership's own analytical scheme. The Vietnamese system is "bureaucratic" in that the policy-making process is dominated by a bureaucratic elite and countervailing extrabureaucratic forces are

has

much

in

common

Southeast Asia. In

weak or

absent. In that sense

it

with non-Communist authoritarian regimes in

Communist

theory, "bureaucratic" denotes sepa-

from the people, which VCP officials have conceded since 1985 is a serious problem for the Vietnamese political system. It also suggests the use of coercive methods to ration of the state apparatus

achieve compliance with state policies, which

is

condemned

in

theory

but has been a consistent pattern in practice.

A

primary theme of the book, introduced in the historical over1 but reappearing in other chapters as well, is that the authoritarian impulses underlying the SRV's political system are deeply rooted in Vietnamese culture and political history. Those Vietnamese Communist leaders whose careers spanned more than fifty years from the origin of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 to the 1980s inherited an authoritarian political tradition that remained far stronger than the relatively feeble shoots of liberalism introduced by French colonialism. One of the tragedies of the Vietnamese revolution is that the rejection of bourgeois freedoms and legal rights that would restrain the party-state bureaucracy became deeply engrained in the attitudes of party leaders and cadres. A second theme is that the SRV's economic and social crisis, outlined in Chapter 2, is linked inextricably with its authoritarian political structure. I connect political structure and policy-making styles and outcomes in the chapters on political institutions (Chapter 3), leadership selection and policy-making (Chapter 4), and political participation (Chapter 6). I develop this theme in depth in Chapter 5, in which I show how state control over the economy, which was a direct outgrowth of its political monopoly, has systematically undermined the objectives of the Vietnamese revolution itself. Instead of contributing to a society more egalitarian than that which existed view in Chapter

Preface

xv

during French colonial rule, the SRV system gave rise to a new class structure based on access to commodities through official position and, paradoxically, sapped much of the strength of the MarxistLeninist state.

A third major theme is the unprecedented process of economic and political change in Communist Vietnam since 1986. As discussed in Chapter 5, the lack of accountability of top party leaders slowed and blunted the regime's policy response to socioeconomic crises during the 1970s and early 1980s. Nevertheless, the leadership of the VCP groped its way toward economic liberalization in the latter half of the 1980s even as it insisted on preserving the fundamental political monopoly of the party. In part the period of change inaugurated in 1986 is a function of a generational transition in the Vietnamese leadership during the 1980s, from a first generation of Vietnamese party leaders who were inflexibly committed to orthodox political and socioeconomic development models to a second generation that included some figures whose experience in the South made them more pragmatic. In part it reflects the fact that the contradiction between orthodox assumptions and sociopolitical reality had grown too obvious for most party leaders to deny as they had in the past. In the 1990s not just economic change but political change as well is being impelled by powerful domestic and international forces beyond the power of the SRV regime to control or direct. Chapters 5 and 6 document several trends that have begun to undermine the strength and stability of the SRV regime and add to pressure for change: the collapse of Leninist systems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; the discrediting of the party and Marxist-Leninist ideology within Vietnam and the emergence of ideological pluralism within the party itself; and the increasing political assertiveness of peasants, intellectuals, students, and merchants, especially in the The significance of this incipient political pluralism remains be tested, but whether the Vietnamese leadership ultimately makes sweeping political changes in the manner of the former Soviet Union or tries to cling to the status quo, it is likely to face momentous challenges to its grip on power before the century ends. A final theme, discussed in Chapter 7, is the transformation of Vietnam's external relations from a predominant orientation toward anti-imperialist struggle to an orientation toward finding an export niche in the world economy a shift that has profound implications for the future of Vietnamese politics and society. Historically, Vietnam's foreign relations have revolved around resisting external

South. to

—

Preface

xvi

powers in the name not only of Vietnamese national independence but of a global revolutionary movement. But the reduction in global East-West tensions, combined with Vietnam's growing realization

had

to have the stimulus of ties with the global economy, Vietnam's foreign policy priorities as well as its reshape to leadership's worldview by the mid-1980s. As the Soviet Union and the socialist states of Eastern Europe lurched toward pluralism in 1989-1990, the Vietnamese leadership, realizing they governed one of the few remaining socialist states in the world, began to lapse into a siege mentality. But the collapse of the Soviet Communist State in 1991 put an end to the party's ideologically based worldview. Can a state that is rooted firmly in an antidemocratic ideology and led by a party that has lost the legitimacy it once had continue to adapt to the dizzying internal and external changes that are washing over Vietnam? Or will it confront the same kind of regime crisis that

that

it

began

Union suffered under Gorbachev? The Vietnamese leadership need not concede that the SRV must go the way of the Gorbachev regime. Its erstwhile mortal enemy, China, provides an example that combines economic liberalization with a firm hand in opposing political pluralism. The two Asian socialist states appeared to be moving toward a new era of cooperation in 19901991 as common ideology and shared political concerns softened the ancient quarrels that had flared up in the 1970s and 1980s. the former Soviet

What

of the Vietnamese political system suggests is by a number of measures, notably weaker in it was earlier in its history. In the past, culture, social structure, memories of social injustice, and colonial oppression in prerevolutionary Vietnam and the role of the party and state in rallying popular support against foreign foes all gave the DRV a strong underlying political legitimacy that buffered it against domestic and foreign shocks. Now that buffer is gone, and the SRV is, therefore, likely to be extremely vulnerable to unexpected turbulence, even if it is relatively successful in the 1990s in bringing about rapid economic development. this analysis

SRV

regime the early 1990s than that the

is,

Although the bulk of the writing was concentrated in the 1987-1990 period, this book is the product of research that has streched over nearly two decades. My research on the Vietnamese Communist political system bagan with a visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in December/January 1974/75, and I returned to Vietnam after the war four times— in 1978, 1981, 1982, and 1984— primarily but not eclusively to research Vietnam's foreign policy.

Preface

The Vietnamese

xvii

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Institute of Inter-

and the Committee on Social Sciences each hosone or more of those research trips. In 1981 and 1982 I traveled an Associate with the Indochina Project of the Center for Interna-

national Relations, ted as

tional Policy; the U.S. Social Science

financial support for

my

1984

Research Council provided the

trip.

thank those friends and colleagues from whom I have learned Vietnam over the years: George McT. Kahin, David W.P. Elliot, Christine Pelzer White, Carlyle Thayer, Jayne Werner, Nguyen Huu Dong, Motoo Furuta, David Marr, William S. Turley, Ngo Vinh Long, Tran Van Dinh, William Duiker, Nayan Chanda, Edwin Moise, and Huynh Kim Khanh, whose untimely death as the manuscript was being completed is a great loss to Vietnamese studies. Motoo Furuta of the University of Tokyo was exceptionally generous in sharing with me valuable documents from his personal collection. Dorothy Avery of the U.S. Department of State assisted me in obtaining some important translations of Vietnamese party documents from the department's files. Motoo Furuta, David Marr, and William S. Turley read drafts of particular chapters, and I have profited from their suggestions for revision. George McT. Kahin and Ngo Vinh Long read and offered helpful comments on earlier drafts of the entire manuscript. I am deeply grateful to George Kahin, as teacher, editor, and friend, for I

the most about

his advice and for unfailing patience, support, and encouragement over the years. Special thanks are also due to my wife, Camille, for

enduring many months of long,

late

hours on the book.

Gareth Porter Arlington, Virginia

Abbreviations

AFP

Agence France-Press

ARVN

Army

ASEAN

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

CIA

CMEA CMPC

of the Republic of Vietnam

Central Intelligence Agency (United States) (also

CPT

DK DRV FBIS

FULRO ICP

COMECON)

Council on Mutual Economic Assistance Central Military Party Committee

Communist

Party of Thailand Democratic Kampuchea regime Democratic Republic of Vietnam Foreign Broadcast Information Service Front Unifie pour la Lutte des Races Opprimes Indochinese Communist Party

IMF

International Monetary

JPRS

Joint Publications Research Service

KMT

Kuomintang

MIA NLF

missing in action

PLAF PRC PRG PRK

People's Liberation

Fund

National Liberation Front

Armed

Forces

People's Republic of China

Government Kampuchea

Provisional Revolutionary

People's Republic of

RVN

Republic of Vietnam

SRV

Socialist

UBC

Unified Buddhist Church

Republic of Vietnam

UPI

United Press International

VCP

Vietnam Communist Party Vietnam Fatherland Front Vietnam News Agency Vietnam Nationalist Party Vietnam People's Army Vietnam Workers' Party Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality

VFF

VNA VNQDD VPA

VWP ZOPFAN

VIETNAM

Administrative Divisions of Vietnam, 1985

International

boundary

Province boundary

® ®•

National capital Municipality

Province capital Special zones 50

100

50

Boundary representation not necessarily authoritative

KILOMETERS 100

MILES

The Making of an

1

Authoritarian Regime

Although all ethnic Vietnamese share a cultural heritage of language, customs, and national identity a heritage defined all the more sharply by the centuries of Vietnamese national resistance to Chinese domination differences in topography, soil, and the dura-

—

—

Vietnamese settlement have given rise to three distinct reor Tonkin, Annam, and gions. North, central, and south Vietnam Cochinchina, as they were called during the French colonial period have all emerged with their own peculiar socioeconomic patterns. Tonkin, the area of the Red River delta, has been inhabited by Vietnamese for more than two thousand years. Annam, the coastal region linking north and south, has been under firm Vietnamese control for less than seven hundred years whereas the Vietnamization of Cochinchina was completed only two centuries ago. The original heartland of Vietnamese civilization was in the plains tion of

—

—

of the

Red River

delta, a triangle

of

flat,

low-lying, rice-growing land

surrounded on the north and west by a larger fan of hills and mountains. For the peasantry of the northern lowlands the problem of water far too much of it during the six-month rainy season and far too little in the dry season has been a constant preoccupation since the beginning of settled agriculture there. The Red River is one of the world's most turbulent during the rainy season with a peak discharge of as much as 850,000 cubic feet of water per second. Without any restraints on its flow, it would inundate nearly two-thirds of the Red River delta land every summer. For centuries villagers have maintained a system of enormous dikes, rising high above the surrounding plains, to protect both the villages and their rice crops from flooding. The construction of flood-control works was associ-

—

—

ated with the establishment of a centralized bureaucratic govern-

ment under the Ly (1009-1224) and Iran (1225-1400) dynasties. The threat of ruptured dikes has remained constant throughout

Vietnam

2

Vietnamese riched

some

history.

1

The

frequent flooding has repeatedly en-

parts of the delta with fresh alluvial sediments so that

those areas can support one of the most dense populations of any 2 In the southern part of the delta,

agricultural region in the world.

however, much of the land is so low-lying that fields are waterlogged during the rainy season. The soil in these provinces has been slowly turning to clay for centuries. The villages of Tonkin have historically been communities closed to outside cultural influences. They were organized according to a strict sociopolitical hierarchy, although most of the land was held 5

communally and in the village.

village cults

Because each

ing the dikes within

its

and

rituals created tight solidarity with-

village

was responsible for maintain-

territory, village notables

had the authority

This combination of solidarity and authoritarianism did not prevent popular uprisings in times of trouble, however; chronic food shortages caused by floods, drought, and insects contributed to antidynastic revolts during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. 5 South of the Red River delta along the narrow spine of the central Vietnamese coastal lowlands, where there was less threat of massive flooding, villages located along riverbanks wherever possible instead of away from floodpaths. 6 The soil was less fertile than that of the Red River delta, however, and could not support the density of population seen farther north. Annamese peasants, particularly those in the provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh, were always the poorest in the country because of the combination of poor soil and undependable rainfall. 7 As the Vietnamese carried out their "march to the south" (nam tien) through central Vietnam from the fifteenth to to mobilize peasant labor.

4

1. Between 1806 and 1900, the dikes ruptured twenty-six times and in the first quarter of the twentieth century, ten times. But only one major break has occurred since the one that caused the terrible flood of 1945. See A. Terry Rambo, "A Comparison of Peasant Social Systems of Northern and Southern Viet-Nam: A Study of Ecological Adaptation, Social Succession and Cultural Evolution" (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1972), p. 77.

—

2.

Ibid., pp.

Vo Nhan

60-61.

Tri, Croissance economique de la Republic Democratique du Viet Nam (Hanoi: Editions en Langues Etrangeres, 1967), p. 14. 4. Rambo, "Comparison of Peasant Social Systems," pp. 25-35, 75-76. 5. Vu Quoc Thuc, L'economie communaliste du Vietnam (Hanoi: Presses Universitaires du Vietnam, 1951), p. 123; Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants under the French (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973), p. 34 n. 3. 6. Michael G. Cotter, "Towards a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement," Journal of Southeast Asian History 9 (March 1968), 16. 7. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 128. 3.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

3

the nineteenth century, implantating tightly organized civilian settle-

ments protected by a shield of military villages and penal colonies, they replicated the closed and relatively isolated communities of the north. 8

As Vietnamese communities began

Mekong

lated

bodia

— in

River delta

— then

to penetrate the thinly

part of the

popu-

kingdom of Cam-

the seventeenth century, they found a very different

physical environment.

The Mekong

River's predictably mild

annual

overflow provided the water needed for cultivation of a rainy season crop, then receded during the dry season. Because there was no need for river dikes or for village reservoirs and irrigation canals, village elites never developed the power to organize peasant labor as 9 they did in the northern and central regions. Villages in the south were usually organized along waterways, so they were less compactly settled than those in Tonkin and Annam

and more open

to outside social

individual was not

enmeshed

and

in a

cultural influences. Because the

web of

village

ceremonies and

kinship organizations, the hold of traditional religion (the officially

approved blend of Confucianism and village-based cults) as well as 10 The Therevada the Confucian family structure was weakened.

Buddhism of the Khmer population provided a cultural context in which popular and potentially politically volatile religious movements, including messianic Buddhist cults, could flourish."

The

agrarian structure of the frontier region further undermined

the cohesion of

nam

Mekong

delta villages.

Whereas

in

Tonkin and An-

concentration of land ownership remained relatively modest

before the French arrived, in the south the

Nguyen court relaxed

its

controls over land ownership, allowing village notables to acquire large tracts as rewards for political loyalty

namese control over the

area.

and

By the middle of the nineteenth cen-

tury, a high percentage of the peasants in the

already landless, and

8.

to consolidate Viet-

southern delta were 12 Thus,

communal land was almost unknown.

"Towards a Social History," p. 16. Rambo, "Comparison of Peasant Social Systems,"

Cotter,

p. 65; Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 172-73. 10. Cotter, "Towards a Social History," p. 20. 9.

1 1 See Hue-Tarn Ho Tai, Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). 12. Nguyen Thanh Nha, Tableau economique du Vietnam au XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles (Paris: Editions Cujas, 1970), p. 68; Alexander Woodside, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), pp. 120-21.

Vietnam

4

Cochinchina the control by village elites was pared with that in Tonkin and Annam.

in

weak com-

relatively

and Colonial Authoritarianism

Precolonial

and culture and,

Precolonial institutions

starting in the late nine-

teenth century, colonial political and socioeconomic structures left their imprints on the authoritarianism of the Vietnamese revolutionary

state.

vided

Traditional Vietnamese society and basis for the later

little

pluralist political culture.

namese imperial Confucian

emergence of

By the

political

system pro-

late fifteenth century,

the Viet-

and notables had adopted the philosophy and institutions of the former Chi-

own power. Confucianism was 13

idly hierarchical political ideology that

model

political

a democratic or even

court, bureaucrats,

nese overlords to bolster their as the

its

for the political system

a rig-

posed the patriarchal family

and treated ordinary

subjects as

incapable of making decisions. Vietnamese citizens had no political

or

civil

rights in imperial

dynasty, Gia

Vietnam.

Long (1802-1829),

The

first

emperor of the Nguyen

heavily influenced by neo-Conser-

men between the ages of fifteen and forty Buddhist ceremonies. His successor, Minh Mang (1829-

vative orthodoxy, forbade to attend

1841), severely restricted printing, rejecting the idea that

outside the scholar class needed to

The

know how

to

anyone

read or write. 14

imperial court had the power to levy taxes, public labor, or

and

on the

power to collect autonomy and resistance to arbitrary Mandarins. Only the village authorities had accurate figures on village population and production. Moreover, the

corvee,

military troops

villages.

But

its

taxes was constrained by traditions of village

village population, unmoved by the Confucian ideology of the court, could and did respond to an assessment it considered unreasonably high by simply abandoning its land and moving elsewhere for a few

years.

15

13. On the Vietnamese elite's acceptance of Confucianism, see R. B. Smith, "The Cycle of Confucianization in Vietnam," in Walter F. Vella, ed., Aspects of Vietnamese History (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), pp. 1-30; John K. Whitmore, "Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Cultural Core: A Discussion of the Premodern Period," in Truong Buu Lam, ed., Borrowings and Adaptations in Vietnamese Culture, Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, Southeast Asia Paper, no. 25 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1987), pp. 7-13. 14. Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (Cambridge: MIT Press,

1971), pp. 26-28, 190. 15. Nguyen Dong Chi,

"Quan He giua Nha Nuoc va Lang Xa o Viet Nam Truoc Cach Mang" [Relations between state and village before the revolution], in Nong Thon Viet Nam trong Lich Su [The Vietnamese countryside in history] (Hanoi: Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1978), p. 59.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

5

Village politics were also hierarchical and authoritarian. Political power was monopolized by the council of notables, who allocated tax and corvee burdens as well as communal land and water resources. Although Confucian theory called for this council to be chosen by age, by the eighteenth century wealth was the real basis of local polit-

power. 16 Members of the council of notables were selected by cooptation, and decisions were made by consensus to ensure secrecy and bolster the authoritarian character of the council's power. 17 Liberal ideology did not become a major political force during ical

Vietnam's struggle for independence against the French in the 1920s and 1930s. As in other societies undergoing the transition to commercialized agriculture, the absence of an independent commercial or industrial bourgeoisie and the survival of a land tenure system that allowed a landowning class to maintain power over the peasantry discouraged a political evolution toward liberalism. 18 Meanwhile, the abuses of a bourgeois democratic colonial power made it easy for an anticapitalist revolutionary movement to discount the possibility of genuine liberalism for the masses under capitalism.

Through

its

facilitated the

created a

legal, fiscal,

and

credit policies the colonial regime

concentration of landownership in

new commercial market

for rice

and

all

three regions.

It

rice land, instigated a

consumer goods to stimulate landowners to maximize the and instituted a heavily regressive tax system that caused hundreds of thousands of smallholders to lose their 19 lands. In Cochinchina, more than 80 percent of the cultivated area was farmed by tenants and agricultural laborers by the 1930s. 20 Many of the tenants and laborers, moreover, had opened up several taste for

acquisition of wealth,

hectares of virgin land only to have familiar with the

By the

new

it

stolen by influential families

colonial legal system. 21

1920s, the Vietnamese

upper

class

was based on large land-

Woodside, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam, pp. 1 14—15. Samuel L. Popkin, "Corporatism and Colonialism: Political Economy of Rural Change in Vietnam," Comparative Politics 8 (April 1976), 106-1 1. 18. See Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966). 19. Vu Quoc Thuc, L'economie communalist du Vietnam, pp. 201-2; Charles Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indochina (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 170-71; Popkin, "Corporatism and Colonialism," pp. 444-45. 20. Rents ranged from 40 to 70 percent of the crop. See Pierre Gourou, Land Utilization in French Indochina, trans. S. Haden Guest and Elizabeth Atherton Clark (New York: Institute for Pacific Relations, 1945), p. 353; Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution, pp. 84-97. 21. Woodside, Community and Revolution, p. 122; Guy Gran, "Vietnam and the Capitalist Route to Modernity: Village Cochinchina, 1880-1940" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1973), pp. 234-331. 16.

17.

Vietnam

6

holdings because industry and exporting were dominated by French companies and domestic trade was controlled by the Chinese minorIn Cochinchina, where the elite had limited political rights, it sought greater economic and political rights from the French through the vehicle of the Constitutionalist Party. But the large landowners also wanted to keep the landless from acquiring any political voice, and once a revolutionary movement involving peasant activism appeared at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, the elite viewed French repression of anticolonial revolutionaries as necessary insurance against the overthrow of the existing ity.

22

system of land ownership. 23 The living standards of most peasants substantially worsened during the colonial period. Typical Vietnamese peasants in Tonkin and Annam were constantly in debt to landlords or usurers and often forced to beg enough rice to feed their families from one day to the next. Even in normal years, most of them went hungry part of the year; in times of flood or drought, the poorest peasants faced starvation.

24

Such was the socioeconomic

situation confronted by the

new gen-

— mostly high school students enraged by French racism and arrogance — that was mobilized into an-

eration of Vietnamese patriots ticolonial activism in the

1920s and 1930s. After the failures of the

scholar-gentry resistance at the end of the nineteenth century and of various monarchist plots in the early years of the twentieth, the

new

generation was groping for a radically new strategy to drive out the French. 25 Ho Chi Minh, an exile in France who later went to the Soviet

Union and became

a cadre in the

Communist

International,

ve Giai Cap Tu Ban Mai Ban Viet Nam" compradore bourgeoisie class in Vietnam] Nghien Cuu Lich Su 24 (March 1961), 34; Tran Huy Lieu, Van Tao, Nguyen Luong Bich, Nguyen Cong Binh, Huong Tan, and Nguyen Khac Dam, Xa Hoi Viet Nam trong Thoi Phat Nhat [Vietnamese society during the French-Japanese period], vol. 9 of Tai Lieu Tham Khao Lich Su Cach Mang Can Dai Viet Nam [Research materials on the history of Vietnam's modern revolution] (Hanoi: Van Su Dia, 1957), p. 118. 23. Constitutionalist Party founder Bui Quang Chieu stated that the "silence" of the rural proletariat, "stemming from ignorance or fatalism, is the only guarantee of social order" {La Tribune Indcckinoise, August 3, 1931). On the Constitutionalist Party 22. See

Nguyen Cong Binh, "Thu Ban

[Discussion of the

during the high tide of revolution, see Megan Cook, The Constitutionalist Party of Co1930-1942: The Years of Decline (Melbourne: Monash Center of Southeast Asian Studies, 1977). 24. Pham Cao Duong, Thuc Trang cua Gioi Nong Dan Viet Nam duoi Thoi Phap Thuoc [The situation of the Vietnamese peasantry under French colonialism] (Saison: Nha Sach Khai Tri, 1965), p. 116; Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution, pp. 122-29. 25. On this "changing of the guard" in the Vietnamese anticolonial movement, see David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 249-77.

chinchina,

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

7

provide such a strategy. He taught the youthful revoand peasants were the "principal forces only because they represented the vast majorrevolution," not of the they were "oppressed more heavily population but because ity of the

was the

first to

lutionaries that the workers

than anyone

The

else."

26

petty bourgeois youth

who became

the core of the Revoluof the 1920s and of the Intionary Youth League (ICP) in found in Marxism-Leni1930 dochinese Communist Party 27 It connected them with a nism a new source of empowerment. worldwide revolutionary movement and gave them a potentially powerful new lever for revolutionary change. The futility of trying to defeat the French with methods that bypassed the organization of workers and peasants was dramatically illustrated, meanwhile, by the destruction by the colonial authorities of the elitist Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Vietnam Quoc Dan Dang) after it launched a foredoomed military putsch in 1930. 28 At one level the Marxism-Leninism of the Vietnamese Communist movement represented a rejection of the traditional authoritarian ideology of Confucianism. But although Ho Chi Minh and most of in the latter half

the

young

nationalists

who were

the earliest recruits to the party in

the 1930s rejected the social hierarchy central to Confucianism, they

were from Confucianist scholar-gentry families. So they were deeply imbued with the Confucian notions of political legitimacy based on personal character and correct sociopolitical views and with the idea of organic society. These traditional Vietnamese values combined with the class-based theory of Marxism-Leninism to form a powerful antiliberal ideology.

29

Marxism-Leninism gave legitimacy to the and the society over those of the individual. As the Marxist scholar Nguyen Khac Vien has noted, the first generLike Confucianism,

claims of the collective

26. See the excerpt from Ho Chi Minh's collected lectures at the Canton training course for Vietnamese youth in 1926 called Duong Kach Menh [Revolutionary road], in Editorial Office, Central Propaganda and Training Committee, Lich Su Dang Cong San Viet Nam: Trick Van Kien Dang [History of the Vietnamese Communist Party: Excerpts from party documents], vol. 1 (1930-1945) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Sach Giao Khoa Mac— Le-Nin, 1978), pp. 14-15. 27. Nearly all the leaders of the Communist Party from central to local levels in 1930 were between eighteen and twenty-one years old, according to one of that first generation. See Le Duan, Thanh Nien voi Cach Mang Xa Hoi Chu Nghia [Youth and the Socialist revolution] (Hanoi: Thanh Nien, 1966), p. 23. 28. See Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 91-99. 29. For the parallel between Ho Chi Minh's description of the ideal Communist cadre and the definition by Mencius of a "great man," see King Chen, Vietnam and China: 1938-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 241.

8

Vietnam

ation of Vietnamese Marxists were

more Confucian than

the bour-

geois intellectuals because they were not "hostile to the principle of collective discipline (as

is

the bourgeois intellectual) since he [the

Marxist] always sees social discipline as an indispensable part of the

development of his own personality." 30 For the fund of ancient wisdom and practice on which the legitimacy of the traditional Confucian elite was based, the Vietnamese Communist movement substituted a "scientific" system of thought that gave party leaders the ability to discern the truth and to point to the correct path. Adherents to Confucianism and Marxism, moreover, regarded their respective doctrines as the only legitimate basis for the Vietnamese state and left no space for competing systems of thought. Despite the French introduction of the concept of bourgeois individualism into Vietnamese society in the 1930s, liberalism did not flourish in Vietnamese intellectual circles when the struggle between colonialism and revolutionaries overshadowed other issues. The intellectuals who embraced individual freedoms as their central ideal, led by the popular novelist Nhat Linh and the Self-Reliant Literary Group (Tu Luc Van Doan), were more concerned with escaping the stifling influence of the Confucian family than with social or anticolonial revolution. Anticolonial activists reacted to the concept of liberal individualism as though it were merely part of a French strategy to divert Vietnamese youth from nationalism. 31 From the beginning the ICP dismissed parliamentary democracy and bourgeois freedoms as means of deceiving working people and intellectuals. At the ICP's first national congress in March 1935, a political resolution denounced the removal of censorship by colonial authorities as a sham because only "capitalists and feudalists faithful to imperialism" asked for permission to publish newspapers anyway. With the means of production in the hands of the capitalist class, it said, "freedom of opinion" existed only for the "exploiters," regard32 less of the constitution. "Bourgeois democracy" was considered to

30. Nguyen Khac Vien, "Confucianism and Marxism in Vietnam," in David Marr and Jayne Werner, eds., Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam, trans. Linda Yarr and Tran Truong Nhu (Berkeley: Indochina Resource Center, 1974), p. 47. 31. The fate of Western individualism during the late colonial period is discussed in Pham The Ngu, Viet Nam Van Hoc Su Gian Hoc Tan Bien, 1862-1945 [A concise modern history of Vietnamese literature 1862-1945], vol. 3 (Saigon: Quoc Hoc Tung Thu, n.d.), especially pp. 425-72, 620-29; Vu Tai Luc, Thanh Than Tri Thuc duoi Nhan Quan Chinh Tri [The intellectual stratum from the political viewpoint] (Saigon:

Viet Chien, 1969), pp. 215-21. 32. "Political Resolution of the First Congress,"

Propaganda and Training Committee, 122-23.

March 27-31, 1935,

History of the Vietnamese

in Central

Communist Party, pp.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

9

33 be "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie." This cynicism about individual freedoms in capitalist countries allowed the ICP's leaders to justify the absence of such freedoms once the party came to power. The ICP's first decade was, in many ways, disastrous. Its Comintern-trained leaders dismissed as "opportunist" Ho Chi Minh's pragmatic strategy of completing the national revolution first before carrying out class revolution and pursued narrow class lines that proved politically costly, during the first five years. 34 Premature uprisings in Annam and Cochinchina in 1930-1931 resulted in French 35 destruction of some of the ICP's strongest bases. A wave of arrests in 1939 nearly wiped out its entirely urban network and most of its top leadership; then another premature uprising in Cochinchina in 1940, which the French ruthlessly suppressed, shattered the party apparatus there and left the countryside terrorized. The Japanese occupation of Indochina in 1940, which the Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France agreed to accommodate, ultimately created a revolutionary situation in which the ICP could seize power without significant opposition. In April 1941 Ho Chi Minh returned from southern China and established the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh), or Viet Minh, the following month. Under Ho's direction, the party adopted a much broader class line to include the majority of the bourgeoisie within the orbit of the united front against Japanese and French imperialism. The strategy was to prepare for a general uprising to coincide with a landing of Allied troops. A historical event that shaped the future of Vietnamese politics for decades was the famine of 1944-1945 the worst in modern Vietnamese history which killed up to two million people in Ton-

—

—

33. "Chung Quanh Van De Chinh Sach Moi" [About the problem of the policy], ICP Central Committee document, October 1936, in Central Propaganda and Training Committee, History of the Vietnamese Communist Party, p. 146. When the ICP changed its strategy in 1936 and supported "bourgeois democratic revolution" in Indochina in alliance with the bourgeoisie, the party leadership had to explain that it was only because of the danger of fascism and "not because the Communist International admires bourgeois democracy" (p. 147). 34. Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pp. 178-79, 184-85; William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 48-49. 35. Duiker, Communist

Road to Power, p. 85. Many of the peasants who had supported the 1930-1931 Cochinchina revolt joined the conservative Cao Dai, which promised protection from government harassment, with the memory of French terror still fresh in their minds. See Lalaurette and Vilmont, "Le Caodaisme," unpublished report by the Inspector of Political and Administrative Affairs in Cochinchina and Province Chief of Tay Ninh (Tay Ninh, 1933; typescript available at Cornell University Libraries), p. 35.

Vietnam

10

kin

and northern Annam. 36 The Japanese caused much of the

suf-

fering by forcing peasants to divert their rice land to industrial crops to serve military needs and then forcing them to sell most of what

remained of the paddy crop for a fraction of the market price to 37 The government of Premier Tran Trong feed Japanese troops. Kim, put into power by the Japanese after their March 1945 seizure of power from the French, was powerless to alleviate the suffering. But Viet Minh cadres throughout Tonkin led hungry peasant crowds, often unarmed, in raids on the rice depots belonging to wealthy landowners and distributed rice to the neediest families. 38 More than two decades later, Vietnamese who witnessed those events recalled how that decisive response to a massive social crisis confirmed the legitimacy of the Viet Minh and helped sweep the ICP, with only about three thousand active party members, into power. 39 By the time the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the Viet

Minh already controlled large areas of the countryside. The Viet Minh takeover of Hanoi was only the culmination of a wave of popular uprisings in provincial capitals in the north and in towns and surrounding Hanoi. It was the strength of peasant support Minh that provided the demonstrators for its show of strength in Hanoi and led to its seizure of power without opposition on August 19. 40 On September 2, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed Vietnam's independence and established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In Cochinchina, where there was no famine and the ICP was still recovering from the bloody suppression of the 1940 Cochinchina revolt, the Viet Minh front was much weaker and did not enjoy the villages

for the Viet

36.

Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution, pp. 130-33. The Japanese-sponsored government created after

the Japanese coup d'etat 1945, was powerless to do anything but carry out Japanese orders for the continued pillage of the Vietnamese economy. Although the Dai Viet Party did not participate directly in the government, prominent figures in the party published pro-Japanese propaganda. See Le Huu Muc, Than The va Su 37.

against the French regime

on March

9,

Nghiep Nhat Linh [The life and work of Nhat Linh] (Hue: Nhan Thue, 1958), Vu Bang, Bon Muoi Nam "Noi Lao" [Forty years of "lying"] (Saigon: Pham

p. 125;

Quang

Khai), p. 155. 38.

David W.

P. Elliott,

"Revolutionary Reintegration: Comparison of the Founda-

tion of Post-Liberation Political Systems in

North Vietnam and China" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1976), pp. 96-98. 39. Gerard Chaliand, The Peasants of North Vietnam (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 73-74. The figure of three thousand ICP members involved in the August revolution is given in Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," p. 99. 40. See Ho Hai, "Mot Vai Y Kien ve Moi Quan He giua Nong Thon va Thanh Thi Nuoc Ta trong Thoi Ky 1939-1945" [A few ideas on the relationship between countryside and city in our country during 1939-1945], Nghien Cuu Lich Su, no. 52, July 1963, p. 16.

The Making of an clear-cut legitimacy that

it

Authoritarian Regime

did in the north. 41

Its

main

1

rivals for

power, the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai sects, had depended on the Japanese occupation forces to build up their armed forces during the war, but when the anti-Japanese Viet Minh government was formed in the north, the sects and their allies were forced to accept temporarily the authority of the Viet Minh Committee in the south when 42 the Japanese surrendered.

DRV Institutions

and

the

The overwhelming

Anti-French Resistance

popularity of the

DRV,

the absence of any

other political force with a mass base, and the weakness of liberal democratic values and institutions in Vietnamese society were all conditions conducive to the development of a one-party dictatorship.

But the DRV's preparation for and waging of a resistance war and justification for tight control of political, economic, and social life. The nine years of resistance war against the French were to make a long-

against the returning French provided both opportunity

lasting imprint

The vative

on

DRV

political institutions.

period of coalition government between the ICP and conser-

anti-Communist parties

in 1946, following the public dissolu-

tion (but actual withdrawal into secrecy) of the

1945, was not a step toward pluralism. 43

ICP

in

November

was a response to the pressure of foreign occupation forces, which strengthened the ICP leadership's belief that the revolutionary regime must be dictatorial toward any opposition to the party. Entering behind the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) occupation army that flooded into Vietnam to disarm Japanese troops north of the sixteenth parallel, two anti-Communist parties the Vietnam Revolutionary League (Viet-Nam Cach Mang Dong Minh Hoi) and the Vietnam Nationalist Party (Viet-Nam Quoc Dan Dang [VNQDD]) demanded the replacement of the DRV regime by a govIt

—

—

41. Le Manh Trinh, "Bai hoc dau tranh de cung co va tang cuong su doan ket thong nhat noi bo Dang trong thoi ky 1939-1945" [Lesson of the struggle to consolidate and strengthen internal party unity during the period 1939-1945], Hoc Tap, no. 8,

1963, p. 14.

between the ICP representative, Tran Van Giau, and the representative of the sects and their allies, Phan Van Hum, on August 25, 1945, in U.S. Department of Defense, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967, 12 vols. 42. See the report of a discussion

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), l:B-31. 43. On the "tactical" dissolution of the ICP, see Propaganda and Training Committee, Lich Su Dang Cong San Viet Nam [History of the Vietnamese Communist party] (Hanoi: Tuyen Huan, 1988) 1:144-45.

12

Vietnam

in which they would control all the key positions." They continued to kidnap and assassinate Viet Minh cadres despite Ho's attempt to placate them by including their representatives in a coalition government. The VNQDD, the larger of the two, withdrew into China when their Kuomintang sponsors negotiated an accord with France for the withdrawal of Chinese troops from Vietnam, but it ordered members to assassinate both DRV and French officials in 5 the hope of provoking war between France and the DRV.' In South Vietnam, where the Viet Minh regime was waging a resistance war against the French by September 1945, anti-Communist parties and groups that had been pro-Japanese during the occupation quickly turned to the French authorities to help suppress the Communist-dominated government. First, the Cao Dai sect in MayJune 1946 and, then, the Hoa Hao sect during the first half of 1947 negotiated agreements with the French to collaborate against the 46 Viet Minh. In September 1945 the DRV published a decree "dissolving reactionary parties," defined by their "collaboration with foreigners to plot actions harmful to national independence and our country's economy." 47 The immediate targets of the ban were the pro-Japanese parties, primarily the Dai Viet Party, which had supported and

ernment

44. The Dong Minh Hoi was led by Nguyen Hai Than, an officer in the Chinese Kuomintang Army for more than thirty years, and was sponsored by the KMT. The VNQDD had also depended on the KMT government for financial support for fifteen years. See King Chen, Vietnam and China, 1938-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 123; Pierre Dabezies, "Forces politiques diss.,

au Viet

Nam"

(Ph.D.

University of Bordeaux, 1955), p. 93.

Hoang Van Dao, Viet-Nam Quoc Dan Dang [The Vietnam Nationalist Party] Thuy Phuong, 1964), pp. 278-79, p. 295; Pierre Celerier, Menaces sur le

45. See

(Saigon:

Viet-Nam (Saigon: Imprimerie d"Extreme Orient, 1950), pp. 47-48; Le Huu Muc, and work of Nhat Linh, pp. 129-32; Nguyen Manh Con, Dem Tarn Tinh Viet Lich Su [Writing history from the heart] (Saigon: Nguyen Dinh Vuong, 1958), pp. 74-75. 46. On Cao Dai moves to collaborate with the French, see Tran Quang Vinh, Lich Su Cao Dai trong Thor Ky Phuc Quoc 1941-1946 [History of the Cao Dai in the national restoration period 1941-1946] (Tay Ninh: Dai Dao Tarn Ky Pho Do, n.d.), pp. 7778, 84-90; A. M. Savani, Visages et images du Sud Viet Nam (Saigon: Imprimerie Francaise d'Outre-Mer, 1955), p. 79, Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Vietnam de 1940 a 1952 (Paris: Editions du Seuil), p. 382 n. 5. On the Hoa Hao collaboration, see Paul Mus, Viet-Nam: Sociologie d'une guerre (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952), p. 70; H. Lanoue, "Vietnam: Bases economiques et sociales des sectes," Cahiers Internationaux 65 (April 1955), 83; A. M. Savani, "Notes sur le Phat Giao Hoa Hao" (n.p., 1951; mimeographed), p. 29; Tran Tong Kim, Mot Con Gio Bui [a dust storm] (Saigon: Viet Thanh, 1947), pp. 162-68. Life

47. Nguyen Van Huong, "Su Nghiep Bao Ve Doc Lap, To Do, Bao Ve Thanh Qua cua Cach Mang va Hinh Luat cua Nuoc Viet Nam Dan Chu Cong Hoa" [The defense of independence, freedom, and the gains of the revolution and the criminal code of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam], in Vietnam Social Sciences Committee, Law Institute, Mot So Van De ve Nha Nuoc va Phap Luat Viet Nam [Some problems of the Vietnamese state and law] (Hanoi: Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1972), p. 119.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

13

puppet government installed by the Japanese afcoup. But its terms obviously applied equally to March 1945 ter the on the support of Chinese occupation. In Novemthe parties relying ber 1945 the Communist Party leadership considered one of its four main tasks to be to "eliminate internal foes." 48 When the bulk of the KMT troops had left in mid- 1946, thereparticipated in the

fore, the

closed

Once

VNQDD

DRV cleared

down

its

out the remaining pockets of troops, offices and newspapers, and began mass arrests. 49

the resistance began in the north, the government set

"section for the repression of traitors" in each village.

50

up

a

In the south

Minh evacuated Saigon in September 1945, they captured a leading Cao Dai figure, Tran Quang Vinh, who was in contact with French authorities and other anti-Communist political fig51 ures. After a pact of military cooperation had been signed between

after the Viet

Hoa Hao military commanders and the French, the Viet Minh captured Hoa Hao leader Huynh Phu So in April 1947, charged him with treason, and carried out a death sentence one month later. 52 Despite the repression of these parties and sects for their opposiregime and collaboration with foreign powers, many of and cadres of such organizations, including some who had been invited to participate in the government in the north and

tion to the

the leaders in the

Executive Committee of the Viet

Minh

in the south, eventu-

puppet Bao Dai regime after 1948. The lesson learned by the ICP leadership was that the DRV had been too lax toward "counterrevolutionaries." Party secretary and theoretician Truong Chinh later expressed regret that "energetic and necessary measures to counteract all possible dangers were not taken immediately upon the seizure of power" because "for a newborn revolutionary power to be lenient with counterrevolutionaries 53 is tantamount to committing suicide." The party's fear of internal enemies quickly gave impetus to the ally

became top

48. lishing

Vo Nguyen

officials in the

Giap, Unforgettable Days, 2d ed. (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Pub-

House, 1978),

Vo Nguyen

p. 71.

Giap, Unforgettable Days, pp. 286-91. 50. Bernard Fall, The Viet Minh Regime: Government and Administration in the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam (Institute of Pacific Relations with the Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1956), p. 35. 51. See Tran Quang Vinh, History of the Cao Dai 1941-1946, p. 63; Jayne Werner, "The Cao Dai: The Politics of a Vietnamese Syncretic Religious Movement" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1926), pp. 275-76. 52. On Viet Minh charges against and execution of Huynh Phu So see telegram from consul in Saigon to the secretary of state, June 24, 1947; Department of State Papers, 1947, 851G.006/2447, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 53. Truong Chinh, The August Revolution (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing 49.

House, 1962),

p. 4.

Vietnam

14

development of an extensive security apparatus. The Vietnamese People's Police (Cong An Nhan Dan Vietnam) was actually created on August 19, 1945, the day the Viet Minh took over Hanoi and nearly two weeks before the DRV itself was founded. It then became 5 Despite shorta "state secretariat" under the Ministry of Interior. ages of money, armaments, and professional skills, from its first days it actively monitored the activities of the VNQDD, mobilized propaganda against them, and eventually carried out mass arrests. 55 The fact that the government was struggling against foreign occupation forces justified an extremely broad definition of national security crimes, apart from outright collaboration with the enemy. In March 1946, soon after the beginning of the resistance in the south, it gave the Administrative Committees of the three regions the authority to send to detention camps "those judged to have spoken or acted in a way which could harm the struggle for independence, the demo'

cratic regime, the safety

Only

in

1953 did the

of the public or the unity of the nation." distinguish twelve types of action that

DRV

constituted national security violations.

The

56

court system was, from the beginning, an

power of the

arm of

the execu-

government primarily for the maintenance of security. At first the only judicial institutions were courtsmartial, dominated by the party and the army, set up to judge those

tive

resistance

accused of violating national security. When a system of "people's courts" replaced the courts-martial in "repressing counterrevolution-

judges at interzonal, provincial, and district levels were appointed jointly by the officials of the Ministry of Justice and the Resistance and Administrative Committees at each level. Many of the cadres of the Ministry of Justice were graduates of law schools of the colonial regime and were imbued with bourgeois democratic concepts of legality. These cadres frequently conflicted with the Resistance and Administrative Committees, who felt little or no concern about such notions of legality. 57 From 1948 to 1950 the ministry was engaged in writing a new, simplified penal code that

aries" the

54. The Cong An celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary on August 19, 1970. See Tran Quoc Hoan, "Ky Niem Lan Thu 25 Ngay Thanh Lap Cong An Nhan Dan Viet Nam" [Celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Vietnam People's Police], Hoc

Tap, no. 9, 1970, p. 51. 55.

Ibid., p. 52.

Nguyen Van Huong, Defense of independence, pp. 119-21; Fall, Viet Minh Regime, p. 31. 57. Resolution of the Expanded Central Committee Plenum, January 15-17, 1948, in Central Propaganda and Training Commission, History of the Vietnamese Com56.

munist Party,

vol. 2 (1979),

pp. 159, 161.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

15

departed dramatically from traditional legal practice, especially in discounting the role of professional lawyers in court proceedings. 58 DRV legal cadres were retrained to view law as a "weapon of the ruling class, with which to punish a class which opposes

The

it."

59

denigration of bourgeois legal concepts and procedures dur-

ing the earlier years of the resistance set the stage for the establish-

ment of

special people's courts to try landlords in connection with

and land reform in 1953. land reform courts could sentence landlords accused of more serious crimes, including those committed before the revolution, to the mass mobilization for rent reduction

The

long prison sentences or even death. Very often, however, they merely formalized sentences that had already been decided by poor

and landless peasants at denunciation sessions organized by peasant organizations under the guidance of the land reform cadres. 60 The exigencies of war further reinforced the tendencies in Leninist ideology and organization toward the centralization of power and limited the role of representative and political institutions that might have at least moderated those tendencies. Although ICP leaders did not consider an elected parliament to be the measure of a regime's democratic character, the concept of democratic centralism

held that popularly elected bodies at each level were supposed to "accept responsibility" before the people and elect the administrative

organs ment. 61

One

at that level while

of the

first

obeying the orders of the central govern-

actions of the

DRV

was to issue a decree Dong Nhan Dan)

ing elections for People's Councils (Hoi

and provincial

establishat village

every two years. These elected councils would, in turn, elect the village and provincial Administrative Committees levels

(Uy Ban Hanh Chanh), which were,

in theory,

equal in power.

The

Administrative Committees could be dismissed by People's Councils at the

central 58.

same or higher level, but they were also subordinate to the government administrative apparatus. The system thus com-

Le Kim Que, "The People's Courts," in An Outline of Institutions of the Democratic Nam (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1974), p. 92; Fall,

Republic of Viet

Minh Regime, pp. 31-32. Do Van Gang, "Nhung Loi Ho Chu Tich Day Bao Can Bo Nganh Tu Phap trong Hoi Nghi Hoc Tap Nam 1950" [Chairman Ho's teachings to legal cadres in the 1950 study conference], in Vietnam Lawyers Association, Nha Nuoc va Phap Luat [State and law] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Lao Dong, 1971), 3:139. Viet

59.

60. Thoi Moi,

January 22, 1957.

Pham Van Dong, "Tang Cuong Cung Co Chinh Quyen Dan Chu Nhan Dan Nam" [Step up the consolidation of the Vietnamese people's democratic govern-

61.

Viet

ment], Report to the Second Party Congress, February 1951, Mot So Van De Ve Nha Nuoc [Some problems of government] (Hanoi: Su That, 1980), pp. 27-28.

16

Vietnam

bined formal mechanisms for popular control with strong central government control over administration at every level. 62 Immediately after the resistance war began, however, the central government suspended local elections, and the system of People's Councils also stopped functioning. Small groups composed of representatives of the army, the party, mass organizations, and civil administration were given authority above the local Administrative Committees. Originally called "defense committees," they were renamed "resistance committees" a few months later. They soon absorbed the Administrative Committees' functions, and by October 1947 they had become "Resistance and Administrative Committees." These groups, which had five members at the village level and up to twelve at provincial levels, were appointed by the central government. 63 Elected village People's Councils were reinstated in 1948 in those areas under firm Viet Minh control, but these bodies could no longer dismiss members of the Resistance and Administrative Committees whereas the latter could dissolve the People's Councils for 64 decisions contrary to higher level directives. The councils existed on paper but were given no real power. As Premier Pham Van Dong observed at the party's second congress in 1951, the DRV had "only begun to pay attention to People's Councils" and had "not yet developed their work." 65 During the campaign for mobilization of the masses and reorganization of village government in 1953, the People's Councils were again "temporarily dissolved" on the grounds that they were controlled by landowners and notables, but no new elections were planned. 66 Meanwhile, the central government further strengthened control over local organs by creating in 1948 fourteen zonal military administrative committees (reduced later to six) with wide-ranging administrative powers, including requisitioning of 62. George Ginsburgs, "Local Government and Administration under the Viet Minh, 1945-54," in P. J. Honey, ed., North Vietnam Today (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 137-49. 63. Vu Van Hoan, "Local Organs of State Power," in Outline of Institutions, pp. 65-

66; Fall, Viet

Minh Regime, p. 2& Government and Administration,"

64. Ginsburgs, "Local

p.

151; Fall, Viet

Minh

Regime, p. 29. 65. Pham Van Dong, Step up the consolidation, p. 28. See also Vu Van Hoan, "Qua Trinh Xay Dung Hoi Dong Nhan Dan" [The process of building the People's Councils], in Social Sciences Commission of Vietnam, Legal Institute, Mot So Van De ve Nha Nuoc va Phap Luat Viet Nam [Some problems of Vietnamese government and law] (Hanoi: Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1972), p. 180. 66. Vu Van Hoan, Building the People's Councils, p. 180.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

17

property, censorship of publications, and arrest, detention, trial, and sentencing of national security offenders. 67 At the national level as well, the elected legislature disappeared

during the resistance war. The relatively free national elections held in January 1946, in which Ho Chi Minh's government received an overwhelming popular mandate, produced a National Assembly of resistance cadres broadly representative of the Viet Minh leadership stratum. 68 But after approving a new constitution in November 1946, the government informed its members that it would not be able to serve as a legislative body during the resistance that was about to begin nor would there be new elections for a legislative assembly. The Assembly was persuaded to vest full authority for making law in the government and to give the Standing Committee of the Assembly the power to maintain "liaison" with the government and to contribute "ideas" to

69 it.

During the self-criticism that followed the admission of errors in 1955-1956 land reform program, the party leadership noted that during the war "democratic activities" had been "restrained." The explanation for this departure from the democratic centralism model was that the state's authority had to be "precise and disciplined" rather than diffuse and divided to respond to the requirements of the resistance. 70 These institutional features of the DRV during the long years of anti-French resistance inevitably shaped the attitudes and practices of DRV officials at all levels. The concentration of power in the hands of central government and its subordinate administrative echelons and the absence of democratic processes or effective legal checks on official power increased the likelihood of authoritarian and bureaucratic patterns. The primary nexus between the DRV and the population during the resistance was the mobilization of foodstuffs and labor to supthe

Government and Administration," pp. 152-56. Tieng, "Sue Manh Than Ky cua La Phieu trong Tay Nhan Dan" [The marvelous strength of the ballot in the people's hands], Cuu Quoc (April 67. Ginsburgs, "Local 68. See

Huynh Van

11, 1971).

Nhan Dan, December 31, 1956, cited in Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," n. 11. The one meeting of the National Assembly during the resistance to the agrarian reform law in December 1953 was clearly more a symbolic than a

69. p.

246

pass

—

—

of the legislative function. It was not carried out under the 1946 constiwhich was never ratified by plebiscite. 70. Nguyen Duy Trinh, "Quan He giua Nhan Dan, Dang va Nha Nuoc trong nen Chuyen Chinh Dan Chu cua Ta" [Relations between the people, the party and the State in our people's democratic dictatorship], Hoc Tap, no. 8, 1957, p. 7. real exercise

tution,

Vietnam

18

port its constantly growing army. After relying solely on voluntary contributions from the population during the first three years of the war, the DRV was forced in 1949 to impose two new taxes. One tax cost each adult sixty

— enough

dong, the other cost ten kilograms of paddy

one soldier for ten days. 71 The following year, the resistance government levied a steeply progressive agricultural tax, which exempted the poorest 10 percent of the population but extracted from 5 to 45 percent of the paddy income of the rest of rice

to feed

the population.

72

The party leadership's view was that the mobilization of foodstuffs and labor had to involve coercion, but that if the people understood it clearly and consciously implemented it, the process would "lose its coercive character." In "very

many

places," however, the

DRV

ad-

mitted that cadres had not "explained and propagandized" but had "compelled by bureaucratism and commandism." The problem of bureaucratism (quan

lieu),

defined as using

commands

rather than

persuasion to obtain compliance, was described as "rather serious 73 within our government, from top to bottom."

DRV

poor and landless peasants in the north when carrying out agrarian reform in 1953-1954, the result was not the creation of a more independent peasant political stratum relative to the party and government. The mass mobilization campaign temporarily replaced discredited local party and administrative organs with a new authority structure extending from the central land reform committees to cadre work teams in the villages. The cadre teams used authoritarian methods to coerce poor peasants to reflect the political views ordained by higher party organs. Indeed, the newly mobilized peasants, instigated by the work teams, denounced poor peasants who had previously become politi-

Although the

began

to mobilize the

or state as "lackeys" of class enemies. 74 Those put into positions of power in the village usually were not tenants or even agricultural workers but the very young; often they were not natives of the village, and they lacked the respect of most of the cally active in the party

Nguyen Xuan

Lai, "The First Resistance (1945-1954)," Economic Policy and NaWar, Vietnamese Studies, no. 44 (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1976), pp. 131-32. 72. Christine Pelzer White, "Agrarian Reform and National Liberation in the Vietnamese Revolution: 1920-1957" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1981), pp. 145-50. 73. Pham Van Dong, "Step up the Consolidation," pp. 29-33. 74. Edwin E. Moise, "'Class-ism' in North Vietnam, 1953-1956," in William S. Turley, ed., Vietnamese Communism in Comparative Perspective (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980), pp. 93-98.

71.

tional Liberation

The Making of an villagers.

75

The

Authoritarian Regime

19

land reform experience did not reduce, but only re-

inforced, the traditional authoritarianism of Vietnamese village politics.

DRV had not had to fight a war of resistance against and Vietnamese collaboraters and if opposition groups had commanded strong domestic support and remained independent of foreign forces, there is every reason to believe that Vietnam would have been an authoritarian state in which representative institutions and the rule of law would have been weak. But the conditions of resistance war gave further impetus to the concentration of power in the hands of the central government and its subordinate Even

if

the

the French

administrative echelons in the absence of democratic processes or of effective legal checks tices, in

on

official

power. These institutions and prac-

turn, established bureaucratic authoritarian patterns of be-

havior that continued after peace was restored.

Revolution in the South and Reunification by Force

Revolutionary politics in South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975 took a form rather different from those in areas of DRV control during the anti-French resistance war, both because of the

region's

socio-

economic structure and because a conservative anti-Communist regime held power with the backing and, ultimately, military intervention of the United States. Instead of being the government, therefore, the

Communist

Party played the role of insurgent, with

far-reaching implications for

its

political style

and

structure.

The Geneva Agreements

of 1954 created two temporary zones of administration pending elections for a government of a united Vietnam in 1956: the Northern zone under the DRV administration and the Southern zone under the much weaker French-sponsored State of Vietnam. The State of Vietnam (renamed the Republic of Vietnam in 1955) frustrated the provisions for all- Vietnamese elections, leaving tens of thousands of civilians affiliated with the Communist Party and their supporters in the South as a potential threat to the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem. The Republic of Vietnam (RVN) responded by trying to destroy the party apparatus physically in the South through arrest, detention, or execution. Despite pleas from Southern Communists to resume armed struggle, Hanoi was constrained by the opposition of its socialist allies and its heavy dependence on them to develop the economy of the North. 75. See White, "Agrarian

Reform and National

Liberation," pp. 426-28.

20

The

Vietnam party leadership sought instead a compromise, a "democratic would avoid either war or the destruction of the

alliance policy," that

76

Through that policy it tried to attract liberal non-Communist opponents of Diem to a united front by making concessions to them on the future regime in the South. The educated elite in the South included many who had been active in or sympathized with the Viet Minh resistance and who opposed Diem for his political repression, his subservience to the United States, and his refusal to permit any moves toward reunification of the country. Some of them were in touch with party members by late 1958 and were open to an alliance with Hanoi against Diem although most still party in the South.

77 preferred a liberal democratic regime in the South. As the violence against the party and resistance veterans in the South mounted, Southern party leaders complained bitterly to

its passive stance. Many of these victims and, in one an interzone committee, took up arms against the Diem regime in 1957-1978 on their own initiatives. In early 1959 the party lead78 ership agreed to a limited armed struggle in the South. It did not, however, intend to win that armed struggle by main force warfare, as in the anti-French resistance war, but by a "general offensive and insurrection" in which political, rather than military, forces would 79 play the main role. Hanoi was hoping that an alliance between the party and non-Communist opponents of Diem at the national level would hasten the collapse of the regime and permit a left-of-center coalition government to take power. Hanoi's political struggle strategy in the South was reflected in the formation of the National Liberation Front (NLF) by Communist party cadres in December 1960. The NLF was based on agreement between the party and the anti-Diem non-Communist intellectuals and political figures on a pluralist and nonaligned South Vietnamese

Hanoi about

case,

76. "Duong Loi Cach Mang Mien Nam" [The path of revolution in the south], Party directive, 1956, document no. 1002, Jeffrey Race Collection, in the Echols Collection, Cornell University Libraries, p. 2. At about the same time the document was written, Hanoi was contacting non-Communist political figures from the Southern

many of whom had been connected with the French-sponsored regime before 1954, and assuring them that the socialist North would coexist with a nonsocialist South for many years, provided that U.S. military influence was removed from the South. Bangkok Post, January 18, 1956.

elite,

77.

See Truong

Nhu Tang, A

Viet

Cong Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1985),

pp. 65-69. 78. See George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How America Became (New York: Knopf, 1986), pp. 101-10.

Involved in Vietnam

79. For a clear delineation of differences between the Chinese protracted war strategy and the Vietnamese "general insurrection" strategy in the South, see Le Duan, "To Muoi Cue and Other Comrades in Nam Bo," February 7, 1961, Letters to the South (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1986), pp. 9-10.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

21

regime and reunification through peaceful negotiations between the two zones. Independent Southern figures made up the bulk of the NLF Central Committee as well as local committees while the Southern party organization provided the finances and logistical support for its leaders and most of the cadres who organized the NLF struc80 ture from top to bottom. The party guided the operations of village level-NLF committees through its party fraction (dang doan), which had no more than 40 percent of the positions on the committees and was ordered not to "dictate" policies to the committees but to lead by persuasion. 81 Most of the members of the village NLF committees were not party members but were respected leaders of the community who had been associated with the Viet Minh resistance to the French. 82 Village party officials, unlike their

autonomy regarding

RVN

counterparts, had wide

taxes, land policy, military recruitment,

ucation. This decentralization of political

power

and ed-

to the village level

not only gave the revolutionary organization greater flexibility to local issues but gave the village population meaningful par-

adapt to

ticipation in decisions affecting their lives.

The

83

relationship between the NLF/party structure

and the rural

population in the South in the early 1960s was also different from that between the DRV and the population in the North during the anti-French resistance. DRV cadres, concerned with obtaining resources and labor from the population, had relied heavily on their status

as

representatives of the legitimate state authority.

Party

cadres in the South, on the other hand, avoided any implication that they represented the power of the state in relations with ordinary peasants and, at least at for the village

from the

first,

RVN

even helped people demand services administration. 84

Truong Nhu Tang,

Viet Cong Memoir, pp. 65-80. from Thu-Bien Province party committee to party committees, March 28, 1961, Department of State, no. 7308, Far Eastern Series no. 1 10, v4 Threat to Peace: North Viet-Nam's Effort to Conquer South Vietnam, National Archives, Washington, D.C., pt. 2, item 5, p. 95; interview no. 123, RAND Vietnam Interviews (Z-ZH Interview series), quoted in Carlyle A. Thayer, "Southern Vietnamese Revolutionary Organizations and the Viet-Nam Workers' Party: Continuity and Change, 195 — 1961," paper for ad hoc seminar on Communist Movements and Regimes in Indochina, New York, September 30-October 2, 1974, p. x n. 121; unidentified party document quoted in Douglas Pike, Viet Cong (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), p. 228. 82. For an example, see James Walker Trullinger, Jr., Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam (New York: Longman, 1980), p. 79. 83. For an insightful discussion of this point, see Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long

80. See 81.

Instructions

1

An

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 159-65. As Race points out, the party's own training documents warned against the party apparatus becoming "an administrative organization" (ibid., p. 160). In the early 84.

Vietnam

22

Party cadres were not merely creating organizations responsive to the party's strategy but educating peasants to assert themselves polit-

Whether

ically.

it

was a conscious aim or not, the effect was

critical political participants

—

to create

who no

longer simply feared thought for themselves. Criticism

activists

and obeyed party cadres but who of cadres and suggestions for correcting their errors were encouraged as signs of political maturity. The stronger the NLF village, the more difficult it was to collect taxes, simply because people in those villages were not afraid to complain about decisions by cadres or to demand lower taxes. Even outright refusal to cooperate, when openly expressed, usually brought further efforts to persuade rather than punishment. 85 The party could not have succeeded, of course, in building such a sophisticated village-level political organization without using violence to eliminate the government apparatus in the villages, either by killing key officials or by frightening them away beginning in 1960. As Jeffrey Race observes, however, the violence by the party only "eliminated the asymmetry between government and Party agents in the rural areas" that had existed over the previous six years.

86

Although the

initial effect

lutionaries in the villages

was

of the appearance of armed revo-

to create fear

among

those

who were

not familiar with them, the political education process eventually eliminated that fear and replaced

The

single

most important

it

with positive support. 87

issue that attracted

participate actively in the revolutionary

poor peasants

movement was

to

the land ten-

ure system. Instead of pushing the tenant farmers to denounce village landlords, as in the North, party cadres channeled their grievances into a struggle against RVN security personnel, who were often used by absentee landlords to collect back rent or to reclaim land redistributed by the Viet Minh. 88 The cadres had little difficulty 1960s, the cadres did not discourage people from seeking the RVN district government's assistance in building schools and supplying teachers but, instead, taught them how to lobby for such benefits. "Experiences in Turning XB Village in Kien Phong Province into a Combatant Village," document E-6, in Michael C. Conley, The CommuInsurgent Infrastructure in South Vietnam: A Study of Organization and Strategy (Washington, D.C.: Center for Research in Social Systems, American University, 1966), p. 351.

nist

85. David Hunt, "Organizing for Revolution in Vietnam," Radical America 8 (January-April 1974), pp. 25-32, 81; W. P. Davidson, "Some Observations on Viet Cong Operations in the Villages," RAND Corporation RM-5267/2ISA/ARPA, July 1967, pp. 149-53; "Experiences in Turning XB Village," pp. 350, 352-53. 86. Race, War Comes to Long An, pp. 115-16. 87. Hunt, "Organizing for Revolution in Vietnam," p. 32-37. 88. "Experiences in Turning XB Village," pp. 348-51.

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

23

persuading the tenant farmers that their interests lay in ensuring that the old village notables and security agents could not reestablish their power. Building a mass movement on the immediate interests of the poor peasants in land helped secure the village from assaults, by forces, but it did not automatically bind the peasants to the government larger aims of the party, such as national independence and re89 Moreover, despite the fact that the party distributed unification. land to peasants only provisionally, some cadres noted that the beneficiaries would be generally more inclined to defend their rights to 90 the land than their Northern counterparts had been. Tenants and other poor peasant farmers in the South were in a better position than those in the North to become politically active on the basis of their own interests rather than simply to follow the orders of the party because of South Vietnam's looser socioeconomic structure. Southern tenant farmers and agricultural workers historically had been less dependent on landlords and more willing to struggle against them than the poor peasantry in the North. So outside cadre work teams did not need to pressure them to mobilize against landlords.

The

military

arm of the

People's Liberation

revolutionary

Armed

movement

in the South, the

Forces (PLAF), was created in 1961 with

troops recruited exclusively in the South although key officers and

cadres were Southerners

Geneva Agreement and

PLAF was

who had regrouped

infiltrated

to the

North

after the

back to the South after 1960.

The

and in attacks on the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in 1962-1963 that it began preparing in 1964 to shift from guerrilla warfare to main force warfare. By early 1965 the PLAF was rapidly chewing up the main forces of the ARVN, prompting the United States to begin the continuous bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965 and to send its own combat units to the South in March 1965. The intervention of U.S. combat forces in the conflict fundamentally altered the politics and society of rural South Vietnam. The NLF zone became the target of massive U.S. firepower, airstrikes as well as "harassment and interdiction" artillery fire. 91 The onslaught

89.

so successful in recruiting

Ibid., p. 357.

90. See the account by a defector

from the party

in Race,

War Comes

to

Long An,

p.

129. 91. For a discussion of "free fire zones" and "harassment and interdiction fire," see Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 95-1 14. For a journalistic account of how the NLF zone was devastated in two of the northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, see Jonathan Schell, The Military Half: An

24

Vietnam

NLF

zone had profound psychological, economic, demopolitical consequences. "In the entire VC-controlled areas along the canals," of the Mekong Delta observed a U.S. official in 1968, "there are very few, if any houses. Long stretches in these areas have been blasted by bombs, artillery, rockets and machine gun fire." 92 Large areas of the countryside were taken out of production as a result of chemicals sprayed under the U.S. crop destruction program. Orchards were wiped out by bombs and shells, thus de93 priving the population of its main source of income. Although most families clung to their land as long as possible, they were finally forced to leave the villages to find safety in RVN-controlled towns or refugee camps. The constant fear of bombs and shells drove people from their homes in the villages into the fields in the hope of escaping injury and death. But when the peasants would "get the nervous shakes even during the daytime," they would come 94 In many NLF villages from 80 to 85 percent of the in as refugees. population fled to areas controlled by the government. 95 The massive population movement to the government-controlled zone reduced the NLF recruiting and financial base while the bombing and shelling reduced individual families' ability to support the Front's military forces. In 1966-1967, NLF cadres were forced by the resistance of the remaining village population to reduce their exactions on the peasants and even to eliminate conscription, which had been introduced in late 1964. Meanwhile, the political life of NLF villages was also disrupted by U.S. air and artillery attacks. Large political meetings, vital to the maintenance of a system of participatory politics, had to be discontinued; schools shut down and mass associations atrophied for lack of leadership. 96 The Tet Offensive was another major blow to the NLF/party organization. Not only in the cities but in the areas surrounding them and in highly populated areas of the Delta party chapters and armed

on the

graphic,

and

the Destruction of Quang Ngai and Quang Tin (New York: Vintage Books, 1968). For another province study, see A. Terry Rambo, Jerry M. Tinker, and John

Account of

D. LeNoir, The Refugee Situation in Phu Yen Province (Mclean, Va.: Research, Inc., 1967), especially pp. 111-12.

Human

Science

92. Debrief of a USAID agriculturalist in Vietnam, 1967-1968, no. 24681, Asia Training Center, p. 58; Hunt, "Organizing for Revolution in Vietnam," pp. 37-43. 93. Hunt, "Organizing for Revolution in Vietnam," pp. 42-44. 94. Debrief of a USAID agriculturalist, p. 58. 95. Hunt, "Organizing for Revolution in Vietnam," pp. 42-54. 96. Ibid., pp. 70-107; David W. P. Elliott and W. A. Stewart, Pacification and the Viet Cong System in Dinh Tuong: 1966-67, RAND Corporation Memorandum RM-5788 ISA/APRA, January 1969, pp. 72-75.

The Making of an units suffered extremely heavy losses. in strategic

a

97

Authoritarian Regime

The NLF/party

Long An Province south of Saigon was

main force regiment long accustomed

mountains had

to

organization

so shattered that

major

battles in the

political

organizing in

to

be brought in to help with

25

1969. 98

In 1968-1969 moreover, U.S. bombing of NLF areas became even 99 From late 1968 to 1972 the intense in the Mekong delta. ARVN gained physical control over the vast majority of former NLF

more

villages

because the

fensive to block

PLAF main

U.S.-RVN

force units did not maintain the of-

pacification efforts.

100

During the 1968-

1971 period tens of thousands of political cadres were lost either in combat or through arrest or assassinations under the U.S. -sponsored Phoenix program to destroy the nonmilitary organization of the insurgency. 101

The NLF zone shrank

retreat to fortified enclaves nearby,

and cadres had to from which they could maintain

dramatically,

102 contacts with the population only with great difficulty.

At the same time, the NLF/VWP apparatus was rapidly becoming dependent on troops from the North. The shrinking NLF population base and heavy combat losses inflicted by U.S. troops and planes followed by the

ARVN

occupation of the rural villages resulted in a

precipitous decline in Southern troops in the

PLAF and

their re-

97. In the case of Can Tho city, a party official later admitted that "many party chapters were killed or imprisoned down to the last comrade" and that in many military units "nearly everyone was killed" (Nguyen Ha Phan, "Youth of Can Tho City," Thanh Nien [Hanoi], December 1977, Joint Publications Research Service [JPRS], Translations on Vietnam, no. 2019, March 24, 1978, pp. 18-23). 98. Tran Van Tra, Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre, vol. 5, JPRSSEA-82-783, Southeast Asia Report, February 2, 1983, p. 39. 99. See "Pacification's Deadly Price," Newsweek, June 19, 1972. 100. By the end of 1971, the U.S. "Hamlet Evaluation System" showed RVN control over all but 3 percent of the population. See Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 192. On Hanoi's strategic decision in August-September 1968 to shift to the strategic defensive while building up its forces for a later offensive, see Gareth Porter, A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam and the Paris Agreement (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-

1975), pp. 92-94. Le Due Tho later referred to "hundreds of thousands" (hang chuc van) of cadres and party members killed or arrested in the South during the war, but this was obviously not a literal statement of the losses (Le Due Tho, Bao Cao Tong Ket Xay Dung Dang va Sua Doi Dieu Le Dang [Report on party building and amending the party statute] [Hanoi: Su That, 1977], p. 47). For official U.S. statistics, see Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 281. For critical accounts of the program, see John Prados, "The Flight of the Phoenix," The Veteran (Washington, D.C.), August 1988, pp. 13-16; James William Gibson, The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), pp. 298-303. 102. David W. P. Elliott, NLF-DRV Strategy and the 1972 Spring Offensive, Cornell University International Relations of East Asia Project, Interim Report no. 4, January sity Press,

101.

1974, p. 15.

26

Vietnam

placement by Northern troops. By the end of 1969, Northern troops all main force Communist troops and no more predominantly Southern units existed. 104

already constituted 70 percent of in the South,

103

By the end of the war, despite the Communist spring offensive of 1972 that recaptured militarily many of the villages that had been lost from 1968 through 1971, the party's ability to recreate the elaborate village-based revolutionary political system of the early 1960s had been irreparably damaged. Nearly all rural zones in the Mekong 105 The weakened party apparatus in delta were without party bases. the South had been isolated from the population in much of the countryside during the latter half of the war, and cadres were too 106 distrustful of the youth in the villages to recruit them as members. Ironically, the period of most rapid decline of the NLF/VWP structure and Southern military forces began just as the NLF was claiming the status of a second government. During 1968 the party carried out a nationwide campaign to elect "people's revolutionary committees" that claimed governing authority in hundreds of NLF 107 villages. That campaign was linked with the formation after the 1968 Tet Offensive of a new pro-NLF Alliance of National, Democratic, and Peace Forces by non-Communist intellectuals and politi108 cal figures. The Alliance and the NLF then formed the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) of South Vietnam in May 1969. The Alliance adopted its own manifesto in mid- 1968, affirming that South Vietnam would be "an independent and fully sovereign Committee on Foreign Relations, Vietnam: December 1969, A Staff 2d sess., February 2, 1979, p. 11. 104. Truong Nhu Tang, then minister of justice of the PRG, recalls asking General Van Tien Dung at a review of revolutionary troops in Saigon immediately after the 1975 victory, "Where are our [NLF] divisions one, three, five, seven and nine?" (Truong Nhu Tang, Viet Cong Memoir, pp. 264-65). In fact, however, the Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth divisions, originally filled exclusively with Southern NLF troops, had been filled with Northern replacement troops since their heavy losses in 1967 and 1968 whereas the First and Third divisions had been Vietnam People's Army divisions formed in the North after the anti-French war. See John Prados, "Year of the Rat: Vietnam 1972," Strategy and Tactics, no. 35, November-December 1972, p. 9. 105. Le Due Tho, speech to a cadre conference, November 26-27, 1981, Xay Dung Dang trong Cach Mang Xa Hoi Chu Nghia o Viet Nam [Party building in the socialist revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Su That, 1985), p. 294. 106. William Turley, "Political Participation in the Vietnamese Communist Party," in Vietnamese Communism in Comparative Perspective, pp. 189-90. 107. See Nguyen Hoai, "Tu Mat Tran Dan Toe Giai Phong den Chinh Phu Cach Mang Lam Thoi Cong Hoa Mien Nam" [From National Liberation Front to Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam], Nghien Cuu Lich Su, nos. 11-12, 103. U.S. Senate

Report, 91st Cong.,

1973, pp. 1-14. 108. On the background of the alliance, see pp. 130-44.

Truong Nhu Tang,

Viet

Cong Memoir,

The Making

of

an Authoritarian Regime

27

of nonalign merit" and that "national recannot be achieved overnight." log The VWP thus renewed its compromise with a section of the Southern elite for a bourgeois democratic regime in the South just as the conditions on which the original compromise had been based were being overstate with a foreign policy

unification

new

taken by

That

political-military realities.

alone did not automatically rule out a separate Southern regime, with a political and economic system different from that in fact

the North, for a transitional period.

the

DRV demand

the U.S. -backed

for a coalition

government

Had

the United States agreed to

government

of President

in

the South between

Nguyen Van

1

hieu, the

1972 and backed it with economic incentives for Hanoi to delay reunification, the chances for the survival of a distinct Southern regime would have been enhanced. 110 1 here is evidence that, even as Communist troops were preparing for the final collapse of the Saigon government, there was a major debate within the party leadership over whether Saigon should be governed by the Vietnam People's Army (VPAj or by nonCommunist Southerners known to be sympathetic to the NLF. " heinitial series of meetings of party leaders on the problem in May 1975 was inconclusive about a time limit on the transition to a reunified political structure, and at least some were speaking privately 112 in terms of years. There were strong arguments for a relatively long transitional period, quite apart from the Southern elite's sensitivity to Northern domination. The socioeconomic and cultural differences between North and South Vietnam had widened during the years of U.S. military occupation. Capitalist ideology had sunk relatively deep roots in the cities and towns of the South not only among wealthy merchants and French-trained intellectuals but within a new middle class based on the war economy. That class included those who

PRG, and the

neutralist "third force" in

1

1

worked

directly for the U.S.

government or contractors, those who

provided services of various kinds to Americans, and those who sold goods diverted from the U.S. military. As many as 1.5 million people 100.

'National Salvation Manifesto of the Vict

and Peace

Nam

Alliance of National,

Demo-

JuK 30 31, 1968, South Vietnam; From the NLF to the Provisional Revolutionary (jovernmrnt, Vietnamese Studies, no. 23, pp. 358 Vt 1)0. hi s is the argument made by then non-Communist k(» justice minister ruong Nhu Tang, Viet Cong Memoir, pp. 213—18. 111. Persona] communication from Ngo Vmh Long, who interviewed part) official* involved m the debate during his visit to Vietnam in 1087. cratic,

Forces,*'

J

'

I

l

i

I

112. ter

United Press International (UPI) dispatch, Washington

dispatch,

.\>?y

York limes,

Mav

\H.

I'll').

Post,

Ma)

31,

1975; Rou-

Vietnam

28

in the Saigon area alone experienced middle-class consumer tastes and upward social mobility for the first time as a result of the flood of money and goods from the United States." A new class of entrepreneurial small farmers had also emerged in the Mekong delta after the land reforms carried out by both the NLF and the RVN and the subsidization of fertilizer and other agricultural inputs by U.S. aid during the war. This sizable middle class embraced liberal ideas of political and economic freedom. It might be argued that South Vietnam was undergoing a capital3

ist

revolution against a traditional agrarian-bureaucratic elite even as Communist movement was carrying out its own "antifeudal and

the

anti-imperialist" revolution.

Moreover,

it

would take many years

to

reconstruct a party apparatus in the South capable of mobilizing

popular activism rather than simply forcing compliance with party policies. In the meantime, the party would have to rely on a state apparatus heavily reinforced by Northern bureaucrats and troops to carry out a socialist revolution there. But the physical domination of the South by Northern troops and Hanoi's adherence to the principle of skipping the capitalist stage of development tempted the VCP leadership to try to do just that. Party leaders feared that the bourgeoisie would become even more entrenched if the South were allowed to have a separate nonsocialist regime and thus jeopardize the prospects for socialist revolution there.

They

also believed the socialist revolution

needed

the economic wealth of the South to succeed in Vietnam's

war

to control first

post-

five-year plan (1976-1980). Explaining the reunification deci-

sion in November 1975, Truong Chinh minimized the differences between the two zones and said the country's economy had to be put under a single administration in order to carry out centralized plan-

ning. 114

The twenty-fourth Central Committee Plenum, meeting in July and August 1975, decided, without consultation with the PRG leadership, to eliminate the separate South Vietnamese regime. At a joint Political Consultative Conference in Saigon in November many of the NLF and PRG representatives were forced to swallow their bitterness about the decision and join in unanimously approving it. 115 113. One indication of the size of the new middle class is the estimate that there were three hundred thousand television sets in South Vietnam by 1970. See Dao Quang My, Dieu Tra ve Vo Tuyen Truyen Hinh tai Xa Hoi Viet Nam [Investigation on television in Vietnamese society] (Saigon: An loat Roneo Ly Huong, [1970?]), p. 2. 1

14.

William

Duiker, Vietnam since the Fall of Saigon, Ohio University monographs Southeast Asia Series, no. 56 (1985), rev. ed., pp. 15-20. Nhu Tang, Viet Cong Memoir, p. 285.

J.

in International Studies,

115.

Truong

The Making of an

Authoritarian Regime

29

The new

next step was the organization of an election in April 1976 for a National Assembly for the whole country, which convened in June to approve the formation of a government for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

and the NLF was left in limbo February 1977 with the Vietnam Fatherland Front Several party members who were officials of the NLF or

The PRG was until

it

merged

(VFF). 116

quickly dissolved,

in

PRG, including PRG Chairman Huynh Tan Phat, became highofficials in the SRV, and one non-Communist PRG official, composer Luu Huu Phuoc, went on to become the chairman of the Culture and Education Committee of the National Assembly. But only two of the non-Communists in those organizations, NLF Chairman Nguyen Huu Tho and PRG Justice Minister Truong Nhu Tang ranking

(who soon escaped to France), were offered positions in the government. 117 Tho was named to the purely ceremonial position of acting 118 president, where he was kept powerless and isolated. As VCP officials sought to speed Vietnam's integration into the global economic division of labor in the late 1980s, at least some recognized that not permitting a separate non-Communist South Vietnamese regime that could cooperate with the North was a major historical error. The non-Communist figures in the NLF and PRG had stressed the importance of national reconciliation and opposed the decision by the party to trick the entire civilian

RVN

bureaucracy

and the non-Communist intelligentsia into going to "reeducation" camps far from their homes and then keep them there for years a policy that engendered bitterness throughout the South. 119 A separate Southern regime would have avoided the policies of forced collectivization of agriculture and elimination of the and

officer corps

—

Chinese-dominated trading system by confiscating the assets of merchants and sending the merchants to the countryside. It would have 1 16. See the brief history of the Vietnam National United Front in Vietnam News Agency, November 17, 1986. 1 17. Cf. list of officials of the PRG in Robert F. Turner, Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1975), p. 259, and National Foreign Intelligence Center, Central Intelligence Agency, Directory of Officials of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, CR 80-15659, December 1980; Truong Nhu Tang, Viet Cong Memoir, pp. 286-87. 1 18. Some years later Tho told a visitor who had brought him some French magazines how precious it was to be able to read the French press. His daughter had bought him airmail subscriptions to all major French magazines and newspapers, but the cadres at the door would not let them go through. "You see I am the acting president of the SRV," he lamented, "but the censors will not allow me to read what I want" (interview with a Western diplomatic source in Hanoi, August 1982). 1 19. See Truong Nhu Tang, Viet Cong Memoir, pp. 271-82.

30

Vietnam

established business links with the overseas Chinese communities in

East Asia

and maintained

a freer press that might have

prodded the

party leadership to begin the process of economic and political re-

form much sooner than it did. In short, Vietnam would have been in a far stronger position to carry out the economic development strategy that it finally adopted in the late 1980s had it not insisted on a forced reunification in 1975-1976. But the strength of the VCP's ideological commitments as well as the legacy of a decade of deep and steadily growing Northern military involvement in the South ruled out such a solution. The North's costly military victory thus added yet another layer to the melange of historical and cultural factors that made the SRV Vietnam's first unified, independent government in more than a century and a half a highly authoritarian and bureaucratic socialist regime.

—

—

The Socioeconomic

Setting

Vietnam occupies 127,000 square miles

(ail

area slighrh

larger

New

Mexico) in the southeastern tip of the continental Asian land mass bordered by China on the north, the South China Sea on the east, and the Truong Son, or Annamite, mountain chain on the west. Vietnam's coastal plain, extending more than one thousand miles from the Cao Bang pass in the north to the tip of the Ca Mail peninsula in the South, swells to three hundred miles at its widest points, the Red River delta in the north and the Mekong Rivei delta in the south. But it narrows to a long, thin, curving strip that is onl) fortv to fifty miles wide for hundreds of miles and onl) about than

twenty-five miles at

Vietnam

is

its

narrowest

the world's twelfth largest, country

in

population, with

an estimated 64.4 million people as of spring 1080. It also has one of the world's highest mean population densities. It is estimated that the country had only .51 hectare of cropland per capita b) 1000 and will have about .44 hectare per capita b> the year 2000. Moreover, the population is very uneven!) distributed geographically: the Red River delta, which accounts for only 5 percent of the total cultivated land of the country, is inhabited bj 20 percent of it- total popula2 tion. By the beginning of the 1080s. the density of population in that region averaged 40.^ persons per square kilometer It reached more than one thousand persons per square kilometer in hai Binh heprovince roughlv the same density as in Hanoi municipality. 1

—

Mekong

1

Riser delta averaged

\66

persons

pei

iquare kilometei

while central coastal provinces averaged H) persons pei iquare kilometer. Meanwhile, the mountainous provinces of no md eenI

1.

\'u

Qu

ference on Ecology in Vu i \ ietnam Hem tg

-

Ecological Situation m Pahz, N.l

itional

I

M

Con-

Vietnam

32

tral

Vietnam were underpopulated, with averages of 55 and 41 per3

sons per square kilometer, respectively. Even during the war, Vietnamese authorities tried to redistribute the labor force to reduce the pressure of population on agricultural 1986, some three million people were refrom densely populated areas to sparsely populated areas in the north and center, and the government plans to resettle ten million more laborers and increase the total cultivated land from 7.6 land.

From 1976 through

located

4 million hectares to ten million hectares by the year 2000.

Nevertheless, Vietnam must reduce its population growth rate. agricultural land can no longer keep pace

The opening up of new

with population growth. Land under rice cultivation has increased by only 16 percent, from 4.8 million hectares to 5.6 million hectares, since 1960 while population has nearly doubled, growing by an aver5 age of 3.4 percent annually during the 1955—1975 period. The cost 6 of opening up more rice land is too high to be practical. The government launched a family-planning program as early as 1962, and in 1977 it set as its target the achievement of an annual population growth rate of just over 2 percent by 1980, 1.5 percent by 1990, and 1.1 percent by 2000. From 1984 to 1987, however, progress toward that goal stalled at around 2.2 percent annual growth. Although the urban population has already achieved these rates, growth rates in rural areas continue to be much higher, and in a number of provinces the rates have actually been increasing. 7

3. Judith Bannister, The Population of Vietnam, U.S. Department of Commerce, International Population Reports, series P-95, no. 77, October 1985, table 2, p.

6. 4. Van Lung, "Rational Labor and Population Distribution: A Way to Increase Export Goods," Nhan Dan, JPRS-SEA-87-061, April 28, 1987, p. 88; "Scientific Conference on the Initial Stage," Tap Chi Cong San, February 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-097,

June

10, 1986, p. 79.

Cropland under rice cultivation in North and South Vietnam in 1960 is from Shui Meng, The Population of Indochina, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Field Report series no. 7 (Singapore, July 1974), p. 67; cropland under rice cultivation in 1986 is from Kim Anh Toan, "Achievements on Agricultural Front in 1981-1985," Tap Chi Ke Hoach Hoa, September 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-019, February 6, 1987, p. 108. Population growth rate estimate is from Anh Phu, "Some Facts and Figures about Labor Distribution in Our Country," Tap Chi Ke Hoach Hoa, February 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-115, July 9, 1986, p. 85. 6. Tetsaburo Kimura, "Vietnam Ten Years of Economic Struggle," Asian Survey 26 (October 1986), 1,046. 7. Stewart E. Fraser, "Vietnam's Population Growth: Old Struggle, New Strategy," Indochina Issues, no. 78, January 1988, table, pp. 3-7. For revised government policies, see "Council of Ministers Decision 162 Concerning a Number of Population and Fam5.

Ng

—

The Socioeconomic Vietnam became

far

Setting

33

more urbanized during the Vietnam War, primovement of population from

marily because of the forced wartime

Urban population as a proportion of the total populafrom 11 percent in 1955 to 21.5 percent in 1975. After the war, however, the sharp reduction of South Vietnam's urban population from 30 percent to 25.6 percent more than offset increasing urbanization in the North. By 1985 the urban population nationwide was only about 19.2 percent of the national population. 8 At the end of the war, an estimated 67 percent of the labor force was involved in agriculture; by 1984 that figure had increased to 71 percent. Ethnic Vietnamese, who use the term kink to differentiate themselves from ethnic minorities living in the country, constitute about 87 perthe countryside. tion increased

cent of the population.

The

largest ethnic minority

is

the ethnic Chi-

Hoa, the official designation used by the Vietnamese state since 1955. As of 1977, there were 1.7 million Hoa in Vietnam, of whom about 1.4 million lived in the south, primarily in Ho Chi Minh 9 City. In the North, the Hoa were concentrated mainly in Quang Ninh Province bordering China, where they were mainly fishermen, foresters, and artisans, and in major cities, where many of them were nese, or

skilled

workers.

The Hoa community

there retained close

ties

with the

China (PRC) despite an official transfer of respon10 sibility for them from the PRC to the DRV in 1957. Although the majority of the Hoa in the South were workers, tens of thousands were businesspeople who controlled the rice trade from purchase of paddy to milling as well as an estimated four-fifths of the wholesale and retail trade, most of the import-export firms, manufacturing, and banking by the 1950s. Some seven hundred thousand Hoa left Vietnam between 1978 and 1982 because they were dissatisfied with their treatment by the new government and the rising conflict between Vietnam and the PRC. 12 In the People's Republic of

11

ily

Planning," Giao Vien

Nhan Dan, December

5,

1988, JPRS-SEA-89-007, February 8,

1989. 8. For nationwide data, see Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Statistics General Department, So Lieu Thong Ke 1930-1984 [Statistical data 1930-1984] (Hanoi: Statistics Publishing House, 1985), JPRS-SEA-86-108, June 25, 1986, p. 13. For South Vietnamese urban population data, see Bannister, Population of Vietnam, p. 7. 9.

Bannister, Population of Vietnam, p. 9.

See E. S. Ungar, "The Struggle over the Chinese Community in Vietnam, 1946-1986," Pacific Affairs 60 (Winter 1987-1988), 596-614. 1 1. Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States and the Modern Historical Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 88-89. 12. Gareth Porter, "Vietnam's Ethnic Chinese and the Sino- Vietnamese Con10.

Vietnam

34

mid-1980s, however, the SRV once again strove to reintegrate the Hoa into the socioeconomic and political system through new decrees that guaranteed them equal rights and promoted them to re13 sponsible positions in the party.

About sixty other minorities total more than six million people, but only seventeen of them comprise more than fifty thousand peo14 The largest ethnic minority populations as of 1980 were the ple.

Tay

Khmer (652,000), the Muong (620,000), the Thai Nung (486,000), and the Meo (351,000). Most of the

(775,000), the

(615,000), the

15

major ethnic groups live in mountainous areas bordering China, Laos, and Cambodia, which gives them a strategic importance in Vietnam's past and present conflicts out of proportion to their numbers. The Tay, Nung, Yao, and Meo, who reside in the mountainous provinces bordering China and Laos, were vital allies of the Viet Minh during the resistance to the French. 16 Several of the minorities straddle the border with China and have been the target of subversive efforts by the PRC. In the highlands of central Vietnam, long considered a strategic security zone by Vietnamese Communist leaders, remnants of Front Unifie pour la Lutte des Races Opprimes (FULRO), an alliance of four minorities, continued armed resistance in the 1980s.

17

The gap between

the ethnic minorities in the highland and border of the population has grown wider since 1954. Illiteracy among these minorities remains high (67 to 88 percent) and has continued to rise, and only 5 to 10 percent of school-age areas

flict,"

and the

Bulletin

of

rest

Concerned

Asian

Scholars

12

(October-December

1980),

55—

60. 13. Ungar, "Struggle over the Chinese Community," p. 614; Murray Hiebert, "Cheer in Cholon," Far Eastern Economic Review, August 4, 1988, pp. 20-21. 14. Trinh Quang Canh, "New Developments in Nationalities Policy," Dai Doan Ket, August 19, 1981, JPRS Southeast Asia 79255, October 20, 1981, p. 126.

Bannister, Population of Vietnam, p. 10. the role of ethnic minorities in the North during the resistance against the Japanese and French, see John T. McAlister, Jr., "Mountain Minorities and the Viet Minh: A Key to the Indochina War," in Peter Kunstadter, ed., Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 2:771-844; Mai Elliott, "Translator's Introduction," in Reminiscences on the Army for National Salvation: Memoir of General Chu Van Tan, trans. Mai Elliott, Cornell University Southeast Asia 15. 16.

On

Program Data Paper no. 97 (Ithaca, 1974), pp. 15-30. 17. FULRO was formed by leaders of the Bahnar, Jarai, Rhade, and Chru minorities in response to inequalities in access to schools, government jobs, and health care For a detailed discussion, see Gerald Hickey, The Highland People of South Vietnam: Social and Economic Development, Corporation, Memorandum RM5281/1-ARPA, September 1967, pp. 27-45; Norman C. LaBrie, "FULRO: The History of Political Tensions in the South Vietnamese Highlands" (M.A. thesis, University facilities.

RAND

of Massachusetts, 1971).

The Socioeconomic

Setting

35

18 children attend school. Since 1968 the Hanoi government has tried to shift minorities practicing slash and burn agriculture to sedentary

farming. Although the shift is supposed to facilitate making educaand other socioeconomic benefits available to the minorities, it

tional

also aimed at strengthening security in the northern border region and in the central highlands. 19 About 1.3 million minority farmers out of an estimated 2.4 milion have adopted settled agriculture at lower altitudes, but many have returned to their traditional ways of life because of economic diffi20 Meanwhile, because of large-scale migration of kinh popuculties. lation from cities to the central highlands, particular to build "new economic zones," by 1980, the ethnic minorities were for the first is

time less than half of the population of the central highlands, exacerbating conflicts over tribal land that had begun in the 1970s. 21 As one might expect from a society deeply imbued with Confucian cultural values,

Vietnam has a high

rate of literacy

and a

relatively

well-educated population for a low-income country. Between 1955

and 1975 the number of students enrolled in primary and secondary schools in the North and the South combined increased from just under 2 million to more than 11 million. 22 By the 1980s, 90 percent of the children aged six through ten in the North were enrolled in primary school whereas in the South around 70 percent of that age group were enrolled. The students who reach grade five represent 60 to 63 percent of the total in their age groups, with a much higher rate of dropouts in rural areas than in Hanoi and a higher rate in the South than in the North. 23 Access to secondary education (grades 8 through 11) is limited to 18. Hoang Truong Minh, "Focusing Efforts on Stabilizing the Living Conditions of the Ethnic Minorities in Highland Areas," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 3, March 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-002, July 30, 1987, p. 37. 19. Editorial, Quan Doi Nhan Dan, April 22, 1987.

Nhan Dan,

April

1988; Bannister, Population of Vietnam, p. 12. August 1, 1986, p. 20; Murray Hierbert, "Taking to the Hills," Far Eastern Economic Review, May 25, 1989, pp. 42-43. For official admission of land disputes between tribal minorities and kinh "new economic zones" in the highlands, see the article by Le Phuoc Tho, head of the party Central Committee Agricultural Department, Nhan Dan, September 23, 1988. An estimated 65 percent of the Montagnard hamlets in the central highlands were relocated by the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments during the war, and much of the land was then taken over by kinh who moved into the highland provinces. See Richard West, "Reconstruction in Vietnam," New Statesman, January 14, 1972, pp. 35-36. 20.

3,

21. Information-Documents (Hanoi), no. 107,

22. Statistical data, p. 162. 23. Suzanne Rubin, "Learning for Life?

Glimpses from a Vietnamese School," in White, eds. Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas of Socialist Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1988), p. 47. David G. Marr and Christine

P.

Vietnam

36

15-20 percent of

that age group.

24

But the rapid increase

in students

completing secondary education in the 1960s and 1970s has created new pressures on the educational system. Secondary school students usually hope to study at the university level, but Vietnam cannot yet support the higher education of that many students nor provide adequate employment for the increasing number of university graduates. Whereas in the early 1960s most of those in North Vietnam who were interested in university education could gain admission, only 5 to 10 percent of students who applied for admission for higher education in the early 1980s could be admitted. 25 Each year several hundred thousand discontented youth must be absorbed into the labor force.

Because of the impact of two Indochina wars and the decade-long China on the Vietnamese population structure, the Vietnamese labor force has come to be dominated by women. A marked imbalance between men and women in the Vietnamese population was evident after the anti-French resistance war; the 1960 census listed only 93.4 males per 100 females. During the war against the United States, the deficit of males in the population further increased dramatically. According to the 1979 census, there were twelve million males and fourteen million females between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four. The dearth of males in the work force was then exacerbated by the increase in the military forces from five hundred thousand to 1.2 million by 1980. As a result, the agricultural labor force was 65 to 70 percent female. Women also constituted 64 percent of the workers in light industry and more than 80 percent in handicrafts. Male workers are the majority only in heavy conflict with

industry and construction. 26 In the

women

as

1980s, 54 percent of secondary school graduates were

were 36 percent of

all

university students.

27

Yet women's

access to leadership positions at the village level has lagged far be-

hind their proportion of the labor force and their educational opportunities. During the war against the United States, when the agriEast Asia and Pacific Regional Office, World Bank (Washington, D.C.), The Republic of Viet Nam. An Introductory Economic Report, Report no. 1718-VN, August 12, 1977, p. 25. 25. Rubin, "Learning for Life?" p. 47. 26. Bannister, Population of Vietnam, pp. 25-27; William Parish, "Vietnamese Society," paper presented at the Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., May 3, 1988, p. 6, citing Vietnam Women's Association, "Vietnam and the United Nation's Decade for Women, 1976-1985," n.d. 24.

Socialist

27.

Parish, "Vietnamese Society," p. 6.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

37

North was 80 to 90 percent female, less than one village in ten had a female as president of the Administrative Committee; only one in three had a female vice-president, and less than one in four cooperatives had women as directors or deputy cultural labor force in the

directors.

28

With the end of the war and the return of men from duty, even the wartime gains were

lost;

the

military

number of women

in

leadership positions on village committees dropped precipitiously

from three thousand in 1974 to fourteen hundred in 1976 and then hundred in 1979. 29 Vietnamese war veterans were ap-

to only eight

parently threatened by the

women and

new assumption of

leadership roles by

acted to reassert their authority. 30

Religious Communities

Five religious faiths have organizations

and

significant followings

Vietnam: Buddhism, Caodaism, Catholicism, Hoahaoism, and Protestantism. According to the current government estimate, however, only 25 percent of the population identify themselves with any of these churches. 31 The reason is that most Vietnamese peasants have traditionally integrated Mahayana Buddhist teachings with Taoist beliefs and Confucian ancestor worship to form a religious in

tradition called "the three religions" (tarn giao).

Even

this officially

sanctioned syncretism, moreover, was further diluted by the practice of the indigenous cult of guardian spirits of the village. 32 In the North, the incidence of ancestor worship declined during first three decades of the DRV until it was unfamiliar except to

the

older people. 33

went

to the

The

Southern zone Buddhist pagoda on holidays during the war but were vast majority of villagers in the

28. Jayne Werner, "Women, Socialism, and the Economy of Wartime North Vietnam, 1969-1975," Studies in Comparative Communism 2-3 (Summer-Autumn 1981), 178, 180, 182; David W. P. Elliott, "North Vietnam since Ho," Problems of Communism

4 (July-August 1975), 51. 29. Elliott, "North Vietnam since Ho," p. 51; Women of Vietnam: Statistical Data (Hanoi: Vietnam Women's Union, 1981), p. 17. 30. See Sophie Quinn-Judge, "Vietnamese Women: Neglected Promises," Indochina Issues,

December 1983. Nguyen Quoc Pham, "Lesson:

no. 42,

Scientific Communism vs. Religions," Tap Chi Giao Due Ly Luan, February-March 1987, JPRS-SEA-87-1 14, October 2, 1987, p. 59. 32. See Raymond Grivaz, Aspects sociaux et economiques du sentiment en pays annamite (Paris: Editions Domat-Montchrestien, 1942), pp. 10-15. 33. Interview with members of the Hoang Quy Cooperative, Thanh Hoa Province, December 1974.

31.

38

Vietnam

more

likely

to describe their religion as "ancestor

worship" than

Buddhism. 34 The active core of the Buddhist church at its zenith comprised an estimated 10 percent of the population. 35 The influence of Buddhism in central and south Vietnam increased rapidly during the Diem regime and the early years of the Vietnam War as it became a rallying point for popular resentment against the Diem government and subsequent military regimes. Militant

Buddhist monks viewed Buddhism as the expression of Viet-

namese national culture and, ideology of the Vietnamese influential in

some

in

state.

36

cases,

Hue and Danang, where

against the military reached

hoped

to

make

it

the

Buddhist clergy were particularly the "struggle

movement"

high point in 1966 before being crushed by force. By the end of the war, however, Buddhism had declined as a sociopolitical force because of political repression and its

internal divisions.

When

the

SRV ended

military

exemptions for Buddhist monks,

number of monks decreased by as much as two-thirds to five to 37 However, Buddhism was far from dying in the ten thousand. South. The government-approved church organization established a university-level institute for teaching Buddhism in Hanoi in 1982, the

which graduated its first students in 1986, and four Buddhist High Schools in Hue, Nha Trang, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hanoi. Beginning in 1988 some land was to be returned to Buddhist monasteries to support the monks, who were discouraged from the ritual begging from door to door. 38 And Buddhists continued to celebrate their own religious festivals, attended by many young people. 39 In the 1980s the Catholic church had an estimated six million followers, of whom about one-third were in the North and two-thirds

34. James Walker Trullinger, Jr., Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam (New York: Longman, 1980), p. 8. 35. Bo Wirmark, The Buddhists in Vietnam: An Alternative View of the War, Uppsala University, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, report no. 9, March 1974, p. 11.

36. Buddist struggle movement leader Thich Tri Quang's political views are quoted extensively in Nguyen Tarn, "Ban Chat Tu Tuong cac cuoc Van Dong cua Phat Giao Viet Nam" [The ideological Character of Vietnamese Buddhist movements], Gio Nam (Saigon), March 22-27, 1971. See also Pierro Gheddo, The Cross and the Bo Tree (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1970), pp. 269-72. 37. Robert Shaplen, Bitter Victory (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 127; Christian Science Monitor, February 8, 1988. 38. Christian Science Monitor, February 8, 1988; interview with Thich Tu Hanh, secretary-general of the United Buddhist Church for South Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, August 1982. 39. AFP dispatch, November 16, 1981, FBIS, November 20, 1981, p. K8.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

39

40 Vietnamese Catholic congregations, usually formed of the poorest peasants in Tonkin beginning in conversions mass by formed their own ho duong (peasant Chriscentury, seventeenth the priest was the real power in matters parish which the in tendoms) Until 1939 Vietnamese Catholics were forcommunity. the affecting inhabited by "pagans" because they would villages live in bidden to honoring the dead. Despite ceremonies in village participate have to Viet Minh, the Catholic Catholics for the many the support of not to collaborate with their followers ordered bishops in Vietnam

in the South.

41

Minh against the French. After the Geneva Agreement temporarily divided

the Viet

there were serious frictions between Catholics and the

the country,

DRV

over the

refusal to allow large numbers of Catholics to under the agreement to move from the North to the South. Ten of the twelve Vietnamese bishops, seven hundred priests, and more than six hundred thousand Catholic faithful moved from the North to the South. The 350 priests who remained in North Vietnam included many who discouraged their parishoners from participating in the land reform program, paying agricultural

government's

initial

exercise their right

taxes, or joining agricultural cooperatives.

The

42

U.S. air war against the North, however, helped solidify the

loyalty of the Catholic

patriotism.

The

party

masses to the

made

DRV

regime by mobilizing their

significant progress integrating itself

one predominantly Catholic village, end of the 1970s one-third of the party membership was Catholic. By 1975 the priest's influence on social and 43 political affairs was radically diminished. Although most of the bishops in the north remained conservative in their attitudes toward communism, Catholicism ceased to be the sharply divisive force in northern society that it had been in the past. into Catholic communities. In

for example, by the

Tom

Fox, National Catholic Reporter, April 14, 1989, p. 18. Pierre Rondot, "Le Probleme Religieux du Vietnam, II: Le Catholicisme au Vietnam," Etudes, December 1950, pp. 332-33; Nguyen Van Trung, "Cong Giao va 40. 41.

Cong San o Viet-Nam" [Catholics and Communists no. 8, December 1968, pp. 45-46, 64-66.

in

Vietnam], Dat Nuoc (Saigon),

42. On Catholic opposition to the land reform and cooperativization policies, see David W. P. Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," pp. 211-15, and Francois Houtart and Genevieve Lemercinier, Hai Van: Life in a Vietnamese Commune (London: Zed Books, 1984), pp. 168-70. The most serious incident between Catholics and the DRV authorities occurred in Quynh Luu district, Nghe An Province, in November 1956, when Catholics seized control of one or two villages, arrested administrative personnel, disarmed Vietnam People's Army troops, and staged a mass march on the district town. There were a number of casualties on both sides before order was restored. See Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," p. 211. 43. Houtart and Lemercinier, Hai Van, pp. 162-92.

Vietnam

40

In the South, on the other hand, the Catholic church's socioeconomic and political power increased after 1954. Hundreds of thousands of Northern Catholic refugees were organized in a belt of villages surrounding Saigon to provide a political base and security for the minority Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. The church hierarchy ran a school to indoctrinate civil servants in the regime's and village priests acted as the de facto political leaders in

ideology,

44 contacts with the government.

Saigon's most valuable real estate

The church also owned much of and many banks and commercial

establishments and dominated the educational system, providing ed-

ucation to about one-half of the elementary and secondary school students in Saigon. 45

powers and privileges were stripped from the church Communist victory in 1975. The Catholic church hierarchy South reached an accommodation with the Communist re-

All these after the in the

gime that gave the state veto powers over its activities and appointments. Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City Nguyen Van Binh, a cautious and diplomatic figure, strove to avoid conflicts with the regime since 1975, abandoning the former Catholic strictures against the

Communist Party, for example. 46 In the 1980s the Cao Dai sect had an estimated two million followers in the Mekong delta region. Filling the spiritual vacuum left by the decline of both Confucianism and Buddhism in Cochinchina faithful joining the

French conquest, Caodaism built on the existing tarn giao and the worship of guardian spirits but patterned its organization after the hierarchy of the Catholic church. It was started by educated bourgeois and petit bourgeois spiritualists but recruited hundreds of thousands of landless laborers and tenants in provinces west and south of Saigon during the 1930s through

after the

religious tradition

schemes. 47 Caodaism splintered into twelve separate branches because of internal rivalries among its leaders, but the largest concentration of Cao Dai was in Tay Ninh Province, the site of the Cao Dai "Holy patron-client relations

44.

and

social welfare

Robert Scigliano, South Vietnam: Nation under

1964), pp. 53-55. 45. Nguyen Van

Stress

(Boston:

Houghton

Mifflin,

Trung, Catholics and Communists in Vietnam, p. 56; Nguyen "Lesson: Scientific Communism vs. Religions," p. 60. 46. Fox, National Catholic Reporter, April 13, 1989, p. 18. 47. See Jayne Werner, "The Cao Dai: The Politics of a Vietnamese Syncretic Religious Movement" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University), 1976, pp. 51-76; Frances R. Hill "Millenarian Machines in South Vietnam," Comparative Studies in History and Society 13 (July 1971), 334-35; A. M. Savani, Visage et images du Sud Viet-Nam (Saigon: Imprimerie Francaise d'Outre-Mer, 1955), p. 90.

Quoc Pham,

The Socioeconomic See."

Setting

41

During the Japanese occupation, the Cao Dai were armed and

trained by Japanese intelligence as an anti-French force, but early in the anti-French resistance war, the itarily

Cao Dai Army

with the French against the Viet Minh.

collaborated mil-

The Tay Ninh branch

of Caodaism remained strongly anti-Communist throughout the and the breakup of that branch by the SRV after 1975 reduced its following dramatically. One specialist estimates that the number of believers in the province dropped from nine hundred

conflict,

1975 to only three hundred thousand by 1985. 48 Tay Ninh Caodaists continued to resist the new regime after 1975 through a number of underground anti-Communist organizations in Tay Ninh. 49 The Hoa Hao Buddhist sect also had approximately two million adherents in the Mekong delta. Like the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao became a "political-military sect" during the Japanese occupation and became fierce foes of the Viet Minh and later of the National Liberation Front. The founder of the sect, Huynh Phu So, was hailed as an incarnation of a nineteenth-century Buddha from the "Seven Mountains" area near the Cambodian border. So encouraged simple worship of Buddha at home and preached against building more Buddhist temples and using relics of the Buddha, sorcerers and fortune50 tellers. The Hoa Hao are concentrated mainly in Dong Thap and An Giang provinces of the western delta, where the church formerly claimed at least 60 percent of the population as members. 51 The Protestant Evangelical Church of Vietnam (Hoi Thanh Tin Lanh Viet Nam) had approximately three hundred thousand members, of whom two hundred thousand were in South Vietnam. Although church officials and clergy in the North long since accommodated to the regime and supported its policies, those in the South remained aloof from or even openly opposed them. Evangelical Protestants have long been active among tribal minorities in the central highlands of South Vietnam. Much of its membership has been located in that region, and some of the activists in the FULRO re-

thousand

in

48. Nguyen Xuan Nghia, "Vai Nhan Xet ve Cac Phong Trao Ton Giao Cuu The o Dong Bang Song Cuu Long" [Some observations on messianic religious movements in the Mekong delta], Tap Chi Dan Toe Hoc, [Ethnic Studies] no. 2, 1985, p. 52. 49. Nguyen Quoc Pham, "Lessons: Scientific Communism vs. Religions," p. 63. 50. The most detailed study of the Hoa Hao is Hue Tarn Ho Tai, "The Evolution of Vietnamese Milenarianism, 1849-1947: From the Buu Son Ky Huong to the Hoa Hao Sect" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1977). For translations of some of Huynh Pho So's writings, see Robert L. Mole, A Brief Survey of the Phat Giao Hoa Hao (n.p.:

1969) 51. See the

map

inside the frontispiece of Mole, Brief Survey.

Vietnam

42

sistance

have been Protestants. The church also had a particularly among young urban professionals in the South. 52

large following

The Economy

endowed with energy and natural remain energy resource in the past has been its coal beds near the northeast coast, which hold proven reserves of 3.0 to Vietnam

is

relatively well

sources. Vietnam's

3.5 billion tons of high-quality anthracite.

now deeper underground and

requires

pensive imported equipment to mine. 53

offshore

oil

The

more

higher-quality coal sophisticated

The country

is

and ex-

also has large

reserves in the the southern continental shelf as well as

Red River and Mekong River

deltas. Vietnamese offiproduction goal of seven million tons of oil annually by 1995, but output in 1989 was still only 1.5 million tons. Natural gas reserves in the two river deltas have yet to be exploited commercially. 54 Vietnamese rivers have the potential to provide an estimated 80,000 million kilowatts of hydroelectric power, so Vietnam should have an electricity surplus during the 1990s. 55 Vietnam has one of the world's four largest bauxite reserves, large reserves of apatite (a phosphate used in making fertilizer), a relatively large quantity of chromite, and enough tin, copper, zinc, and graphite to support significant mining activities. The country's 3,260-kilometer coastline and 400,000 hectares of maritime zone waters contain vast quantities of seafood that have already become a major export. At the close of the colonial era Vietnam had about 14.3 million hectares of forests, but like other Southeast Asian nations, it is in danger of losing its tropical forest resources. Although Vietnamese jungles have not yet completely recovered from U.S. wartime defoliation, which affected 1.7 million hectares, more forests have been lost since the war ended than during it. Estimates of its remaining forest land vary from less than 7 million to more than 9 million fields in the

cials

hope

to reach the

Reg Reimer, "Evangelicals

in Vietnam: 'We Are Living by Faith,'" Indochina April 1987, pp. 8-9; Associated Press dispatch, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 31, 1982, p. 7F; interview with a member of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam now living in the United States, Washington, D.C., January 18, 1988. 53. AFP dispatch, February 18, 1988, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), East Asia Daily Report, February 26, 1988, p. 46. 54. Socialist Republic of Vietnam, State Planning Committee, Report on the Economy of Vietnam (Hanoi: United Nations Development Programme, 1990), pp. 138-40.

52.

Issues, no. 74,

55. Nguyen Tri, "Some Opinions on the Direction of Industrial Development in Our Country in Future Years," Nghien Cuu Kinh Te [Economic research], October

1985, JPRS-SEA-86-047,

March

17, 1986, p. 65.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

43

an estimated 225,000 hectares of forest cover disappearing each year from logging, the collection of firewood, and fora rate that will leave the country without any natural forest fires 56 ests soon after the year 2000 unless it is halted. One of Vietnam's major weaknesses is its transport and communication infrastructure. Vietnamese economists estimate that only about one-third of the goods moved in Vietnam are transported by modern, rapid means. The country has about ten thousand kilometers of paved roads, but even the national routes linking major cities have deteriorated seriously from decades of war and lack of maintenance. The country's only railroad is so antiquated that it takes 50 percent longer today to get from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City than it did in 1945. Vietnamese ports can only handle one-half the tonnage annually that Vietnam needs. The volume of cargo and the number of passengers carried by the railroad reached their peaks in 1977— 1978 and declined from that peak by 33 percent by 1985. 57 The transportation system is so poor that it cannot move sufficient rice hectares, with

—

from the Mekong delta to the rice deficit areas in central and North Vietnam in times of famine. In theory, the Vietnamese economy has five distinct sectors: the state sector; joint state-private enterprises (an economic unit formed with capital contributed by one or more household heads and the conduct joint production or business); the collective econand handicrafts cooperatives in which the means of production are at least partially owned by the collective); the household economy (individuals who produce goods under contracts state to

omy,

(agricultural

with state or collective enterprises); and the private and self-em-

ployed sector (private industries, individual agricultural producers,

and merchants). However, until the late 1980s, the private and family economies and even the "semisocialist" collectivized economy were viewed with suspicion, discriminated against in allocating access to supplies and credits. After the Sixth Party Congress, the household economy and the private sector in general were recognized as important contributors to the economy, but it was not until 1988 that the state issued degrees recognizing the long-term existence of private industry.

56. Patricia Norland, "Vietnam's Ecology: Averting Disaster," Indochina Issues, no.

66,

June 1986,

p. 2;

"The Re-Greening of Vietnam," Vietnam Today SRV, State Planning Committee, Report on the Econ-

Elizabeth Kemf,

(Canberra) 48 (February 1989),

7;

omy, p. 106. 57. "Ravages of War," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 27, 1989, pp. 72-74; Statistical data, pp. 125, 137.

Vietnam

44

When

DRV

assumed the administration of North Vietnamese began taking over private industrial enterprises and converting them into state-controlled or cooperative enterprises. By 1964 private capitalist industry was completely eliminated, and the state's contribution to total industrial production had increased from 12 percent in 1955 to 64 percent. This state-controlled industrial structure of the North remained essentially unchanged through the Vietnam War. 58 cities in

the

1954,

it

After reunification, the state integrated the South's private industry into the socialist structure by reorganizing 1,500 large and me-

dium-sized enterprises into 650 state and so-called state-private enterprises with 130,000 workers and turning another 1,000 smaller 59 industrial enterprises into cooperatives.

The

"state-private enter-

was a misnomer because the state invested little or no capital in them and by massively undervaluing the private assets provided 60 little income compensation to the factories' former owners. By 1984 the state presided over some three thousand industrial prise"

enterprises in the state/joint public-private sector with a total of

seven hundred thousand employees. 61 These state-controlled enterprises accounted for 70 to 75 percent of industrial production in the South, whereas the "collective" sector accounted for an additional 21 percent. 62 The state sector operated at 30 to 50 percent of capacity and, thus, was unable to provide employment for more than onehalf to two-thirds of the year. 63

The performance of

the state industrial sector was so poor that decided in 1986 to approve the establishment of small private industries with ten to thirty employees to stimulate the production of consumer and export goods. They were to have access to state loans with priority going to businesses producing articles that the state enterprises produced in insufficient quantities. Within one year some three thousand such small enterprises sprang up in Ho Chi Minh City alone, employing an estimated twenty-five thousand the

DRV

58. G. Nguyen Tien Hung, Economic Development of Socialist Vietnam, 1955—1980 (New York: Praeger, 1977), table 4.3, p. 63; Nguyen Xuan Lai, "Stages and Problems

of Industrialization," Vietnam Courier (Hanoi), September 1970, p. 3. 59. Doc Lap, February 1979, JPRS-73-172, April 8, 1979. 60. Nhan Dan, September 12, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, October 25, 1989, p. 57. 61. Statistical data, p. 56. 62. Nguyen Van Linh, Thanh

Pho Ho Chi Minh: 10 Nam [Ho Chi Minh City: 10 JPRS-SEA-87-104, August 26, 1987, p. 72. 63. Vo Nhan Tri, "Party Policies and Economic Performance: The Second and Third Five- Year Plans Examined," in Marr and White, Postwar Vietnam, p. 82. years], trans.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

45

workers. 64 In 1988 the legal and political restraints on private industry were removed, and by spring 1989 private enterprises were em-

North. 65 In agriculture, the state sector consists of state farms, which are larger-scale farms producing industrial and export crops with laploying as

many

as

one thousand workers, even

in the

state. From only 59 state farms in 457 with 362,000 personnel and 1.5 1966 the number 66 million hectares of cultivated land in 1989. State farms have been

borers receiving wages from the increased to

notoriously inefficient, with the vast majority annually losing for the state.

money

67

The collective sector includes fully socialist cooperatives in which land and other means of production are collectively owned and production cooperatives in which land and tools are still privately owned is collective. At first, Vietnamese agricultural cooperatives were limited to the hamlet, or subvillage, level, with an average of only 60 families. During the war, however, hamlet-level cooperatives were combined to form cooperatives at the village or even commune level. The number of cooperatives was reduced from 41,401 at the end of 1960 to 22,360 by 1969, and the average number of households per cooperative increased to 136 by 1968. 68 By the mid-1970s the recommended size for cooperatives was 150 to 200 households organized into work units, or brigades, of 50 to 70 families, which cultivated 15 to 20 hectares of land. 69 The organization of production in agricultural cooperatives in the North changed in 1980-1982 when production contracts between the cooperative and individual cooperative households became generalized. These contracts allowed the household to take responsibility for the later stages of cultivation and harvest on an assigned piece of land rather than assigning all labor tasks to labor brigades. The household could keep all of the crop above taxes and the amounts contracted to be sold to the state. 70 But contracts were still

but labor

Washington Post, July 15, 1987. April 20, 1989. 66. VNA, August 20, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, August 21, 1989, pp. 6564. 65.

Nhan Dan,

66. 67. Editorial, 68.

Nhan Dan, June

Quang Truong, "The

22, 1989.

Collectivization of Agriculture in

Vietnam" (Master's

of Social Studies, The Hague, 1976), p. 74. 69. Christine Pelzer White, The Role of Collective Agriculture in Rural Development, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, research report, December

thesis, Institute

1984, p. 117. 70. An excellent discussion of the product contract system

is

in Christine

White,

46

Vietnam

number of laborers per family and for fragmented Although contract quotas were supposed to remain set for a period of five years, they were raised in practice before the end of the contract. So the contract ultimately failed to provide posiallocated by the

parcels of land.

tive incentives for

increased production. 71

In 1988 the household economy was given the major role in agriculture for the first time as land cultivation rights were allocated to households for periods of up to nineteen years, and contracts with the state, as distinct

The

from

taxes,

were

finally

agricultural cooperative ceased being a

traction" for the state

made

truly voluntary.

method of "surplus

and instead became a provider of

ex-

services,

such as irrigation, to the households. In the South, the peasantry strongly resisted the collectivization of agriculture. As late as February 1985, almost ten years after reunification, the party's theoretical organ admitted that only 25 percent of peasant households in the South had joined some form of 72 By mid-1987, 92 percent of the agricultural collective organization. population was reported to have joined agricultural cooperatives as a result of SRV tax policies. The vast majority of the cooperatives existed in name only, however, as individual households carried out 73 their own production plans. Despite the dominance of cooperatives nationwide, household production accounted for 48 percent of the value of the country's agricultural output even before the 1988 reform, including 95 percent of its livestock production. 74 Within the cooperatives, the "family economy" the production of vegetables, fruit, pigs, and poultry on private family plots that constituted 5 percent of the cooperative's land was the main source of family income. It provided an estimated 68 percent of the personal income of collective peasants in 1983 compared with 52 percent in 1976. 75

—

—

"Reforming Relations of Production: Family and Cooperative

in

Vietnamese Agri-

cultural Policy" (unpublished paper, n.d.). 71.

SRV,

72.

Ngo Vinh Long, "Some

State Planning

Marr and White, Postwar

Committee, Report on the Economy, p. 87. Aspects of Cooperativization in the Mekong Delta,"

in

Vietnam, p. 165.

In 1987 various provinces admitted that only a minority of the nominal cooperwere actually socialist in operation, with the percentage ranging from 25 to 40 percent. Hanoi Domnestic Service, July 2, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, July 15, 1987, pp. N5-6. 74. SRV, State Planning Committee, Report on the Economy of Vietnam, p. 88. 75. Le Ngoc, "Agriculture, the Main Front: Perceptions and Reality," Thong Ke, December 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-060, April 27, 1987, p. 51. In the North, before 1965, it was estimated that 61 percent of peasant income came from the family economy 73.

atives

The Socioeconomic

The

state has

ment of

dominated trade

in the

a socialist system there, but

it

Setting

North since the

47

establish-

has never established control

over most trade in the South, where the volume of commerce has always been much larger. In the North, the state controlled 94 per76 In the cent of wholesale and 90 percent of retail trade by I960. South, however, the private sector's dominance of commerce has not receded since 1975 despite all the government's efforts. During the 1978 campaign for the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce in the South, the state nationalized 412 large commercial establishments in Ho Chi Minh City, transformed 70,000 private traders into other occupations and brought another 8,000 small merchants into the state commercial network. 77 But large merchants had already anticipated the move in advance and had dispersed most of their goods among relatives and smaller 78 traders. These merchants managed to organize an effective underground trade network, which continued to determine prices in the market. 79 The state commerce, supply, and procurement sector had 414,000 workers by 1984, but it controlled only 30 to 40 percent of the consumer goods produced by the state and cooperative smallindustry and handicraft sector; the rest seeped into the black market.

80

Development Strategy and Performance

The DRV began its economic development planning as one-half of a technologically backward agricultural country. Before the partition of the country in 1954, North Vietnam had represented the food deficit region of the country with 10 to 20 percent of the population suffering regular food shortages. It depended on an annual shipment of 200,000 to 250,000 tons of rice from the rice-surplus economy. Andrew Vickerman, The Fate of the Socialism" in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Yale University Southeast Asian Studies Monograph Series, no. 28, 1986, p. 188. 76. Vickerman, Fate of the Peasantry, p. 120.

and only 39 percent from the

collective

Peasantry: Premature "Transition

to

77. Nguyen Van Linh, Ho Chi Minh City, p. 72; Le Can, "Our Situation and Tasks," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 8, August 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-208, December 1, 1986, p. 19; Doc Lap, February 1979. 78. Ngo Vinh Long, "Some Aspects of Cooperativization," p. 169. 79. Nguyen Kien Phuoc, "Initial Experience in the New Mode of Business at the BinhTay Market," Nhan Dan, March 13, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-142, August 15, 1986, p.

89. 80. Statistical data, p. 20;

1987 socioeconomic development plan, presented by

Chairman of the State Planning Commission Vo Van Kiet, Hanoi Domestic Service, December 26, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, December 30, 1986, p. K9.

Vietnam

48

Mekong delta region to feed its population. Industry represented only 1.5 percent of total production, and there were only seven modern

industrial enterprises.

81

During the first five-year development plan (1961-1965), the development strategy followed the Soviet model: the priority in investment went to heavy industry while light industry and agriculture were given less emphasis. Industry was scheduled to received 49 percent of the investment for the plan, whereas agriculture was to receive only 22 percent. The heavy industrial sectors called "Group A" (electricity, mining, engineering, metallurgy, and chemicals) received 80 percent of the investment in industry, whereas "Group B" (consumer goods industries) got only 20 percent. 82 The other major feature of the Vietnamese development strategy was the decision to collectivize agriculture before reaching a level of industrialization necessary for mechanization of agriculture. Underlying this strategy was the assumption that cooperatives would create a more efficient division of labor and increase the scale of production even without mechanization and other major technological advances. But collectivization and the substitution of administrative means for economic incentives were also aimed at extracting the maximum surplus from the peasantry, which could then be used to support heavy industry. Heavy industry, also financed in part by aid from the Socialist countries, was expected to provide the technology chemical fertilizer, the mechanized equipment, and water pumps needed to achieve much higher agricultural production. 83 This development strategy did achieve relatively rapid increases in industrial production an average of about 18 percent annually between 1960 and 1964. 84 With this industrial development came a doubling of the number of state employees to nearly one million people, creating a major increase in demand for rice. 85 But the fiveyear plan left agriculture in worse straits than when it began. In fact, total annual rice production never rose above 4.6 million tons, only slightly higher than the total for 1958, during the entire period. After reaching its peak of 335 kilograms in 1959, per capita rice production averaged only 254 kilgrams over the period of the plan,

—

—

—

Vickerman, Fate of the Peasantry, p. 33. Nguyen Tien Hung, Economic Development of Socialist Vietnam, p. 87. 83. For a detailed description, see Vickerman, Fate of the Peasantry, pp. 159-204. For a critique of the approach, see Adam Fforde and Suzanne H. Paine, The Limits of National Liberation (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 38-41. 84. Nguyen Tien Hung, Economic Development of Socialist Vietnam, p. 140. 85. Fforde and Paine, Limits of National Liberation, p. 59. 81.

82. G.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

49

which was only partially offset by an increase in subsidiary crops, such as maize, manioc, sweet potatoes, and beans. 86 The failure of agricultural production to increase between 1960 and 1965 reflected the absence of significant technological improvement as well as the lack of incentives for the peasant to put intensive labor into the collective economy. The family economy was clearly more profitable for the peasant family than the cooperative because there was little relationship between hard work and income in the collective economy owing to both egalitarian distribution policies in 87 the cooperative and artificially low state procurement prices. During the war against the United States hopes for industrialization had to be shelved as the DRV abandoned some industries and dispersed the rest throughout the countryside. Because of U.S. bombing, labor shortages, and a shift in financial resources from production to support of the war effort, the value of industrial and handicrafts production plummeted from 2.7 billion dong in 1965 to 88 1.3 billion dong in 1968. Agricultural production also continued to stagnate. Average annual rice production for the 1965-1971 period was slightly less than the average for the 1961-1964 period. 89 Only 0.5 million tons of rice supplied to Vietnam by the People's Republic of China annually helped ward off starvation between 1968 and 1972. 90

With the restoration of peace and the reunification of the country, SRV embarked on its second and third five-year plans covering the 1976-1980 and 1981-1985 periods. The basic development strategy of the party remained unchanged. During the two plans industry received the largest share of state investment, and that share grew over time. During the second plan, 35 percent of investment was allocated to industry, with more than two-thirds of that the

86. Vickerman, Fate of the Peasantry, table 4, p. 279; Nguyen Tien Hung, Economic Development of Socialist Vietnam, table 7.5, p. 127. Hung suggests that official DRV statistics on agriculture during the 1960s should be discounted by as much as 30 percent based on internal consistency, crop yields, and the available food supply (p. 128). These figures are only useful, therefore, as indications of the overall trend in production. 87. On the state's refusal to rely on material incentives in agricultural cooperatives, see Christine White, "Agricultural Planning, Pricing Policy and Co-operatives in Vietnam," World Development 13, no. 1 (1985), 102. 88. Nguyen Tien Hung, Economic Development of Socialist Vietnam, table 6.1, p. 98.

89.

Ibid., p. 128.

90. For per capita grain output, see

Vickerman, Fate of the Peasantry, table 4, p. 279. Chinese food aid during the war, see Nayan Chanda, "Vietnam's Economy: Its Domestic and International Dimensions" (unpublished paper, 1983), p. 2.

On

50

Vietnam

going to heavy industry and one-third to light industry; 30 percent was 91 For the period of the third plan, agriculture reto go to agriculture. ceived only slightly more than 20 percent of the investment while in-

The capital goods sector, moreover, was again allocated 80 percent of industrial investment. 92 From 1975 to 1980, national income grew at an average annual 93 rate of only 0.4 percent. The average annual increase in industrial output during the period has been estimated at between 0.2 and 0.6 percent, and output in state-controlled industries actually decreased dustry was receiving well over 50 percent.

by 6.5 percent during the same period. 94 Inefficient management, low labor productivity, and shortages of raw materials and spare parts because of sharp cutbacks from wartime levels of foreign assistance to Vietnam all contributed to lower growth than anticipated. 95 Probably the main factor in the precipitous decline in industrial production, however, was the huge diversion of investment resources into a major military buildup in 1978, which suddenly increased Vietnamese armed forces from 770,000 to 1.5 million. 96 The diversion was so large that the second five-year plan had become mean97 ingless by 1979 and was quietly scrapped. The second five-year plan also aimed to increase the size of agricultural cooperatives and their specialization in the most advantageous crops. 98 Paddy production grew at an average rate of only 2.4 percent annnually from 1976 to 1980 while total grain production during the plan increased at an annual average rate of 4. 1 percent. But this growth was entirely the result of putting fallow land 91. See William S. Turley, "Vietnam since Reunification," Problems of Communism 26 (March-April 1977), 46. 92. Vo Nhan Tri, "Vietnam: The Third Five-Year Plan 1981-85: Performance and

October-December 1985, pp. 7, 10; Kim Agricultural Front in 1981-1985," Tap Chi Ke Hoach

Limits," Indochina Report (Singapore), no. 4,

Anh Toan, "Achievements on

Hoa, September 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-019, p. 110. 93. Nguyen Dinh, "Concerning Inflation in Our Country," Tap Chi Cong San, October 1977, JPRS-ATC-88-002, February 9, 1988, p. 36. 94. Le Can, "Our Situation and Tasks," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 8, August 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-208, December 1, 1986, p. 18; Vo Nhan Tri, "Party Policies and Economic Performance," in Marrand White, Postwar Vietnam, pp. 81-82. 95. Le Can, "Our Situation and Tasks," p. 18. 96. According to an official Chinese" source, Vietnamese military expenditures increased from 40.4 percent of the budget in 1978 to 47 percent in 1979. Tetsaburo Kimura, "Vietnam Ten Years of Economic Struggle," Asian Survey 26 (October

—

1986), 1,051. 97.

David Marr, "Vietnam's Economic Situation," Vietnam Today, no. 39 (November

1986), pp. 3-5. 98. For a description of this strategy, see Le Duan and Pham Van Dong, Towards a Large-Scale Socialist Agricultural Production (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing

House, 1975).

The Socioeconomic

Setting

51

cultivation once again as cultivated area increased by 20 percent during the plan period. Meanwhile, yield per hectare actually fell by an average of .25 percent annually." During the plan period Vietnam had to import 5.6 million tons of food from the

under grain

Soviet Union.

100

The poor performance of Vietnamese

agriculture was, in part, the

result of a reduction in agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer

and

of U.S. aid to South Vietnam after the war for which Soviet aid did not compensate. 101 It also reflected the further reduction of consumer goods that could be traded to farmers for their grain surplus, the result of the termination of Chi102 Another factor affecting grain nese commodity assistance in 1976. output was the low level of state investment in agriculture, which was reduced even further because of the military buildup that began in 1978. Finally, collectivization and the obligatory sale of grain to the state at prices 15 to 20 percent below free market prices were disin103 centives for increased grain production. During the third five-year plan period (1981 — 1985), the annual pesticides,

because of the

loss

increase in industrial output averaged 9.5 percent, but the efficiency

and

quality of

consumer goods production

sector continued

to

decline.

104

in the state-controlled

Agricultural production improved

markedly during the third plan. Total grain output, according to increased by an average of 4 percent annually dur-

official figures,

ing the

first

four years of the third five-year plan (1981-1985), while 105 at 6 percent annually.

paddy production increased

99. Statistical data, pp. 81, 83, 84. Le Can, "Our Situation and Tasks," p. 17. 101. According to Le Due Tho, the amount of fertilizer available by the early 1980s

100.

was only half that received as gratuitous aid during the war. See Le Due Tho, "On the Question of Developing New Factors and Perfecting the New Management System in Agricultural Cooperatives," Hanoi Radio, September 4, 1982, FBIS, September 21, 1982, p. K6. 102. Much of China's assistance before 1977 had consisted of such as hot water flasks, electric fans, bicycles,

used as incentives for peasants to

canned milk, and

consumer items

which had been See Ngo Vinh Long,

fabrics,

sell surplus grain to the state. Cooperativization," p. 169. 103. White, "Agricultural Planning," p. 110. A 1973 survey revealed that as many as 25 to 30 percent of the cooperatives were losing money each year because they had to sell their paddy to the state at prices that were below their production costs. Chris-

"Some Aspects of

"Recent Debates in Vietnamese Development Policy," in Gordon White, Robin Murray, and Christine White, eds., Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983), p. 257. 104. Le Can, "Our Situation and Tasks," p. 17; Statistical data, p. 42. 105. Statistical data, p. 84. One specialist argues that these grain yields were exaggerated and that the 13.3 million tons would be a better estimate of total output than tine White,

52

Vietnam

This recovery from the disastrous second five-year plan was driven primarily by the adoption in the early 1980s of new policies to increase incentives in agriculture, including the system of "product contracts" fixing contracted grain quotas for the cooperatives for

a period of five years so that the surplus to be disposed of could

continue to grow, and sharply increased procurement prices for grain in October 1981. Rice crop yields reportedly increased from 21.1 quintals per hectare in 1980 to 27.5 quintals per hectare in 1984. 106 As a result, Vietnam had to import only one million tons during the 1981-1985 period, and in 1983 it was able to feed the population from its own production for the first time. 107 By 1985, however, the stimulative effect of the contracts system

and yield and output of grain both leveled off. 108 In 1986 food output officially grew by only only 1 1 percent, leaving a shortfall of 1.5 million tons of grain, and in 1987 total grain output actually fell by 500,000 tons, causing a famine in northern provinces in 109 early 1988. The biggest reason for the setback in agriculture during the mid-1980s was the increasingly unfavorable terms of trade for farmers as the state increased the prices of agricultural inputs and consumer goods, without increasing paddy prices accordingly, and also increased procurement quotas on cooperatives. As a result, the number of families undertaking product contracts with the cooperative declined dramatically as they put greater effort into household economies. 110 In most cooperatives some families actually returned land that had been leased to them under production contracts. " The renewed push for collectivization of agriculture in the South declined,

.

1

the 17 million tons claimed. See Lam Thanh Liem, "Nouvelles reformes et crise persistante de l'economie rural dans le delta du Mekong de 1981 a 1985," Annates de Geographie, no. 524, July-August 1985, pp. 403-4. 106. W. Evers, R. Baban, F. Le Gall, and A. Pera, Socialist Republic of Viet Nam: Recent Economic Developments, International Monetary Fund, May 14, 1982, p. 2; Statistical data, p. 83.

Le Can, "Our Situation and Tasks," p. 17. famine in Thanh Hoa province in Chinh Tarn and Van Ba, "A Question Requiring an Answer," Lao Dong, June 16, 1988, JPRS-SEA-88-035, August 31, 1988, p. 57. 109. Nguyen Thi Hien, "Nha Nuoc Phai Kiem Soat Gia Ca" [The state must control prices], Doc Lap, September 2, 1987, p. 5; Verena Stern, "Foreign Capital to Ease Desperate Situation," Sueddeutsche Zeitung, January 16, 1988, JPRS-SEA-88-014, March 7, 1988, pp. 59-61. 110. Do The Tung, "Mot So Bien Phap Hoan Thien Khoan San Pham trong Nong Nghiep" [Some measures to perfect product contracts in agriculture], Nhan Dan, Oc107.

108. See the investigation of

tober 6, 1986. 111. Chu Van Lam, "Khoan San Pham va Che Do Kinh Te Hop Tac Xa trong Nong Nghiep" [Product contracts and the cooperative economy in agriculture],

Nghien Cuu Kinh Te, nos.

1

and

2,

February and April 1988,

p. 34.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

53

that began in 1984 also adversely affected output. Many peasants destroyed their rice fields and planted gardens instead or simply abandoned them altogether to become merchants rather than join 112 In many cooperatives youths were reported to detest cooperatives. agriculture and were advised by their parents to find nonagricul-

employment. 113 Meanwhile, severe shortages of basic necessities combined with chronic huge budget deficits contributed to hyperinflation. During the 1981-1985 period the volume of money issued rose at an average annual rate of 83.7 percent compared with an average rise in national income of 6.4 percent annually. By 1985 the purchasing power of the Vietnamese dong was declining by 16 to 18 percent every month. And in 1987 the annual inflation rate was estimated at 700 to 1,000 percent. (The government admitted to 300 percent.)" 4 The economic development strategy underlying the 1986—1990 five-year plan, reflecting the grim economic realities at the time of the Sixth Party Congress in December 1986, abandoned the former strategy of putting the bulk of investment capital into industry and tural

viewing agriculture as a means of supporting industrialization. The new line on economic development was to concentrate investment on grain and foodstuffs, consumer goods, and export goods. Agriculture, rather than industry, was given primary emphasis, and the

components of the economy was to be longer pursued the illusion of relatively autonomous industrialization but looked to the model of export-oriented development that had been successful for Asia's newly industrializing countries, relying on Lenin's "New Economic Policy" potential of the non-socialist

"fully exploited."

115

of the 1920s for a

The SRV no

socialist

precedent.

The Vietnamese economy

benefited from a demobilization of milireduced the armed forces from 1.5 million in 1987 to between 700,000 and 800,000 by late 1990. 116 Adjustments in investment priorities, liberalization of price and land allocation policies, and favorable weather conditions also helped to reverse the detary personnel that

112.

August

Nguyen True Quynh, 1,

Saigon Giai Phong, April 19, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-180,

1986, p. 80.

113. Tran Dinh Van, "When Is Agriculture Truly Foremost?" Dai Doan Ket, August 27, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-201, November 14, 1986, p. 115. 1 14. Nguyen Dinh, "Concerning Inflation in Our Country," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 10, October 1987, JPRS-ATC-88-002, February 9, 1988, pp. 35-37; SRV, State Planning Committee, Report on the Economy of Vietnam, p. 44. 115. "Political Report of the Central Committee at the Sixth National Party Congress of Delegates," JPRS-SEA-87-066, May 7, 1987, pp. 51-58. 116. Kyodo News Service dispatch, November 1, 1990, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report,

November

2,

1990, p. 55.

54

Vietnam

mid-1980s. In 1988, food production increased by 2 miland in 1989 it increased by another 1.5 million tons. As a result, Vietnam suddenly emerged as the third largest supplier of rice on the world market, exporting 1.5 million tons of rice in 1989 and 1.6 million tons in 1990. 117 Liberal economic reforms also helped to bring hyperinflation under control. The inflation rate droped to 184 percent in 1988 and then plummeted to 32 percent in 1989. 118 But from the end of 1989 to the end of 1990, prices rose 67.5 percent, reflecting the end of imports of petroleum and fertilizer from the Soviet Union at subsidized prices. 119 The government's control over inflationary tendencies remained tenuous and vulnerable to external economic forces beyond its control, including the refusal of the United States to permit assistance to the SRV from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Vietnam's balance of payments deficit since the war has been a serious obstacle to economic development because of both trade deficits and external debt servicing. Vietnam ran a balance of payments deficit every year from 1976 through 1990 with export earnings covering, on the average, less than half of imports and scheduled debt services. Vietnamese exports grew very slowly from $406 million in 1978 to $740 million in 1986 (see table 1). But after economic liberalization took effect, exports increased rapidly from $733 million in 1988 to $1,782 in 1990 mainly on the strength of rice, oil, and marine products. Most of the increase was accounted for by hard currency exports, which soared from $465 million to 1.3 billion during the two-year period. With imports reduced from their high point in the mid-1980s, Vietnam was able to achieve a slight trade surplus in 1990 for the first time. However, an increase in debt service payments from $85 million in 1988 to $349 million in 1990, mostly to cline of the

lion tons over that in 1987,

—

17. Interview with Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry Nguyen Cong Tan, Vietnam News Agency (VNA), February 21, 1990, FBIS-EAS-90-046, March 8, 1990, p. 70; SRV, State Planning Committee, Report on the Economy of Vietnam, p. 32; David Dollar, "Vietnam: Successes and Failures of Macroeconomic Stabilization," in Borje Ljunggren and Peter Timmer, eds., The Challenge of Reform in Indochina (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). 118. Socioeconomic report by Council of Ministers Chairman Do Muoi, December 18, 1989, FBIS-EAS-89-244, December 21, 1989, p. 64. 119. Dollar, "Vietnam: Successes and Failures." Nayan Chanda cites an IMF estimate that the loss of hard currency costs of the loss of subsidized Soviet imports was $250 to 300 million, or 4-5 percent of the country's GDP (Nayan Chanda, "Indochina Today: Reform and Paralysis," in The Challenge of Indochina: An Examination of the U.S. Role [Queenstown, Md.: Aspin Institute, 1991], p. 20). 1

The Socioeconomic Table

1.

Foreign trade, balance 1976-1986

1,465.8

215.0 309.0 406.7

1,653.0

383.1

1,576.7

398.6 388.3 479.7 534.5 570.5 660.3 739.5

825.9

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986

1,044.1

1,697.3

1,599.6 1,689.2 1,802.5 2,046.3 2,506.9

Trade balance 610.9

-

table 2).

its

735.1

-1,059.1 -1,269.9 -1,178.1 -1,309.0 -1,119.9 -1,154.7 -1,232.0 -1,386.0 -1,767.4

Source: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Vietnam: (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), p. 322.

the convertible area, kept

55

of U.S. dollars)

Exports

Imports

Year

(in millions

Setting

A

Country Study

balance of payments in the red (see

120

Until the major economic reforms of 1988, the standard of living of the average Vietnamese had fallen over the previous three decades. The monthly average real income per capita of families of workers and state employees in the North was almost 40 percent lower in 1979 than it had been in I960. 121 Basic necessities such as meat, sugar, fish sauce, fuel, and soap were rationed at subsidized prices to workers and cadres, but their salaries were only enough to keep them going for a few days each month. Unemployment or underemployment was estimated to affect 50 percent of the work force in industry and 30 percent in agriculture, or approximately eleven million workers. 122 At its low point in efficiency between 1976 and 1980, the Vietagricultural economy was providing between 268 and 275 kilograms of grain per capita, which was about 25 percent less than required to maintain minimum caloric input. In the mid 1980s per

namese

capita calorie

consumption

in

Vietnam was 3 1 percent lower than

in

Indonesisa, 36 percent lower than in the Philippines, 27 percent

120. Dollar, 121.

"Vietnam: Successes and Failures." Tri, "Socialist Vietnam's Economic Development,"

Vo Nhan

White, Postwar Vietnam,

122. Frankfurter Allgemeine (Frankfurt/Main),

cerning Inflation

in

in

Marr and

p. 27.

Our Country,"

p. 37.

June

16, 1987.

Nguyen Dinh, "Con-

56

Vietnam Table 2. Balance of

payments

Current account balance Convertible area Nonconvertible area Trade balance Convertible area Nonconvertible area Total exports Convertible area Nonconvertible area Total imports Convertible area Nonconvertible area Services

and transfers

Convertible area Nonconvertible area

(in millions

of U.S. dollars)

1988

1989

1990

-764 -209 -555 -679 -138 -541

-586 -218 -368 -350

-339 -210 -129

-9

97

-341

-87

733 465 268 1412 603 809

1320 977 343 1670 985 685

1782 1305 477 1772 1209 564

-85 -71 -14

-237 -210 -27

-349 -307 -42

10

and Failures of Macroeconomic StabilizaBorje Ljunggren and Peter Timmer, eds., The Challenge of Reform in Indochina (Cambridge: Harvard University Press for the Harvard Institute of International Development, forthcoming). Source: David Dollar, "Vietnam: Successes

tion," table 3, in

Table 3.

Population (million) Food production (paddy equivalent

Food

deficit

1976

1980

1984

1988

1989

49.2

53.7

13.5

14.4

58.7 17.8

63.7 19.6

64.4 21.4

274.4 75

268.2 73

303.5

307.3

83

82

332.9 91

million tons)

Food production per

capita (kg)

Percentage of requirement (100 percent = 365 kg)

Source: Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Statistical Planning

the

Economy of Vietnam, UNDP, December

Commission, Report on

1990, table 6.8, p. 94.

lower than in Thailand, and 33 percent lower than in Malaysia. I23 The breakthrough harvest of 1989 increased per capita grain production to 333 kilograms. But the average Vietnamese still got nearly 10 percent less grain than is needed for sufficient caloric con-

sumption (see table 3). The most serious consequence of the SRV's economic perfor123. For World Bank data on the four ASEAN states, see James Clad, "Poor Get Poorer," Far Eastern Economic Review, August 18, 1988, p. 34.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

57

decline in the nutrition and health of Vietnamese study of villages in Long An, Kien Giang, and Minh Hai provinces in 1987 revealed that between 34 and 40 percent of chil-

mance was the children.

A

dren were malnourished, whereas researchers in a more recent survey found that 51.1 percent of the children were suffering from malnutrition. 124 In another study they found that since 1980 the number of newborns with abnormally low birthweight has been

and in a few localities has reached 20 to 30 perResearchers found that the average height of Vietnamese decreased between 1973 and 1985. 126 steadily increasing

cent.

125

Social Structure

Vietnamese social structure has been transformed over the past four decades by both political upheavals and economic change. War, agarian reform, collectivization, and the process of consolidation of

power have

all left their marks on this structure. on the basis of access to land, the society has been restratified primarily on the basis of access to position in the economic management and political-administrative bureau-

party and state

Once

hiearchically organized

cracy.

Before the ety,

DRV

undertook revolutionary transformation of

soci-

the main source of socioeconomic inequality in both North and

South Vietnam was the structure of land ownership. When the DRV to power in 1945, poor peasants (those who lacked sufficient land to support their families) and landless laborers, who represented about 60 percent of the population of Tonkin, controlled only about 10 percent of the land, whereas the 2.5 percent of the rural population that lived by renting out land owned 24.5 percent

came

of the land outright and controlled much more of it indirectly. 127 The traditional agrarian social structure was shattered by the land reform campaign carried out by the DRV in North Vietnam from 1954 to 1956. A program of land redistribution, in which poor peasants were mobilized to accuse landlords of crimes and several thou124.

Quan Doi Nhan Dan, January 5, 1988, JPRS, East Asia Daily Report, May 2, AFP dispatch,, March 12, 1990, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, March 14,

1988, p. 42; 1990, p. 72.

125. Hoang Dinh Cau, "Health Care in the New Stage," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 4, April 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-003, September 3, 1987, pp. 25-26. 126. AFP dispatch, March 12, 1990. 127. Data collected by DRV authorities on all 3,653 villages that underwent land reform cited in Tran Phuong, ed., Cach Mang Ruong Dat [Agrarian revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1968), table 8, p. 14.

Vietnam

58

sand landlords were executed, eliminated the economic base of the landlord class and leveled the structure of land ownership. 128 After the land reform, the poor peasants and landlords were left with nearly equivalent standards of living. Rich peasants and middle peasants had a somewhat higher living standard, not primarily because of differences in land ownership but because they owned tools and water buffalos and because they had an average of 25 percent more laborers per family than did poor peasants. 129 Three years after the completion of land reform, however, former poor peasants represented more than half the families with an agricultural surplus, indicating considerable

The

upward

social mobility.

130

organization of socialist agricultural cooperatives further nar-

rowed economic differences among rural households in the North. The cooperatives put a floor under the incomes of the poorest famiby distributing a subsistence minimum to every household, reamount of its labor. It distributed income through a system of work points whose egalitarianism depended on whether the system distinguished between different qualities of labor. Throughout the war the work-point system tended to be highly egalitarian, compensating all adult laborers at the same flat rate. In the model cooperatives of the North, therefore, what economic differentiation existed among cooperative households was based on different endowments of labor and varying degrees of skill and industriousness in production in the family economy. 131 During the war, however, many cooperatives were subcontracting out cooperative land to individual households for the final stages of cultivation and allowing them to retain that portion of the crop beyond contracted quotas. 132 The general application of the production contract system since 1981 created a new stratum of wealthier peasants. In the 1990s a "rich" peasant in the context of the cooperative lies

gardless of the

reform program that deal extensively with errors see Edwin E. Moise, Land Reform in China and North Vietnam: Consolidating the Revolution at the Village Level (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), and Christine P. White, "Agarian Reform and National Liberation in the Vietnamese Revolution: 1920-1957" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell Univer128. For analyses of the land

later

sity,

denounced by the leadership,

1981).

129. David

W.

P. Elliott, "Political

ization Period," in

Joseph

J.

Zasloff

Integration in North Vietnam: The Cooperativand MacAllister Brown, Communism in Indochina:

New

Perspectives (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975), p. 178; Vickerman, Fate of the Peasantry, p. 202. 130. Vickerman, Fate of the Peasantry, p. 136. 131. White, Role of Collective Agriculture, pp. 119-22.

132. Melanie Beresford, "Household and Collective in Vietnamese Agriculture," Journal of Contemporary Asia 15, no. 1 (1985), 11.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

59

one who has rice reserves from one season to the next houses and to purchase such items as beds, sofas, and clocks. Although some well-off families increase their incomes by lending money to poorer families at high interest, most of those in this stratum earn their incomes through skill and hard work, not from hiring workers, acquiring land, or making loans. 133 The wealthiest families in Northern villages, however, are usually those with members who have positions of authority in the village or the cooperative both the party committee members and those who have economic functions, such as cooperative directors, accountants, and unit heads. The largest houses in the village are often occupied by the leading party or state cadres, who have been able to parlay their positions into economic success. Cooperative management cadres can divert money from discretionary funds or obtain a larger volume of agricultural inputs and sell them at higher prices. They use their profits to build new houses, buy luxury goods, or invest in business. 134 State and party cadres also have the connections with sources of cheap supply needed to make larger profits from the in the

north

is

to build brick

—

family economy. 135

The

of the Mekong delta presents a dramatic contrast to that of the North. During the Diem period, in south central Vietnam, 40 percent of the land was rented out by landlords, whereas in the Mekong delta region, 6,300 big landowners, representing 0.25 percent of the rural population, owned about 45 percent of the rice land, and 600,000 tenants cultivated nearly twothirds of the land. 136 During the Vietnam conflict the delta region was transformed by revolutionary war, U.S. intervention, and economic-technological changes from a system of landlords and tenants into a system of capitalist relations in which family farmers were the dominant sociosocial structure

133. Huu Tho, "Income Disparities in Rural Areas," Nhan Dan, September JPRS-SEA-86-206, November 24, 1986, pp. 95-101. 134. Saigon Giai Phong, July 5, 1986. 135. Interview with Nguyen Van Thang, secretary of the

5,

1986,

Cu Chi District VCP Committee, Saigon Giai Phong, April 23, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-128, July 24, 1986, p. 85. 136. See David Wurfel, "Agrarian Reform in the Republic of Vietnam," Far Eastern Survey 26 (June 1957), 81-92; Wolf Ladejinsky, "Agrarian Reform in the Republic of Vietnam," in Wesley R. Fishel, ed., Vietnam: Anatomy of a Conflict (Itasca, 111.: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1968), p. 519; MacDonald Salter, Land Reform in South Vietnam, Agency for International Development, Spring Review Country Paper, June 1979, p. 94; Stanford Research Institute, Land Reform in Vietnam, prepared for the Republic of Vietnam and the Agency for International Development (Menlo Park, Calif., 1968), summary volume, p. 199.

60

Vietnam

economic stratum. 137 Wartime labor shortages, loss of buffalos, reduced crop areas, and the introduction of new rice varieties and cheap commodities financed by U.S. aid caused increasing numbers of South Vietnamese farmers to become dependent on expensive agricultural inputs and machinery to grow rice. Even the smallest landowners had to market a large share of their crops to pay expenses. Thus, a new form of agrarian differentiation developed based primarily on the ownership of farm machinery and commer138 cial activities rather than on the ownership of land. In a survey of eighty rural areas in South Vietnam in 1981 researchers found that 25 percent of the rural households had little or no land; 56 percent of the rural households, which were classified as "middle peasants," owned 60 percent of the land but lacked draft animals and farm equipment; 12 percent of the households were classified as "upper middle peasants" because they controlled 27 percent of the land and could rent out land or hire farm workers and rent out farm equipment to poorer farmers, even though most of their income was from their own labor. The "rich peasants and rural representing 2.5 percent of the rural households, owned more than one-half of the larger tractors and other agricultural machinery. On the average, a rich peasant capitalists,"

7 percent of the land but

household's income was ten times greater than that of a middle peasand there was a tendency for middle peasants to slip into poor

ant,

peasant status through indebtedness. 139 In 1983 the SRV moved to eliminate "capitalist exploitation" in agriculture, whether through hiring workers or renting agricultural

machinery and buffalos.

It

forced wealthier peasants to give up land

they could not cultivate themselves; forced tractor owners to

sell

farm machinery to the collective or to form a "farm machinery team" under state direction; and subjected upper middle peasants to steeply progressive taxation that took more than 80 percent of their their

clear that the beneficiaries of the RVN land reform program were often from those of the earlier NLF redistribution, creating postwar conflicts over land ownership for the SRV. See Nguyen Huu Phan, Nhung Dieu Can Biet Ve Chinh Sack Hop Tac Hoa Nong Nghiep Mien Nam [What you need to know about the policy of cooperativization of agriculture in the south] (Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, 1982), pp. 42-43. 138. Ngo Vinh Long, "Agrarian Differentiation in the Southern Region of Vietnam," Journal of Contemporary Asia 14, no. 3 (1984), 283-305. 139. Ibid.; Tran Quoc Khai, "The Question of Reallocating Land and Eliminating All Forms of Exploitation in the Nam Bo Rural Areas," Nhan Dan, August 11, 1982, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, September 23, 1982, p. K7. 140. Lam Thanh Liem, "Nouvelles Reformes et Crise Persistant," pp. 397-99.

137.

It is

different

The Socioeconomic

Setting

61

The

result of this process, however, was a redistribution of the that involved widespread political abuse and favoritism. taken land Many party members and cadres got more land than the average distributed within their areas while some families received less. Some party members appropriated large amounts of the best land for themselves, and some who got land did not work it themselves but

rented it out. 141 In the urban areas the social structure increasingly polarized between workers and cadres on fixed incomes and those with opportunities to engage in trade or business, whether legally or illegally.

As

a result of the

economic

liberalization policies of the early 1980s,

much more rapidly than the state sector, esHo Chi Minh City. Some of the old bourgeoisie reap-

the private sector grew pecially in

peared, and smaller merchants and capitalists rapidly gained control over money and goods. 142 These businesspeople, usually referred to by officials as "speculators" and "economic saboteurs," would not have been able to obtain so much of the goods produced or imported by the state without the connivance of economic cadres. They bought commodities in bulk from officials and resold them on the black market. Ironically, it was the party-state bureaucracy, which was officially sworn to eliminate such illegal businesspeople as class enemies, that nurtured this class.

between the minimum and maximum wages during the 1980s was only 3.5 times. However, because the purchasing power of the dong declined in the late 1970s

The

legal differential

in the state sector

and 1980s so

drastically, the living standards of manual workers, and cadres depended primarily on the distribution of goods from the state under various semilegal or illegal schemes

civil

servants,

called "bonuses" or "internal distribution." 143 Access to

commodities

thus became the primary determinant of the socioeconomic structure in urban areas.

The primary beneficiaries of this practice were middle- and highranking bureaucrats who obtained far more than their fair shares of goods and even managed to have goods and supplies distributed to "A Summary of Opinions Contributed to the Party Congress concerning Agriand the Living Conditions of Farmers," Saigon Giai Phong, September 24, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-218, December 15, 1986, p. 98; interview with VCP general secretary Nguyen Van Linh, Hanoi Domestic Service, December 7, 1988, FBIS-EAS-88-236, December 8, 1988, p. 54; Nhan Dan, April 7, 1988. 142. Nguyen Van Linh, Ho Chi Minh City, p. 61. 143. Tung Van, "Fully Develop the Positive Impact of the Improvement Made to Wages," Tap Chi Cong San, November 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-034, Febrary 24, 1986, p. 141.

cultural Production

39.

62

Vietnam

and relatives. Bureaucrats dealing with economic management or having authority in production or trade units could also friends

convert control over goods into substantial profits either by purchasing goods at subsidized prices for resale or simply stealing them and 144 selling them on the free market. The disparity between the life-styles of officials and those of the rest of the population extends into other aspects of society. As in other socialist states, party-state bureaucrats have long had prefer-

red access not only to consumer goods but to housing, transportation, education, travel, and medical care. Higher cadres had a system of state stores for higher cadres, one for the Central Committee level and one for directors of offices, which assured them of plentiful 145 supplies of consumer goods despite severe shortages. Despite the VCP's condemnation of "special rights and privileges,"

some authority at central, provincial, and local levels commonly appropriated such benefits for themselves. The assignment of housing was bureaucratically administered and was subject cadres with

and bribery. The vast majority of the urban population lived in extremely overcrowded conditions while leadership cadres at the provincial level lived in villas, and higher-level cadres often had two or three apartments in different cities. Factory directors or deputy directors used factory workers to help build to political favoritism

their villas.

146

Although workers still moved by bicycle, bureaucrats were more go to work by car or motorcyle. In the 1990s, there are fifty thousand cars in the entire country (more than eleven thousand in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City alone). The heads of organizations and agencies commonly buy expensive European or Japanese cars to symbolize their authority although their collective cost was the equivalent of all the foreign currency earned from agricultural exports by a single district. Leadership cadres in the provinces, districts, and

likely to

villages

prices.

have opportunities to purchase motorcycles

at subsidized

147

In theory the Vietnamese educational system gives an advantage 144. For a more detailed discussion ^f the nature of corruption in the Vietnamese system, see Chap. 5. 145. The stores for higher cadres were established in 1962 according to a wellinformed Vietnamese source interviewed in November 1981. 146. Nguyen Trung Thuc, "Ideological Life: Words and Actions," Tap Chi Cong San, April 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-003, September 3, 1987, p. 106; Khanh Van, "Social Fairness," Quan Dot Nhan Dan, January 10, 1987, JPRS-87-060, April 27, 1982, p. 99.

147. Trong Nghia, "A Painful Fact," Tap Chi Cong San, October 1987, JPRSATC-88-002, February 9, 1988, p. 42; Quan Doi Nhan Dan, May 6, 1986; Hoang Trung, "Special Privileges and Favors around Imported Motorcyles," Nhan Dan, March 17, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-087, May 22, 1986, p. 120.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

63

workers in admission to higher education. Production workers who have "outstanding" records for three years or more have prior148 But party and governity over other students to enter universities. able to on their socioeconomic adpass ment officials appear to be vantages to their sons and daughters. The children of party cadres seldom become workers or artisans because they can usually obtain 149 The percentage of children jobs with various state organizations. of high-ranking cadres in the military is reportedly lower than that of ordinary families. 150 Political criteria have been used, meanwhile, to keep some students out of universities. For many years, the children of former personnel of the Saigon government were not allowed to enter a university even though they passed the examination because of their "personal histories." 151 This political discrimination was denounced by critics as "backgroundism" and supposedly ended 152 as of the 1987-1988 school year. Vietnamese society has been restructured by the transformational policies of the DRV/SRV regime as well as by the unintended consequences of the regime's system of economic management. The inequalities of traditional agrarian society have been largely eliminated only to be replaced with those of a heavily bureaucratized transitional society. Despite the fact that those bureaucratically based inequalities are the result of illegalities, they are an essential feature of Vietnamese society under VCP rule. to

148. Saigon Giai Phong, February 19, 1987.

DaiDoanKet, April 1, 1987. Tran Bach Dang, "Seventy Years of Soviet Government," Saigon Giai Phong, November 4-5, 1987, JPRS-SEA-88-015, March 10, 1988, p. 43. 151. See Nhan Dan, January 22, 1987. For an example, see Ben Nghe, "Realities Compel Me to Write," Saigon Giai Phong, November 11, 1987, JPRS-SEA-88-009, Feb149.

150.

ruary 24, 1988, p. 52. 152. Saigon Giai Phong, February 19, 1987.

Political Institutions: Party,

3

State,

and Mass Organizations

"The party leads, the people control, and the state manages." So goes the slogan expressing the Vietnamese Communist Party's idealized vision of how the political system operates. In this vision, each

—

of the three main institutional components of the system the VCP, the state apparatus, and mass associations has a distinct function in the system. In practice, however, the state and mass organizations have always been little more than extensions of the party's power. In theory the overweening leadership role of the Vietnamese Communist Party in the political system maximizes unanimity and ensures that party lines and policies are implemented fully and accurately. In fact it has simply led to confusion and conflict over the proper roles of party and state and to the bureaucratization of mass organizations. The price of a centralized political structure under the domination of the party has been an overburdened leadership group, rampant abuses of power, popular alienation, ineffective policy-making on many issues, and an inability to respond administratively to popular needs. Starting in 1987, the VCP leadership responded to widespread dissatisfaction with the "formalism" of the SRV's elected organs and mass organizations by attempting to rejuvenate these institutions while leaving untouched the party's control over them. These reforms embraced party-state relations, the roles of the National Assembly and local elected organs as well as mass organizations, and the quality of electoral processes. They were aimed at encouraging wider and more open debate on major policy issues, giving greater legitimacy to popularly elected organs, and eliminating the intrusion by party organs into problems that were properly the responsibility of the state. In the process, the party leadership clearly hoped as well to

—

growing demands for greater freedom and participation. Within the relatively narrow limits set by the VCP leadership,

satisfy

65

Political Institutions

was unable to overcome inherent in an authoritarian one-party system. The National Assembly, even with an enhanced legislative and debating role, could not address issues that challenged the power of the party leadership. Nor could mass organizations reflect fully and however, the reform of

some of the

political institutions

difficulties

accurately the interests of socioeconomic groups such as farmers,

merchants, and students. By the end of the 1980s, the VCP was confronted with demands for pluralism from within the party itself as well as from businessmen, intellectuals, students, and others. In the context of transitions to pluralist systems in Eastern Europe and steps in the Soviet Union in that direction, politically aware Vietnamese were no longer content with the superficial reforms that accompanied the "renovation" (doi moi) campaign that began in 1986. In response, the VCP leadership drew the line firmly against any challenge to its political monopoly.

The Role of the Party

The Vietnamese Communist Party is assigned an extraordinarily powerful role in the Vietnamese political system, even when compared with other Communist systems. Unlike the Chinese and former Soviet constitutions and previous Vietnamese constitutions, which gave no formal grant of power to the role of the party, the 1980 SRV Constitution made the Vietnamese Communist Party the "sole force leading the state

namese

society

is

people." 2

society."

1

The

party's role in Viet-

described in a party training manual as all-embrac-

ing, including "all aspects

economic,

and

social, cultural,

The VCP's

of life in all domains and the material and

political functions

—

political, military,

spiritual life

of the

include setting major lines

and policies; training and assignment of cadres both within the party and the state; conducting ideological education among the masses; and persuading them to carry out party resolutions. 3

The

National Party Congress

is,

in theory, the highest authority

within the party. Held every four to five years,

it is

gates representing at least two-thirds of the party

attended by dele-

members and

two-

Hien Phap Nuoc Cong Hoa Xao Hoi Chu Nghia Viet-Nam [Constitution of the Republic of Vietnam] (Hanoi: Phap Ly, 1981), pp. 19-20. 2. Tai Lieu Hoc Tap: Ly Luan va Chink Tri [Study document: Theory and politics] (Hanoi: Sach Giao Khoa Mac-Le-Nin, 1976), p. 330. 3. "Thoroughly Understand the Resolution of the Fifth Party Central Committee Plenum," Nhan Dan, July 30, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 29, 1988, 1.

Socialist

p. 67.

66

Vietnam

thirds of party chapters.

It

reviews the reports of the Central

mittee, approves the general lines of the party in foreign

Com-

and domes-

decides the "most basic issues" concerning the situation and tasks of the party, amends the party statutes and elects a new tic affairs,

Central Committee. In between party congresses, the Central Committee

is

the "su-

preme leading organ" of the VCP. It determines all major foreign and domestic policies in its twice-yearly meetings, and ensures that they are properly implemented by the state and mass organizations by setting up special party organs and committees to guide and check on state organs and mass institutions. Finally, it manages and assigns cadres to various tasks in the party and the state. The Political Bureau, a small group of the most senior party leaders (which has varied from only eleven full members in 1960 to fourteen in 1986), is the inner core of the party leadership. It has full authority to provide strategic direction to the party in between plenums of the Central Committee by translating Central Committee resolutions into

more concrete

policy guidlines to the party. It also

has the responsibility for formulating, discussing, and resolving long-term, fundamental theoretical and practical issues and for en-

suring political and ideological unity within the party.

It

reports

its

work and that of the secretariat to the Central Committee. The most influential post in the Central Committee is that of general secretary (formerly called first secretary). The post of party chairman, which had been held only by Ho Chi Minh and was built around his unique role, was abolished after his death. The general secretary is first among equals within the Political Bureau, usually delivering the main address to each Central Committee meeting and setting the ideological tone for the entire party through speeches and writings. Past general secretaries Truong Chinh (1941-1956) and Le Duan (1960-1986) have left their stamps on the party by staking out personal views on major socioeconomic policy issues. General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh, elected in 1986, quickly established a high profile with regard to the struggle against "negative

phenomena" in the state and party apparatus by writing a regular column in the party's daily newspaper Nhan Dan in 1986 and 1987 and throwing the spotlight on individual cases of graft, corruption and malfeasance that came to his attention.

The general secretary also heads the Secretariat, consisting of thirmembers of the Central Committee (five of whom are also members of the Political Bureau), who deal with day-to-day organi-

teen

zational

problems and are responsible for organizing the implemen-

Political Institutions

tation of Central

Committee

decisions.

The

67

Secretariat sends investi-

gating teams to check on policy implementation, conflicts and controversies involving party organs, or socioeconomic problems. In

1987, for example, the Secretariat formed an investigating team headed by the deputy head of the Central Control Commission to spend three months in Thanh Hoa looking into allegations of abuses

by the provincial committee. 4

The

Secretariat also oversees seventeen Central

Committee stand-

ing departments for the oversight of various policy areas, such as agriculture, industry,

and foreign

affairs,

and functional party

issues

such as party organization, party history, and propaganda and training. The power and functions of the departments whose areas of responsibility coincide with those of government ministries may exercise de facto policy-making influence over those ministries. The most powerful is the Party Organization Department, which was directed for many years by Political Bureau member Le Due Tho. Because the position gave him control over the assignment of cadres in both party and state organs, it was widely believed, as one critic wrote in 1982, that the department had "encroached on the powers of the government." 5 Party organization is supposed to be based on the principle of democratic centralism, in which decisions made by the majority of the leadership at the central level must be obeyed by the minority and must be implemented by the party organization at lower levels. Thus, decisions of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau are binding on all party members. Although party members have the right to express their views freely within the framework of party meetings, they are not supposed to oppose decisions once they are

made. In the atmosphere of greater freedom introduced by the party's "renovation" drive that began in 1986, however, that principle be-

came

increasingly difficult to enforce.

acknowledged

The VCP

leadership explicitly

1989 that the renovation project had complicated the task of maintaining political and ideological control over Vietnamese society. Renovation, it said, had "created many new issues in theory and practice that are strongly affecting the thoughts and feelings of our party cadres and members and the people." The Political Bureau, having admitted that the orthodox Soviet model of socialin

4. Thai Duy, "An Abscess Has Been Lanced," Dai Doan Ket, April 2, 1988, JPRSSEA-88-026, June 7, 1988, pp. 26-28. 5. Nguyen Khac Vien, quoted in Paul Quinn-Judge, "A Vietnamese Cassandra," Far Eastern Economic Review, February 26, 1982, p. 15.

Vietnam

68

ism was no longer tenable, was unable to point to a substitute for it. As Vo Chi Cong said in late 1989, "At present, no new model has taken shape, so all the [socialist] countries are still groping and experimenting on their own. ... In fact, nobody can say he has the 6 truth in hand. Here lies the crisis in theory and ideology." The inability of the party leadership to assert that it had "the truth in hand" gave rise in the late 1980s to a new wave of skepticism about the usefulness of Marxism-Leninism itself. Nguyen Van Linh

lamented the fact that there existed within the VCP "different ways of evaluating Marxism-Leninism" with one group arguing that it was "outdated and was only suitable to the nineteenth century and early twentieth century." Another group claimed that it only fit "certain countries," whereas a third school of thought contended that it was 7 only "partly correct."

Intraparty dissent took organizational form, moreover, with the

emergence of the "Club of Former Resistance Fighters," an association of former officers of the revolutionary army, all of whom were party members. The club, which regarded itself as a "pressure group" within the VCP, was first organized in Ho Chi Minh City in 1983 and later set up branches in surrounding provinces. Led by General Tran Van Tra, a zone commander in the South throughout both resistance wars and the military governor of Saigon immediately after the 1975 victory, the organization began requesting of8 ficial recognition in 1985 but was ignored by the government. The club continued to operate, even without official recognition. In

its

tice

publication

it

criticized the

VCP

leadership for failing to prac-

openness and for various socioeconomic

leadership apparently did not feel that

policies.

9

The VCP

could suppress the organization, given the revolutionary credentials of its members. In January 1990 General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh accepted the invitation of the club to meet with its members for an informal session at which some complained about restrictions on individual freedoms. In early March Hanoi extended official recognition to the organization as the Vietnam Veterans Association." 10 it

Vo Chi Cong speech December 15, 1989, p. 63. Speech by Nguyen Van Linh, September 30, 1989, Hanoi Domestic Service, October 2, 1989, FIBS-EAS-89-190, October 3, 1989, p. 69. 8. Interview with a foreign visitor to Vietnam, Washington, D.C., April 1988. 9. Murray Hiebert, "Against the Tide," Far Eastern Economic Review, September 14, 1989, p. 30; Nayan Chanda, "Force for Change," Far Eastern Economic Review, October 5, 1989, pp. 25-26. 10. Jacques Bekaert, "East Europe: The View from Hanoi," Bangkok Post, January 6.

7.

Political Institutions

Below the central

69

organized according to adand village or subward levels) and according to production or work units. Party committees at the three subordinate administrative levels are hierarchically linked because the secretary and deputy secretary at the lower level are, generally, members of the party committee at the next level. The provincial party committee has been the key interlevel,

the party

is

ministrative units (provincial or city, district or ward,

mediary

The

local levels.

and the population.

three to thirty

own

and

basic-level party organization

the party

its

programs

level for translating national party policies into

for action at district

members

is

A

is

the point of contact between

basic-level organization of

organized as a party chapter

(chi bo)

elected executive committee (chi uy). If there are

members, they elect committee party chapters on the basis The chi bo is in turn broken

with

more than

thirty

an executive committee (dang

base-level party

(dang bo co

so),

from

uy) for a

which, in turn, organizes

of production or work units or location. into cells (tieu to) of three to fifteen members who have similar ranks and occupations." The VCP strives to pervade society through nearly forty-two thousand base-level party organizations. But party leaders have been extremely cautious about having too many party members, fearing that it would open the door to "opportunists" and "reactionaries" or even CIA agents. 12 As a result, party membership has tended to be too small for effective leadership. The party had its highest proportion of membership to the total population of Vietnam 5 percent in 1950 during the resistance war against the French. But the proportion has never been that high since then. It dropped to 3 percent in 1960 and remained at 3 percent at the time of the Fourth Party Congress in 1976. In 1988 the VCP had 2.12 million members, or about 3.3 percent of the population, compared with an historical Soviet ratio of party membership to total population of about 9 percent, and a Chinese ratio of around 4 percent. 13

down

—

—

1990, p. 4; UPI dispatch, March 6, 1990, Indochina Digest (Washington, D.C.), 1990. 11. "Statutes of the CPV, Adopted by the Fourth National Party Congress of Delegates and Supplemented by the Fifth and Sixth National Party Congresses of Delegates," FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 11, 1987, p. 36. 12. See Central Organization Department, Vietnam Communist Party, Huong Dan Cong Tac Phat Trien Dang [Guidance for party development work] (Hanoi: Su That, 12,

March 3-9,

1978), p. 7. 13. Data through 1976 are from Quang Truong, "Political Development and Leadership in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1975-1981)" (Ph.D. diss., Vrije University, Amsterdam, 1981), p. 63; 1988 data are from "Thoroughly Understand the Res-

Vietnam

70

Moreover, there has been a fundamental imbalance

party

in

strength between North and South since the late 1960s. During the war against the United States, party membership grew rapidly in the

North from about four hundred thousand

in

1960 to

1.5 million in

1976, giving the party organization in the North 6.3 percent of the 14 In South Vietnam, however, base-level party North's population.

organization suffered very heavy losses during the war, in which

hundreds of thousands were either killed or imprisoned, and at end it represented only 0.7 percent of the Southern popula15 Nearly one decade after the war, only one Southern village in tion. 16 four had a party committee. In theory the VCP is supposed to be the party of the working class, or proletariat. But historically its membership has been overwhelmingly from the petty bourgeois intellectual and peasant strata. At the time of the Third Party Congress in September 1960, workers were said to constitute only 3.4 percent of party membership. Fulltime cadres from petty bourgeois background represented almost 40 percent of the total, whereas peasants (even divided between poor peasants and middle or rich peasants) represented 56 percent. 17 The party leadership rationalized this anomaly by asserting that the class character of the party is not determined by the class origins or membership of party members but by their ideology. 18 As of 1990, only about 8.8 percent of party members were workers who participated war's

directly in production.

19

As economic liberalization proceeded in the late 1980s, the party's urban membership became increasingly involved in economic activities beyond the family economy. Party leaders discovered from a survey of twenty-four urban subwards that the families of more than one in four local party members were involved in some kind of capitalist business that hired workers or engaged in trade or moneylending. (Nearly one out of two party members in Ho Chi Minh olution of the Fifth Party Central

Committee Plenum," Nhan Dan, August

1,

1988,

FBIS-EAS-189, September 29, 1988, p. 70. 14. Tap Chi Cong San, January 1980, p. 47. 15. William J. Duiker, Vietnam since the Fall of Saigon, Monographs in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series no. 56 (Ohio University, 1985, rev. ed.), p. 8. 16.

17.

Nhan Dan, October 7, 1983. David W. P. Elliott, "Revolutionary

Comparison of the FoundaNorth Vietnam and China" (Ph.D. diss.,

Reintegration:

tion of Post- Liberation Political Systems in

Cornell University, 1976), p. 295. 18. See Vu Can, "Let Us Strive to Fulfill the Party's Development Task," Hoc Tap 11 (November 1962), JPRS 17195, Translations of Political and Sociological Information on North Vietnam, January 18, 1963, no. 21, p. 15. 19. "Enhance the Leadership Ability and the Militancy of Party Cells," Tap Chi Cong San, February 1990, FBIS-EAS-90-059, March 27, 1990, p. 69.

71

Political Institutions

City

were from families involved

in

such businesses compared with

only 14 percent in Hanoi.) After a lengthy debate at the Fifth Central Committee Plenum in 1988, the VCP adopted a firm policy that

members may not engage in may have difficulty reversing the

economic

party

capitalist

it

sociological trends already

activities,

but

under

20 way, especially in the South. The quality of party members and party committees has been recognized as a major problem by the party at least since the mid-1970s.

Party

membership was

increasingly seen by the 1970s as a

means of

obtaining socioeconomic privileges rather than pursuing idealism.

Between 1975 and 1988, some 310,000 members had to be expelled from the party for disciplinary reasons an average of only 23,000 a year. That rate cannot be considered an accurate reflection of the percentage of party members who have been involved in corruption

—

or abuse of power. In a 1988 survey by the

VCP

Secretariat of 6,687

which may have tended to understate the problem, 16 percent had committed serious violations. 21 By the early 1990s, 44 percent of the membership of the VCP had been admitted after the end of the anti-U.S. war in 1975. The loss of conviction about socialism within the party was so great by the end of the decade that some party propaganda organs were reluctant to talk about Communist ideals, fearing that it was no longer credible. The VCP theoretical organ suggested that a large proportion of the party's membership were "indifferent to political issues, pessimistic, party

members

in 41 villages,

discouraged, and

less

confident in the

ability

of the party and state

leadership to solve difficulties and extricate the country from the

current

crisis."

22

supposed to translate party lines and implementation by social institutions, such as

Basic-level party organs are policies into concrete

production and business units, hospitals, and schools. They are supposed to persuade the masses to carry out state plans and to fulfill

comply with laws and party resoAt the same time they are expected to give higher-level party authorities accurate feedback about both the basic needs and concerns of the population and its reactions to party policies. This dual function of persuading and listening to the masses is referred to as

obligations to the state as well as to lutions.

"mobilizing the masses." Party cadres are supposed to avoid two equally dangerous errors 20.

"Thoroughly Understand the Resolution," August

21.

Ibid., pp.

1,

1988, pp. 71-72.

70-71.

22. Speech by Nguyen Van Linh to Fifth Plenum of the VCP Central Committee, Hanoi Domestic Service, June 22, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 24, 1988, p. 39; "Enhance the Leadership Ability," p. 69.

Vietnam

72

commandism and tailism. Commandism be patient and understanding in carrying out propaganda for party policies, refusing to listen to the complaints of the masses, or considering such complaints to be evidence of a "reactionary" attitude. Tailism, on the other hand, consists of failing to educate the masses and, instead, accepting even reactionary views as in dealing with the masses:

consists of failing to

legitimate.

23

In practice, the role of local party organs in mobilizing the masses has been severely limited. The village-level party leadership tends to be a self-perpetuating elite. It is elected at an annual congress of the party members in the village after being subjected to regular criticism from party members. But the election procedures ensure that the existing party executive committee will be returned except for changes planned by the committee itself; the slate of candidates traditionally has only two more names than the number of seats on the 24 executive committee.

The nomic

base-level party

committee dominates every political and ecofrom the agricultural cooperative

institution at the local level

to the security forces to the village People's

Council because

its

mem-

members to take advantage of their power. Party committee members often recruit into the party chapter those already associated with them personally who are likely to support them in conflicts. Those who openly oppose committee members are likely to be viewed by them bers

fill

those key positions. Temptation

is

strong for

its

such opponents are sometimes charged with being and are threatened or even thrown in jail. Where such

as troublemakers;

antiparty

abuses occur, older people who remember the powerful notables of the prerevolutionary village (bon cuong hao) call the party committees the "new village bullies" (bon cuong hao moi). 2b The VCP's monthly journal presented a grim description in 1986 of the prevalence of oppressive behavior by local party committees: "More than a few party members have an attitude of contempt for the masses, do not listen to their opinions, do not learn from laborers and do not actively go about educating and mobilizing the masses. Some cadres 23. "Report on Amending the Party Statute" at the Third Party Congress, read by Le Due Tho, Van Kien Dai Hoi [Congress documents] (Hanoi: Central Committee, Vietnam Workers' Party, 1960), 2: 47-49. 24. Tran Nhu Trang, "The Transformation of the Peasantry in North Vietnam" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1972), pp. 484-85. 25. Tran Bach Dang, "Seventy Years of Soviet Government," Saigon Giai Phong, November 4-5, 1987, JPRS-SEA-88-015, March 10, 1988, pp. 25-27; Thai Duy, "Nong Dan Phai Duoc Lam Chu Nong Thon" [The peasants must become masters of the countryside], Lao Dong, March 24, 1988.

Political Institutions

and personnel persons

.

.

who hold

ternalistic style

.

are authoritarian and arrogant.

A number

73

of

and authority display a bureaucratic, paand discharge their responsibility ... as though they position

were 'king.'" 26 Moreover, cadres are inhibited from communicating popular views by the difficulty of distinguishing between legitimate complaints and demands and "reactionary" views. For example, cadres have had well-founded fears that accurately reflection of the complaints of collective farmers about coercion or procurement prices would be viewed as tailism. Cadres are more likely to hedge their bets by remaining aloof than by trying to guess what they should reflect to

higher echelons.

State Institutions

As

formal chart showing the apparatus would be highly

in other Marxist-Leninist systems, a

legal structure of the

misleading.

Under

the

Vietnamese

SRV

state

constitution the highest state authority

is

the popularly elected National Assembly, which elects the key officials

of

all

of the central organs of state power: the Council of State,

the Council of Ministers, the National Defense Council, the

Supreme

and the Supreme People's Organ of Control. 27 But until recently, the National Assembly has merely rubber-stamped legislation prepared by the government, and it now functions with autonomy from the party only within a limited political-legislative People's Court,

sphere.

The first National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, elected in 1946, remained in limbo after the war, neither convened nor replaced until elections were held for a new National Assembly in 1960. The VCP leadership and state apparatus acquired the habit of making decisions without regard for any popularly elected organ, and the election of a new assembly did nothing to change that habit; for the next two decades, the assembly's two annual ses-

were purely formal affairs in which votes in plenary sessions were by hand and were invariably unanimous. The legislative function of the assembly was not regarded by party leaders as essential, sions

26. Nguyen Phu Trong, "The Priceless Lesson of History," Tap Chi Cong San, February 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-001, June 22, 1987, p. 83. 27. This discussion of the legal structure of the SRV state apparatus is based on Nguyen Van Thao, Tim Hieu Bo May Nha Nuoc: Quoc Hoi va Hoi Dong Nha Nuoc, Hoi Dong Bo Truong [Understanding the government structure: The National Assembly and Council of State, and the Council of Ministers] (Hanoi: Phap Ly, 1982).

Vietnam

74

and the assembly had little to do during its sessions except unanimously approve state plans submitted by the government. As late as 1980, in fact, the government's Law Commission held a conference on legal tasks for the year without any representation from the NaAssembly. 28 The desire of the government in the late 1970s to create a body of law to replace the patchwork of decisions by the Council of Ministers led to the decision to give greater emphasis to legislation by the National Assembly. The Seventh National Assembly elected in 1981 embarked on the first major legislative task drawing up the country's first complete penal code. A legislative committee of the assembly began meeting every month for up to one week with government ministers as well as outside specialists to consider various aspects of the penal code. The committee, whose membership included the Columbia University— trained lawyer Ngo Ba Thanh, opposed the government's positions on some issues, such as a government draft law on refugees. 29 Actual drafting of legislation, however, was accomplished jointly by the legislative commission and the Council of Min30 isters by exchanging drafts. The Sixth VCP Central Committee adopted a multifaceted reform program called "renovation," one of whose aims was "broadening democracy in all fields of social life." 31 The first expression of renovation was the decision to make the National Assembly more a forum for the expression of popular views. Former National assembly tional

—

Chairman Nguyen Huu Tho

called for a distinction

between party

leadership of the Assembly through persuasion by the party

mem-

on would be

bers within the body and that through forcing the party's views the entire membership.

He announced

that secret balloting

used for the first time so that deputies could exercise their own judgment. 32 General Secretary Linh himself criticized the "formalism and bureaucratism" of previous assemblies and insisted that elected bodies must no longer be presented with "faits accomplis" that re-

28.

Nhan Dan,

April

7,

1980.

Pham Hung

asked for a draft law that would consider Vietthe country to be "traitors," whereas the committee advised against such a law. Interview with Ngo Ba Thanh, Ho Chi Minh City, August 1982. 30. Interview with Minister of Justice Phan Hien, Hanoi, August 1982. 29.

Interior Minister

namese who had

left

31. Tran Trong Tan, '"Doi Moi' va Phuong Huong Cong Tac Tu Tuong Truoc Mat" ["Renovation" and the orientation of immediate ideological work], Nhan Dan,

June 32. tion,"

6,

1988.

Nguyen Huu Tho, "The Eighth National Assembly: Some Problems of RenovaTap Chi Cong San, March 1987, FBIS-EAS, May 18, 1987, pp. K6-7.

Political Institutions

75

quired a "rubber stamp." 33 The first step toward a new legislative role for the assembly was to hold secret ballots on substantive issues and to approve the majority position by a public unanimous vote. 34 The election of the chairman of the Council of Ministers (also known as the premier) evolved rather quickly from a pro forma affair to a

more competitive one; when Pham Hung was

elected to the

post in 1987, a few deputies supported candidates other than the winner. 35 In June 1988, with the press observing the entire session for the first time, the assembly moved closer to a real contest for the it elected Do Muoi to replace acting Preand Nguyen Co Thach had asked to withdraw from the election to make it unanimous, but many delegates 36 insisted that there be at least two candidates from which to choose. Kiet received 168 votes of 464 despite the fact that Muoi was the candidate of the Council of Ministers and the Political Bureau. The National Assembly also began publicly questioning and criticizing the government for the first time. In late 1986, encouraged by the Sixth Party Congress, deputies took the government to task

leading state position

mier

Vo Van

when

Kiet. Kiet

for failing to halt the skyrocketing prices of essential goods. 37

during a famine

And

1988 that affected millions of people assembly deputies sharply questioned and criticized government ministers for refusing to listen to the people and government officials, forcing famine-ridden provinces to send rice to the central government, and failing to give the assembly accurate data on the famine. 38 At its December 1988 session the assembly entered yet another phase of development when the principle that the party would set only general orientations on policy issues and allow the assembly to legislate without direct interference was put into operation for the 39 first time. The assembly debated the issue of how to deal with the in

Assembly by VCP general secretary Nguyen Van Linh, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 17, 1987, pp. N6-14. 34. Interview by John McAuliff with National Assembly deputy Nguyen Xuan Oanh, Ho Chi Minh City, March 1987. 35. Mainichi Shimbun, June 21, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 23, 1987, 33.

Address

VNA, June

to the National

17, 1987,

p. 8.

Lao Dong, June 30, 1988; Tien Phong, June 28-July 4, 1988. Tran Dinh Van, "New Year's Letter," Dai Doan Ket, January 29, 1986, JPRSSEA-88-084, pp. 81-82. 38. Tien Phong, July 5-11, 1988; AFP dispatch, July 10, 1988. FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, July 12, 1988, pp. 67-68. 39. Nguyen Huu Tho, "Renovation of Mechanism Pressing Needs of the Renovation Process," Tap Chi Cong San, March 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, 086, May 36. 37.

—

5,

1989, p. 65.

Vietnam

76

budget deficit. 40 Even in mid- 1988 National Assembly deputies had been frustrated in their efforts to get accurate information on the budget, which was still considered a state secret. One deputy received three different sets of figures from different government officials.

41

By 1989 all group meetings as well as plenary sessions of the assembly were reported live on radio and television, and there were heated debates and votes on controversial issues, such as whether or not private newspapers were necessary to ensure press freedom and who might appoint or dismiss the editor of a newspaper. 42 The assembly also voted to postpone final passage of the trade union bill, calling for further consultation with labor unions and revisions be43 fore its resubmission in its next session. The National Assembly has thus become a forum for lively debate and even policy-making on matters of the budget and socio-economic planning. Nevertheless, it is the party leadership, through the Council of Ministers, that controls the legislative agenda. On issues that pit the power of the state against nonparty interests, moreover, the number of voices in the assembly independent of the VCP leadership remains small, as indicated by the vote of 354 to 33 in December 1989 on the provision of the draft press law that ruled out privately owned newspapers. 44 The institutionalization of real autonomy for the National Assembly would depend on allowing more candidates to be elected who are not subject to party discipline, which the

VCP

leadership has not yet accepted. 45

on a draft law, but such a vote indicates internal divisions within the party apparatus rather than genuine autonomy from the government. The case of the bill on the organization of People's Councils and People's Committees in 1989 demonstrated the impact of disunity in leading party and state organs on the National Assembly. Government plans to transform the People's Committees into organs with real authority were drawn up as draft legislation to be presented to the summer Occasionally, the assembly has divided sharply

40. Hanoi Domestic Service, December 20, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, December 22, 1988, pp. 56-58. 41. Interview with a Vietnamese government source who asked to remain unidentified,

42.

January 1990.

VNA, December

30, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report,

January

2,

1990, p.

70.

43. Hanoi Domestic Service, December 29, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, January 2, 1990, p. 69. 44.

VNA, December

28, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report,

December

p. 71.

45. For a discussion of National

Assembly

elections, see

Chap.

6.

28, 1989,

Political Institutions

77

session of the National Assembly. But pressure from the party-state bureaucracy, apparently representing networks of personal influ-

ence extending from the central to the local level, resulted in the government dropping its plan to present the legislation. After the National Assembly delegations of Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and other localities also lobbied for the legislation. The decision was reversed, and it came to the floor of the assembly for debate. But a large percentage of the deputies, who maintained links to local party-state bureaucrats, tried to kill the bill through both arguments and parliamentary procedures. They argued that the establishment of a standing committee would increase the size of the state bureaucracy at a time when great efforts were being made it reduce it and that it would create conflict and rivalry between the two local organs. They called for testing the workability of the new structure in pilot projects before making it a legal requirement. In the end the People's Councils bill was passed over the opposition of more than one-third of the assembly membership. 46 State power is still concentrated primarily in smaller, more compact bodies that are staffed by ranking party leaders. The Council of State is a new institution created by the 1980 constitution to replace both the old Standing Committee of the National Assembly and the position of state chairman, both of which were abolished. The state chairman position, usually referred to as that of president, was occupied only by Ho Chi Minh until his death in 1969 and then by the essentially powerless Ton Due Thang. The Council of State, or State Council, is called the "collective chairman" of the SRV and exercises all the powers of the National Assembly during periods between its meetings. The State Council has the power to interpret the constitution and to annul or modify decrees of the Council of Ministers. It also supervises the work of the Supreme People's Court and the Su-

preme

The

People's Procurate.

emerged as a powerful figure because of accompanying constitutional powers and in part because of the party rank of the incumbent. Apart from leading a body that combines legislative, judicial and exchair of the State Council has

in the state structure, in part

ecutive functions, the chairman serves ex officio as

armed

commander

in

and chairman of the National Defense Council. The first chairman of the State Council, Truong Chinh, was also one of the three most senior party leaders, a former party chief of the

46.

Thai Duy, "Fifth Session of the Eighth National Assembly: A New Step For1 1-17, 1989, JPRS-SEA-89-034, October 26, 1989, pp. 27-

ward," Dai Doan Ket, July 29.

forces

78

Vietnam

secretary-general and former chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly. He was replaced by Political Bureau member Vo Chi Cong in 1987. The Council of Ministers is the central policy-making body within the state structure. Under the chairmanship of the prime minister, it is responsible for the decrees and orders that guide the day-to-day activities of the state bureaucracy. It is also a collective leadership body in which each member is responsible for the decisions of the council. The membership of the Council of Ministers has included a higher number of Political Bureau members than the Council of State, which indicates that it is the most important decision-making center in the government. In 1982 the chairman and prime minister, Pham Van Dong, and five of the nine vice-chairmen were Political Bureau members; in 1987, the chairman, Pham Hung, and four of the nine vice-chairman were Political Bureau members. The decisions of the Council of Ministers are carried out by a large, bulky state administrative apparatus that includes more than 70 ministries, state commissions, general departments, and agencies directly subordinate to the Council of Ministers, and a total of 850 47 line and staff departments and institutes. In large part, the swollen bureaucracy resulted from the tendency of central government bureaucrats to create unnecessary bureaus and sections in some cases, as many as twenty bureaus and one hundred sections in a single ministry or agency. 48 But the size of the state bureaucracy is also a function of the state's intrusive role in the economy. A large part of the central state bureaucracy consists of state corporations and enterprises in industry, agriculture, and trade, both domestic and foreign. In the early 1980s, for example, the Ministry of Foreign Trade had nineteen corporations and enterprises under its control, whereas the Ministry of Agriculture had six. 49 The state apparatus is unitary all the way from central organs through provinces, cities directly managed by central administration

—

Nguyen Nien, "Revolutionary Change in Concept and Deep Reforms Needed Organization of Our Present State Apparatus," Luat Hoc [Legal studies], no. 3, July 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-216, December 12, 1986, p. 72. 48. David W. P. Elliott, "Institutionalizing the Revolution: Vietnam's Search for a 47.

in the

Model of Development,"

in William S. Turley, ed., Vietnamese Communism in Compara(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980), p. 208; Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," pp. 256-57. 49. National Foreign Assessment Center, Central Intelligence Agency, Directory of

tive Perspective

Officials of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,

December 1980, pp. 23-24, 34-36.

Political Institutions

79

and autonomous zones, 50 then to districts and towns controlled by provincial administration, and finally down to the village level. The proliferation of bureaucratic offices extends to lower levels as well.

By the 1980s each province had from thirty-four to forty offices of hundreds of subordinate sections. Many of these offices extend down to the distinct level as well. Le Due Tho 51

central state organs with

declared in 1984 that the state's table of organization could be cut by one-half to two-thirds without reducing its effectiveness. 52 The People's Councils, popularly elected at the village and district levels, are supposed to be the supreme authority at each level of

government in provinces, autonomous zones, and cities directly under the central administration; districts, towns managed by provincial administration, provincial capitals and city wards; and villages. According to the 1974 law governing their operations, the Administrative Committees were to "carry out resolutions of the People's Councils at their own levels and the resolutions, decrees and decisions, circular letters and directives of the higher echelon state organ." 53 But the People's Councils have never been endowed with the political authority necessary to give them real control over the local

Administrative Committees.

The VCP were

always

bemoaned

effectively powerless

the fact that the People's Councils

but failed to do anything about

renovation program of the

late 1980s.

it

until the

In the early 1960s, most party

cadres viewed the People's Councils as purely "symbolic" organs

without any real political function. 54 It was generally understood within the VCP that "people regarded policy directives of the Party as nearly like law," so party cadres simply transmitted those through

mass organizations

to get faster implementation. In a

number of

re-

50. Autonomous zones are regional administrations for provinces with largely minority populations which are supposed to help the central administration reconcile national policies with cultural peculiarities of the zone. They are not "autonomous" but are under the "direct management of the central government." Vu Van Hoan,

"Local Organs of State Power," in An Outline of Institutions of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1974), p. 72. 51. "Renovation of Organization and Operational Methods of the Political System," Nhan Daw, July 7, 1989, p. 3, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, p. 54. 52. Le Due Tho, "Bao Cao ve Xay Dung Dang" [Report on party building], Xay Dung Dang trong Cach Mang Xa Hoi Chu Nghia o Viet Nam [Party building in the Socialist revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Su That, 1986), p. 485. 53. "Law Organizing People's Councils and Administrative Committees at All Echelons," To Chuc Nha Nuoc Viet-Nam Dan Chu Cong Hoa [The state organization of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam] (Hanoi: Su That, 1974), p. 127. 54. Tan Chi, "To Realize More Clearly the Role of People's Councils," Nhan Dan, November 24, 1962, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, December 17, 1962,

UJ10-13.

Vietnam

80

gions, the councils did not

even meet regularly, and where they did,

the elected representatives either failed to attend or did so only as a

matter of form. 55 A quarter-century later, nothing had changed. People's Council meetings were still only a formality to approve decisions made by the 56 Administrative Committee at that level. People's Councils had no Standing Committee, without which they could not operate in between its sessions, and their meetings were held in the offices of the

They remained

People's Committees. People's Committees.

57

In 1988 the

firmly

VCP

under the control of the

leadership decided to up-

grade the role of the People's Councils, but did not give them a standing committee, without which they could not compete with the 58 Only in 1989, after a struggle within the People's Committees. party-state bureaucracy, were they finally given the capability for independent decision making. 59 The principle of an independent judiciary is ambiguous in Vietnamese law and ideology. In the Vietnamese system the judicial system is subordinate both to the party leadership and to other branches of the state. Like the National Assembly, the People's Courts did not function during the resistance war against the French; their functions were fulfilled by a system of military courts. The only Supreme Court consisted of the president of the Republic and the minister of the interior, and it ruled only on cases of high treason. 60 Until 1958 People's Courts at each level were directly under the dual supervision of both the higher courts and the administrative

committees. 61

The Supreme

People's Court was established as the highest judi-

55. Vu Hoan, "Gop Y Kien ve Van De Lam The Nao Phat Huy Hon Nua Tac Dung cua Hoi Dong Nhan Dan Cac Cap" [Opinions on how to develop further the all echelons], in Nghien Cuu Nha Nuoc va Phap Luat [Research on the state and law], (Hanoi: Khoa Hoc, 1964), 2: 210. 56. Trinh Nguyen, "Some Questions about the Organization and Operation of the Management Machinery of Our State in the Present Revolutionary Stage," Luat Hoc, no. 4, October-December 1985, pp. 40-49, JPRS-SEA-86-191, October 27, 1986, p. 94; speech by Vo Chi Cong to national conference on People's Councils, Nhan Dan,

effectiveness of Peoples Councils at

November 13, 1987. 57. Nhan Dan, June

16, 1989;

Thai Duy, "Fifth Session of the Eight National As-

sembly," p. 28.

Text of Central Committee Secretariat

58.

ber

8,

59.

60. cratic

directive,

Quan Doi Nhan Dan, Septem-

1988.

For details, see pp. 75-77. Bernard B. Fall, The Viet Minh Regime: Government and Administration Republic of Viet-Nam

versity Southeast Asia

(New York:

in the

Demo-

Institute of Pacific Relations with Cornell Uni-

Program, 1956), pp. 30-31.

People's Court, Highest Judiciary Organ in the DRV," Supreme Court of the USSR, no. 3 (Moscow, 1961), JPRS, Translations on North Vietnam, no. 4940, September 5, 1961, p. 25. 61. V. Kolnikov,

Bulletin of the

"Supreme

81

Political Institutions

organ only in 1958. The chief justice is elected by the National Assembly from among its own members; the other judges of the Supreme People's Court are chosen and dismissed by the Council of State on the proposal of its Chairman, and the Court's activities are supervised by the Council of State. The People's Court judges at provincial or city and district levels are chosen by and may be dismissed by the People's Councils at those levels. 62 Although the constitution asserts judges and jurors are independent during trials, and party statutes forbid pressure on judges to violate the law, these guarantees of independence are vitiated by the cial

principle that party officials are responsible for bringing the general trend of judicial judgments into line with party policy. The chief justice of the Supreme Court wrote in 1981, "It is incorrect to think that the Party is not allowed to direct or should not direct the work courts just because, in administering justice, of people's are independent and subject only to law." 63 The People's judges Courts at provincial and district levels work in close cooperation with administrative committees. 64 Early each year, the judicial sector holds a conference to review its work for the previous year and to plan its "orientation and tasks" for the next year with the guidance of a .

.

.

high-level party official. 65

In practice, state agencies and local state organs are frequently

judgments that they do not one relatively untrained cadre responsible for executing its judgments. 66 As of 1987, there were no state regulations on the execution of court judgments. Such regulations had been submitted to the Council of State but had not yet been ratified and promulgated. 67 Even the Supreme Court had no real enforcement capability, as was illustrated by its inability to enforce its ruling of September 1984 that the vice-minister of foreign trade had to return the house he had arbitrarily occupied to its rightful owner. The vice-minister, with the support of the minister of foreign trade, was able to defy able to prevent the execution of court like.

A

typical district court has only

62. Texts of the laws organizing the National Assembly, Council of State,

People's Courts, Luat To Chuc [Organizing law] (Hanoi:

and the

Nha Xuat Ban Phap

Ly,

1981), pp. 10-15,53. 63. Pham Hung, "People's Courts

and the Implementation of the Constitution and the Enforcement of Law," Tap Chi Cong San, August 1981, FBIS, October 9, 1981, p. 9.

Le Kim Que, "The People's Courts," An Outline of Institutions, p. 99. NhanDan, February 14, 1982. 66. Nguyen Van Sam, "Local People's Courts Help Strengthen State Management," Phap Che Xa Hoi ChuNghia [Socialist law], January-February 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-201, November 14, 1986, pp. 92-93. 64. 65.

67. Saigon Giai Phong, April 7, 1987.

82

Vietnam

both the Supreme People's Court and the Peoples Committee of Ha68 noi, and nearly three years later, he was still occupying the house. investigating, inspecting, agencies in and conThe SRV is awash trolling state and party institutions to ensure that their actions are lawful: party and Administrative Committees have their own inspection organs at each level; mass organizations such as the Confedera69 However, tion of Labor have their own inspection organs as well. the People's Procurate, or Control Organ, created by the 1960 constitution is the primary legal watchdog of the government. It is reall the activities and orders of government organs under the authority of the Council of Ministers,

sponsible for ensuring that

including investigations, detention, prosecution,

trial,

sentencing,

accordance with the law. The chief procurator, like the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is elected by the National Assembly and must be one of its members, whereas the other members of the Supreme People's Control Organ are chosen and dismissed by the Council of State. Personnel of the Control Organ at lower levels are named by and are under the direction of the

and execution of sentences are

in

chief procurator. 70

The Control Organ

each echelon has wide-ranging powers to government agencies at or below that level. It can demand explanations, documents, or investigations by government units; amend or nullify any government measure that violates the law; request an end to specific activities, bring legal actions against those responsible, and award appropriate compensation to individuals victimized by state organs. Much of the work of the Control organ is concentrated on the work of the People's Courts and security organs regarding investigation, trial, and detention. 71 In practice, however, the Control Organ has no power vis-a-vis state security organs if the latter wishes to fend off investigate

and

at

to act to correct illegal actions by

interference in their dealing with detainees, especially those sent to

reeducation camps.

Because the Vietnamese state has been involved in military conflict during most of its existence, the Vietnam People's Army has been a major socioeconomic as well as political institution. During the conflict with China in the 1980s, the VPA had 1.1 million regular troops 68. Hanoi Domestic Service, May 14, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 2, 1987, pp. N5-7. 69. Thach Gian, Tim Hieu Bo May Nha Nuoc: Vien Kien Sat Nhan Dan [Studying the state apparatus: The people's organ of control] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Phap Ly,

1982), pp. 17-18. 70. Text of law organizing the People's Procurate, Organizing Law, pp. 70-73. 71. Ibid., pp. 74-84.

Political Institutions

83

backed up by three million trained reserves. In 1987, an estimated one of every three adult males belonged to a military organization. 72 The VPA also nearly monopolized the country's capabilities for construction in transportation, communications, irrigation, and hydropower. Moreover, it was more disciplined and efficient than any other institution in society. That factor undoubtedly explains why the State Planning Commission decided to select VPA officers and

NCOs open

to

fill

two-thirds of the district level administrative positions

in 1977.

73

In comparison with the Soviet and Chinese parties, the Vietnamese party was able to avoid any major conflict between civilian military leadership in

its

first

and

three decades in power largely be-

cause the leaders of the Vietnam People's Army were not profes74 General Vo sional military men but ranking party leaders first.

Nguyen Giap,

for example, represented a far broader political per-

been active in both urban beginning of the anti-French resistance. By the 1980s he had taken on science and technology as his primary issue. The party's own statutes put the VPA "under the party's absolute, direct, comprehensive leadership." The key mechanism for party spective than that of the military, having

and rural

issues long before the

control has been the Central Military Party

Committee (CMPC), with

both military and nonmilitary members appointed by the Central Committee and operating under the direct leadership of the Political Bureau and the Secretariat. The CMPC supervises the work of the party within the VPA, which is organized in a vertical system extending from basic units to the General Political Directorate at the top. 75 The position of top VPA generals within the leadership has always been significant but also clearly circumscribed. Since 1975 at least two members of the Political Bureau have been VPA generals in Thayer, "The Vietnam People's January 1987, pp. 1, 7.

72. Carlyle A.

72,

Army Today,"

Indochina Issues, no.

73. William S. Turley, "The Military Construction of Socialism: Postwar Roles of the People's Army of Vietnam," David G. Marr and Christine P. White, in Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas of Socialist Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia

Program, 1988), pp. 206-7.

"The Political Role and Development of the People's Joseph Zasloff and MacAlister Brown, eds., Indochina in Conflict: New Perspectives (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1974), pp. 24-45; William S. Turley, "Origins and Development of Communist Military Leadership in Vietnam," Armed Forces and Society 3 (Winter 1977), 219-48. 75. Carlyle A. Thayer, "Vietnam," in Zakaria Haji Ahmad and Harold Crouch, 74. See William S. Turley,

Army,"

in

eds., Military-Civilian Relations in Southeast Asia (Singapore:

Oxford University

1985), pp. 245-46; Turley, "Military Construction of Socialism," p. 200.

Press,

Vietnam

84

each of its three incarnations. On the other hand, the trend since the end of the second Indochina War has been for the percentage of Central Committee seats occupied by VPA general officers to decline.

76

VPA generals have also been prominent in the state apparatus, holding five of thirty-three ministerial posts, including the Defense Ministry. But three of these posts (supply, construction, and communications and transport) have reflected the VPA's capabilities in logistics and engineering and the role the VPA has played in economic development in the postwar period. Since 1975 new VPA units have built roads, rail lines,

and power

projects

and cleared

agricultural

A

General Directorate for Economic Development was set up in the Defense Ministry to command them, and by 1982, there were 77 16 "economic construction divisions" in the VPA. land.

Party-State Relations

The VCP ple that

has operated since

its

early days in

power by the

princi-

leadership of the society must be "direct, unified and

its

The

detailed."

78

deciding

all "policies,

maintained by all important organizational and cadre problems by controlling all activities of state organs and by placing party cadres in key positions in those organs. 79 Although the VCP is supposed to "lead the state, but not replace the state," 80 confusion about the division of function between party and state has been a fundamental problem of the Vietnamese political system from the beginning. As Nguyen Khac Vien observed party's leadership over the state

plans

is

and major methods" and

Figures for military representation in the Central Committee vary, depending alternate members are included and certain officers are considered to be active duty or not. According to Turley, the percentage of VPA officers among full voting members in the Central Committee decreased from 25.6 percent in 1960 to 23.8 percent in 1976 and to somewhere between 15.5 and 19 percent in 1982 (Turley, "Military Construction of Socialism," p. 198); Thayer's figures are 15 percent in 1960, 16 percent in 1976, 13 percent in 1982, and 7 percent in 1986 (Carlyle A. Thayer, "The Regularization of Politics: Continuity and Change in the Party's Central Committee: 1951-1986," in Marr and White, Postwar Vietnam, p. 187). 77. Turley, "Military Construction of Socialism," p. 206. 76.

on whether

78.

Viet

Pham Van Dong, "Tang Cuong Cung Co Chinh Quyen Dan Chu Nhan Dan Nam" [Consolidate the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam], in

Mot So Van De

ve

Nha Nuoc [Some problems regarding

the state] (Hanoi: Su That,

1980), p. 41. 79. Le Duan, Phat Huy Quyen Lam Chu Tap The Xay Dung Nha Nuoc Vung Manh [Develop the right of collective mastery, build a strong state] (Hanoi: Su That, 1978), p. 91.

80. Ibid, p. 69.

85

Political Institutions

in 1987,

"from the period of underground

activities,

then through

protracted war, the Party mechanism has for too long been all-encompassing, enveloping state organs. Party echelons from central to village seize every concrete

problem and resolve

it

directly, eclipsing

81 the role of state organs."

Bureau never adopted a clear and conguidance should be on socioeconomic guidance encroached on the tasks of the Council of

For decades, the sistent line

on how

Political

specific

its

and that At the Fifth Party Congress in 1982, the VCP leadership acknowledged that it was still not clear which problems should be put before the Political Bureau. 82 Until 1988 the Political Bureau not only worked out the general orientation of the annual state plan and budget but actually made detailed planning and budgetary deci83 This all-encompassing Political Bureau role eliminated any sions. possibility of a divergence between party and state leadership at the top, but it also absorbed much of the time and energy of key Political Bureau members in policy implementation. So the Political Bureau decided in 1988 that it would decide only the "major orientations and tasks" and the "most important objectives," leaving the detailed issues,

Ministers.

contents of the socioeconomic plans to the Council of Ministers. 84 Party leaders have long conceded that too

many members of

the

Bureau were serving in state organs, which diverted their time from broader leadership functions. 85 The detailed supervision of policy by the Political Bureau has also tended to paralyze the state Political

apparatus because urgent decisions cannot be made without its approval. In 1988 it became apparent to some ministries that Vietnam faced a serious food deficit, but they could not purchase rice abroad without action by the Political Bureau, which was slow to act on the issue.

86

The

various Central Committee departments have also

become

di-

would normally fall unministries and agencies. Although everyone

rectly involved in resolving policy issues that

der the powers of in the 81.

VCP

state

agrees in principle that the party only sets orientations,

Nguyen Khac

Vien,

"Then Chot

.

.

.

Cai

To Bo May" [The

key

[is

to]

reorga-

nize the machinery], Lao Dong, no. 20, May 24, 1987, p. 2. 82. Le Due Tho, Report on party building, p. 411. 83. 84. tional

Vietnam News Agency, December 23, 1988, FBIS, December 27, 1988, p. 74. Address by Vo Chi Cong to a meeting of the heads of delegations to the NaAssembly, December 15, 1989, Hanoi Domestic Service, December 19, 1989,

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, December 2, 1989, p. 65. 85. See the interview by Nayan Chanda with Hoang Tung, Far Eastern Economic Review, February 27, 1981, p. 32. 86. David Marr, "Which Way Forward?" Vietnam Today (Canberra), no. 46, August 1988, p.

3.

86

Vietnam

whereas the state has the primary responsibility for "managing social the working relationships between those VCP departments, the

life,"

and state agencies whose functions overlap with being debated after the Sixth Party Congress. In 1989 it was agreed for the first time that the VCP departments could not deal directly with state organs, and that the party Secretariat would communicate with them if it agreed with suggestions of VCP Departments. 87 In government ministries and state enterprises the party has historically relied on party groups or "cadre affairs sections" (ban can su) within each office to ensure that party lines and policies were carried out in the office. Managers of the ministries, offices, or enterprises were supposed to have full authority over policy implementation, but they had to submit their proposals for the tasks and policies of their branches or enterprises for the year to the party group or work committee. 88 The party group often had difficulty avoiding either the error of "enveloping leadership" that would interfere with the actual implementation of policy or the equally serious error of "superficial leadership" that failed to provide sufficient guidance. 89 These arrangements created constant confusion over the authority of the managers and caused them to lose prestige. Finally, the VCP decided at its Fifth Party Congress to drop the work committees and 90 to reinforce the responsibility of the managers. At the provincial and district levels it has been standard practice for the Administrative Committees to be led by the deputy secretary of the party committee for that level while the party secretary devotes himself to full time to party work. 91 At the village level, traditionally either the party secretary or deputy secretary has been the chair of the Administrative Committee, and those two party leaders have been in charge of the village militia and security personnel. The majority of the Administrative Committee comprises VCP members. 92 Thus, Administrative Committees at provincial, district, and local levels have been, in effect, extensions of the party commitparty Secretariat,

them were

still

Nguyen Huu Tho, "Renovation of Mechanism," p. 65. Le Due Tho, Bao Cao Tong Ket Cong Tac Xay Dung Dang va Sua Doi Dieu Le Dang [General report on party building work and the amendment of the party statute] (Hanoi: Su That, 1977), p. 116. 87. 88.

89.

Elliott,

"Revolutionary Reintegration,"

p.

282-83.

Le Due Tho, Report on party building, p. 412. 91. Private communication from David Elliott, June 1978. 92. Francois Houtart and Genevieve Lemercinier, Hai Van: Life in a Vietnamese Commune (London: Zed Books, 1984), pp. 71-72; Tran Nhu Trang, "Transformation of 90.

the Peasantry," p. 479.

Political Institutions

people have regarded the directives of having the force of law. 93

tees, so

tees as

local party

87

commit-

Mass Organizations

The

function of the third

component of the Vietnamese

political

major socioeconomic sectors and interest groups in society with the party. The major mass organizations include the Vietnam Women's Union, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the National Peasants' Union, (formerly the Collective Peasants' Union), the Vietnam Confederation of Workers, and the Vietnam Fatherland Front, which maintains links with religious figures and intellectuals. These organizations, reprelabor unions, peasants, women, senting all major social categories are quasi-governmental. youth, intellectuals, and religious groups Their primary role is to persuade key social groups to support and carry out VCP lines and policies. They are also supposed to provide a means by which the party can maintain an accurate assessment of moods and attitudes among these groups. 94 In the past, mass organizations have been used by the party to achieve a wide variety of socioeconomic and political objectives. The Youth Union (for ages fifteen to thirty) and the Women's Association, for example, mobilized farm families to participate in agricultural cooperatives. And the Youth Union had the mission of motivating young men to join the military during the war. 95 After the war, the Youth Union mobilized youth to form volunteer labor units in "new economic zones" and organized youth inspection teams to struggle against the theft of public property, bribery, and other abuses in state organs and enterprises. 96 The Youth Union is regarded by the party as the main training ground for future recruits because young people usually join the Youth Union with the intention of becoming members of the party. 97 The Central Committee of the Youth Union, moreover, is placed system, the mass organizations,

to link

is

—

93.

Vu Hoan, "Gop Y

—

Kien," p. 193.

Le Due Tho, Report on party building, pp. 415-16. 95. Excerpts from Central Committee resolutions of September 28, 1967, and March 15, 1970, Van Kien Dang Ve Cong Tac Thanh Nien [Party documents on youth 94.

work] (Hanoi:

Thanh

Nien, 1974), marked "For Internal Circulation," pp. 195-96,

244. 96.

and

Thanh Nien, August 1977, Hanoi Domestic Service, June 14, 1981, FBIS, Asia June 16, 1981, p. Kll. Tran Nhu Trang, "Transformation of the Peasantry," p. 485.

Pacific Daily Reports,

97.

Vietnam

88

under the guidance of the party Central Committee. 98 Since 1962 most of the new recruits to the VCP have, in fact, come from the ranks of the Youth Union. The percentage of new recruits to the party coming from the Youth Union increased steadily from 49 percent in 1961 to 94 percent in 1975 and then began to recede in the directly

1970s."

late

Until recently the

Vietnam Confederation of Workers'

task

was

to

"ensure the concentrated guidance of the state" in the workplace by "mobilizing the masses by means of education and persuasion." 100 Thus, the unions have never had the function of defending the interests of the workers against management; rather they have been responsible for collaborating with the state in the management of state enterprises.

101

Each of the mass organizations is linked tightly to the VCP by means of Central Committee members in their key leadership posts, "party groups" (dang doan) within the executive committees of each

mass organization, and by the requirement that their activities be based on the party's line and policies. The presidents (chairs of the executive committees) of the Women's Union, the Fatherland Front, and the Confederation of Labor have long been Central Committee members. Nguyen Van Linh was a Political Bureau member when he served as president of the Confederation of Workers in the late 1970s. The party group within the executive committee of each mass organization is nominated by the party explicitly

chapter within the organizations and operates under the direction of the central party leadership. 102

Although some mass organizations claim very large memberships, they are far from integrating the entire population into such quasi-

The Labor Confederation claimed a membership of 84 percent of the workers and civil servants in the entire country

official structures.

in the early 1980s.

103

The

Collective Peasants Union, established in

1979, had an estimated 10 million 98. Excerpt

work,

members

from Vietnam Workers' Party

in 1985,

Statute, in Party

but nearly 99

documents on youth

p. 77.

Thanh Mm, January 1980, JPRS-75-763, Vietnam Report, no. 2190, May 23, By the early 1980s, the army had replaced the Youth Union as the main source of new members. See Nhan Dan editorial, Hanoi Domestic Service, November 22, 1982, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, December 1, 1982, p. K6. 100. Bui Quy, "Quan He giua Cong Doan va Nha Nuoc" [Relations between labor unions and the state], Hoc Tap, no. 5, May 1963, p. 44. 101. Lao Dong, April 17, 1965, JPRS 30,218, Translations on North Vietnam, no. 99.

1980.

175,

May

102. 103.

24, 1965, p. 6.

Le Due Tho, General Report, p. 115. Lao Dong, August 29, 1985, JPRS-SEA-85-181, November

27, 1985, p. 130.

Political Institutions

89

percent of the membership was in the North. In the South, membership in the union appears to have been only about 50 percent of the

membership of production cooperatives and collectives. 104 The Youth Union has been relatively unsuccessful in recruiting young people. It claimed a membership in 1974 of 2.5 million in the

DRV,

or about 55 percent of the estimated youth population in the North. 105 But after reunification, it admitted that only 30 percent of the youth in Northern provinces between the ages of 15 and 30 were actually Youth Union members and only about 10 percent of the 106 Despite an increase in memtotal youth population in the South. bership to 4.5 million members by 1981, it still represented only 30 percent of the total eligible population, and in the South the per-

centage was only 5 to 8 percent. 107 By 1987 Youth Union membership in the South had declined even further to an estimated 1 to 2 percent of the age group. 108 The Vietnam Fatherland Front, which replaced the earlier Vietnam National Union (Lien Viet) in 1955, is intended to be the em-

bodiment of the national united front. It was not originally a mass membership organization but comprised other organizations and selected "patriotic personalities" by invitation only. But since 1977 any interested individual has been able to join. 109 Affiliated with the Front are all the associations mentioned as well as several associations of writers, artists, and other professionals, the Viet Nam Students' Union, the Industrialists and Traders' Union, organizations representing proregime Buddhists, Catholics, and Cao Dai, and, until 1988, two minor political parties founded in the mid- 1940s: the Vietnam Democratic Party, which represented, in theory, the "national bourgeoisie" and the Socialist Party, representing socialist 110 intellectuals. The Front has committees at national, provincial, district, and local levels with representatives from as many organizations and social categories as possible, each headed by a leading party

member

at that echelon.

104. Vietnam News Agency, December 17, 1984, JPRS-SEA-85-0 15, January 24, 1985, p. 1 18; Nguyen Van Linh, Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh: 10 Nam [Ho Chi Minh City: 10 years], JPRS-SEA-87- 104, August 26, 1987, p. 145. 105.

NhanDan, Feburary

19, 1974.

Thanh Nien, January 1978, p. 2. Even in the North, many villages still had no Youth Union organization. See Tien Phong, June 29, 1976. 107. Thanh Nien, October 10, 1981, JPRS 79958, June 27, 1982, no. 2339, pp. 1-5. 108. Nhan Dan, November 20, 1987. 109. Interview with Ngo Ba Thanh, member of the VFF Central Committee, Ho Chi Minh City, November 1978. 110. In October 1988 both the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party dissolved 106.

themselves.

Vietnam

90

Much and

of the VFF's work has focused on intellectuals, merchants, The primary task of the Front in Ho Chi Minh

religious figures.

City in 1978, for example, was to persuade capitalists to accept the

reform of trade. " Through its Catholic members, the Front has also served as a channel of communication between the state and the Church and as a mechanism for managing the strains between them. In 1976 it persuaded the government and the Church to negotiate an agreement under which a group of Catholic priests accused of plotting against the government would confess their guilt publicly in return for which the state would forego a public trial that would single out Catholics. 112 But the Front is also expected to be a 1

socialist

"thread connecting the masses to the party" that keeps the party 113 leadership informed of public opinion. In addition to these functions the VFF has a role in the electoral VFF committees at each level have the authority to organize

process.

and on the

the process of nominating candidates for the National Assembly People's Councils.

The VFF

is

directed to achieve consensus

of nominees through joint conferences involving party officials, mass organizations, and officials of local state organs; to organize nomination conferences by mass organization, economic sector, and locality in line with the decisions at joint conferences; to gather comments from laboring people on the nominees; and to organize conferences to endorse the candidates. 114 After the concept of renovation of political institutions was introduced at the Sixth Party Congress of 1986, it was admitted openly that mass organizations had long been bureaucratic and undemocratic. A respected figure in the VCP charged that the Fatherland Front had been for many years "at the point of death." 115 It was criticized for having failed to transmit the opinions of the masses to the party,

list

instead

using a

masses. 116

method of

information" to the said by one of its cadres to have

"unidirectional

The Youth Union was

become "administrativized, formularized, old, weak and retarded," and its leadership was criticized for its "remoteness" from its members.

VCP

General-Secretary Linh suggested that a large proportion

Interview with Bui Huu Nhan, Ho Chi Minh City External Affairs Depart10, 1978. 112. Interview with Ngo Ba Thanh, November 1978. 113. Dam Hien, "Some Problems on Front Work Requiring Concern and Solution," DaiDoanKet, August 27, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-189, October 22, 1986, p. 105. 114. Huynh Tan Phat, "The Most Important Task of the Front in the Elections Is to Hold Discussions to Recommend Qualified Candidates," Dai Doan Ket, February 15, 1987, JPRS-SEA-87-061, April 28, 1987, pp. 46-48. 115. Tran Bach Dang, "Doi Moi Cong Tac Mat Tran vi Mot Mat Tran Doi Moi" [Renovate front work for a renovated front], Dai Doan Ket, April 30, 1988, p. 2. 116. Dam Hien, "Some Problems on Front Work," p. 105. 111.

ment, November

Political Institutions

91

of Youth Union members joined the organization primarily to avoid minimum test standards for college entrance or to be able to study and work abroad two of the advantages of membership. 117 Youth Union officials admitted that only about one-third of its 160,000 118 chapters were considered active. Even before renovation began, Nguyen Van Linh noted that the role of the labor confederation and trade union activities in Ho Chi Minh City were "still hazy." 119 Trade unions were not truly independent of the management of production units but had followed the orders of the enterprise directors. 120 Trade union chapter heads are often "taken care of by corrupt managerial personnel and thus become part of the clique that exploits workers. 121 After becoming VCP general-secretary, Nguyen Van Linh admitted that trade unions were ridiculed by workers as "the fifth wheel" in enter-

—

prises.

122

One problem traditionally

with mass organizations has been that the party has viewed them as the least important political institutions

and has assigned

its

least

capable cadres to lead them at various ech-

Cadres doing "Front work" have been given poor pay and allowances and few or no office facilities and equipment, especially at the village level. VFF cadres have complained for years about the discrepancies between their pay and working conditions and those of cadres assigned to economic branches. The work of heading the Front at district level has been regarded as so undesirable that district party committee members assigned to chair district Front committees usually feel they are being "disciplined." 123 VCP efforts to make the mass organizations more responsive to their memberships have included encouraging debate, making suggestions, and actually carrying out some steps toward limited democratization and greater independence of local state organs, but not of the party. By 1988 the VCP leaders and trade union officials had elons.

117. Doan Ket (Paris), January 1988, JPRS-SEA-88-024, p. 34. According to the Youth Union's organ, 89 percent of the youths who went abroad under the labor cooperation agreements, which was considered a privilege, were members of the Youth Union (Thanh Nien, August 1989). 118. NhanDan, March 25, 1988.

119.

Nguyen Van Linh, Ho Chi Minh

120. Saigon Giai Phong,

October

City, p. 143.

1986. 121. Khanh Van, "Social Fairness," Quan Dot SEA-87-060, April 27, 1987, p. 98. 122. Service,

8,

Nhan Dan, January

10, 1987,

JPRS-

Speech to Sixth Congress of the Vietnamese Trade Unions, Hanoi Domestic October 17 and 18, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, October 20, 1988, p.

65.

Ngo Ton Dao (chairman, Fatherland Front Committee of Minh Hai Prov"Some Thoughts on Fatherland Front Work at Grassroots," Dai Doan Ket, September 30, 1981, J PRS 79579, December 3, 1981, VNR no. 2326, pp. 20-21, 106. 123.

ince),

Vietnam

92

reexamine and debate the trade unions' structure and relaOne party official noted that the Labor Confederation had originally been set up on a "wartime configuration"

begun

to

tionship with the state. as a highly centralized is

"command

system."

Its

Executive Committee

elected at a national congress of delegates that operates analo-

gously to a party congress. He proposed that the system be reorganized along occupational union lines with a "central council" whose members would be elected by the occupational unions them124 selves, so that it would operate in more decentralized fashion. The official organ of the federation called for the elimination of "an incorrect notion of one-way unity between the federation and the state," that is, complete subordination of labor union organiza125 Some writers challenged the orthodox notion that tion to the state. because the proletarian state itself protects the interests of the workers, the primary role of the labor unions is to be a "school for socialism." They argued that the main purpose of the labor unions should be to protect the interests of the union members because it is 126 The draft bill on labor in the nature of the state to be bureaucratic. unions passed by the National Assembly in 1989 embraced both functions, but a draft program on party "mass proselytizing work" put primary emphasis on the role of unions in "protecting [the] le127 gitimate, legal interests" of the workers. There were some limited moves toward democratization of trade union elections in 1988-1989. Elections for executive committees of the unions at congresses at district, provincial, factory coalition, and branch levels in 1988 were more open than before. Workers were allowed for the first time to nominate themselves for the committees, and, in some cases, self-nominated candidates accounted for 10 to 15 percent of the membership. In Ho Chi Minh City as many as 40 percent of the trade union secretaries elected reportedly were not party members. 128

One 124.

party official suggested in 1988 that the youth organization

Comments

by Dinh Van Khai on the "Draft Report of the Executive CommitVietnam Labor Confederation to the Sixth National Trade Union ConHanoi Domestic Service, August 15, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, Au-

tee of the gress,"

gust 16, 1988, p. 52. 125. "Doi Moi Tu Duy Cong Tac Cong Doan" [Renovate thinking in labor union work], Lao Dong, March 31, 1988. 126. See the debate on the role of the trade unions in Lao Dong, June 16, 1988, p. 7.

127.

Hanoi Domestic

Service,

February

5,

1990, FBIS-EAS-90-028, February 9,

1990, p. 58. 128. "Dai

Hoi Cong Doan Cac Cap Co Gi Moi?" [Is anything new at various echelons?], Lao Dong, July 21, 1988, p. 1.

union congresses

in the trade

Political Institutions

93

needed to "organize independent bases capable of carrying out activon their own initiative." 129 Some Youth Union cadres argued that because the organization was completely dependent on the state and did not respond to the needs of its membership, there should be an entirely new youth organization that would permit the members themselves to determine its objectives. They demanded as well that the Vietnam Youth Federation and the Vietnam Students' Association, which are now under the authority of the Youth Union, become independent and compete with the union for membership. But the VCP rejected these demands with a stern rebuke, reminding the cadres that such views were "inconsistent with the viewpoint of our party on construction and organization of the revolutionary ities

masses." 130

changed its name to the Vietnam Peasants' Union and was opened to all farmers, whether members of cooperatives or not. The new organizational framework was aimed at making the association more responsive 131 According to to peasant "thoughts, aspirations and suggestions." one provincial-level union official, the purpose of the Peasants' Union was to "protect poor peasants from exploitation by the local cadre." 132 At the union's first congress, delegates called for peasants to be guaranteed at least 40 to 50 percent of their crops and for the cooperative management apparatus to be reduced by at least onehalf. They further complained about state procurement prices and the failure of state commercial enterprises to pay promptly. 133 VCP General-Secretary Nguyen Van Linh supported the aim of struggling against abuses by cadres in villages, hamlets, and cooperatives. But he warned that protecting the peasants interests "certainly does not mean running after the partial and temporary interests of peasants ... at the expense of the general, fundamental and longterm interests of the entire society." 134 In other words, party control over the union would be used to ensure that it did not depart from the state's lines and policies.

The

Collective Peasants' Union, meanwhile,

129. Nguyen Van Tung, "From the Speech of Secretary General Nguyen Linh," Thanh Nien, February 1988, JPRS-SEA-88-028, June 20, 1988, p. 39. 130. Nhan Dan, November 8, 1989. 131.

Vo Chi Cong,

ment of the

"Doi Moi

Van

Quan Ly Kinh Te Nong Nghiep" [Renovate manageNhan Dan, May 9, 1988.

agricultural economy],

132. David Wurfel, "Perestroika, Vietnamese Style: Problems and Prospects," Vietnam: Facing the 1990s, University of Toronto- York University Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, Asia Papers, no.

133. 134.

March

Nhan Dan,

1,

1989, p. 38.

April 4, 1988.

Address by Nguyen Van Linh, March 28, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, 30, 1988, p. 59.

Vietnam

94

Efforts to rejuvenate mass organizations have confronted a contra-

between the two principles that are supposed to guide their VCP: on one hand, party committees are supposed to "respect the organizational independence of mass organization," whereas on the other hand, they "must assume close leadership over mass organizations" by setting their objectives and 135 This contradiction clearly constrains offiassigning their cadres. cials of mass organizations from enhancing their autonomy from the diction

relationships with the

central party-state bureaucracy.

The Agricultural Cooperative as a

The

Political Institution

agricultural cooperative, although not officially an organ of

the state, nevertheless has been a political institution with a quasi-state

character.

It is

within the cooperative that economic decisions affect-

ing the daily lives of most Vietnamese peasants have been made,

such as assignments of labor and work points. The key decisionmaking bodies in the cooperatives have been the congress of cooper-

members, the director, the Management Committee, the ConBoard, and the heads of the cooperative production brigades. Historically, there has been a good deal of jockeying for power between the management level and the brigades. The director, the Management Committee, and the Control Board are elected every two years by the annual congress of cooperative members, whereas the head of each brigade is elected by its own members. The congress is supposed to meet three times a year and has the formal authority to decide the production plan, work organization, and distribution of benefits to the membership. In practice, however, power was always concentrated in the hands of the director and the Management Committee. Until 1988, the Management Committee established the cash value of work points earned by brigade members, which, in turn, determined the level of taxes to be paid to the state. With the effective end of collectivization of agricultural land, however, that function has disappeared. The relationship between the Management Committee, the brigades, and households has evolved through several historical stages. In the early 1960s, the brigades were mobile production groups that had no fixed membership and could be shifted from one field to another. They did not have their own land, draft animals, or other ative trol

135. "Political Report of the Central Committee JPRS-SEA-87-066, May 7, 1987, p. 87.

at the Sixth

National Congress,"

Political Institutions

95

means of production. This organization of labor was unpopular with members and did not encourage high productivity. As production brigades gained fixed membership and assignments of land for a single harvest and then for a three-to five-year period, 136 the brigades became more institutionalized. Each brigade demanded an equal amount of equipment and land the cooperative

of equal productivity so that the incomes of the various brigades would be relatively equal. The brigades were responsible for the entire production cycle and entered into three contracts with the cooperative on their norms for the number of total work days and work points, total output, and expenses. They became, in effect, small, cooperatives,

self-sufficient

independent from the Management

Comittee. 137 In 1974 the party and state began a radical reorganization of the cooperatives aimed at eliminating the self-sufficient rice-production

brigades and reestablishing the authority of the mittee over their economic

were limited harvesting;

teams.

The

activities.

The

Management Com-

rice-production brigades

to three basic functions: transplanting,

manuring, and

other functions were to be carried out by specialized Management Committee coordinated the activities of the all

brigades, assigned individuals to different brigades,

of them a uniform

and imposed on

of labor norms as the basis for awarding work points to individual cooperative members. In practice, however, the brigades often retained autonomy in organizing production and determined their own system of work points and, thus, 138 their own system of distributing benefits to their members. The directors represented their cooperatives in meetings at the district level at which the annual production plans and the quotas to be delivered to the state were discussed with the district Administrative Committees. Although in theory the plans were supposed to be negotiated between the cooperatives and the districts, in fact, the directors were under strong pressure by state officials to accept the all

set

136. Christine Pelzer White,

"The Role of

Collective Agriculture in Rural DevelopUniversity of Sussex, Institute for Development Studies, research report, December 1984, pp. 116-17. 137. Interview with Dao Ngoc Che, member of village Administrative Committee, Vu Thang Village, Thai Binh Province, December 26, 1974. 138. See Adam Fforde, "Problems of Agricultural Development in North Vietnam," paper presented at "Vietnam, Indochina and Southeast Asia: Into the 80s," seminar sponsored by the Institute of Social Studies, September 29-October 3, 1980, The Hague, Netherlands, pp. 4, 8-11; Christine White, "Recent Debates in Vietnamese Development Policy," in Gordon White, Robin Murray, and Christine White, eds., Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World, pp. 252-53.

ment:

The Vietnamese

Case,"

Vietnam

96

The state attempted to use the directors and the Management Committees to achieve greater centralized control over labor organization and distribution but could not make them agents of the state within the cooperative. Directors and Management Committees tended to mediate the demands of the state on the cooperastate plans.

139

peasants by claiming that the cooperatives' production was less 110 really was to lower taxes and quotas for sales to the state.

tives'

than

it

From

the beginning,

when

higher-level cadres went to agricultural

cooperatives to organize the harvesting and to gather figures for central state purposes,

poor most

some

directors deliberately led

them

to the

paddies and told them that these were the cooperative's 141 Many cooperatives kept one set of books to fertile lands.

rice

and another for the cooperative's own

142

These defend the interests of the peasants vis-a-vis the imperial state of Vietnam. The agricultural land reform instituted in 1988 (see Chap. 5), under which peasant families were given long-term cultivation rights for a single parcel of land, signaled a new phase in the relations between cooperative management and households. Although households had to remain in the cooperatives to maintain their cultivation rights, the Management Committee no longer fixed work points, which dramatically reduced its power over the peasants' livelihood. show

to the state

use.

practices recalled the efforts of the council of notables to

The

VCP

The

Confronts Pluralism

carefully limited series of steps to give electoral institutions a

patina of greater democracy and to permit wider discussion and de-

which began

unfold in 1986, brought a flood of criticism of demands for greater personal and political freedom. As Vietnam was toying with minor reforms in 1987-1988, Leninist political systems in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union were lurching toward various forms of accommodation

bate,

to

the political system along with

with

demands

for an

end

for political pluralism. Inevitably, this led to

to the

VCP's monopoly of

political

power

demands

as well.

139. White, "Role of Collective Agriculture," p. 43. 140. Truong Quang, "The Collectivization of Agriculture in Vietnam" (Master's thesis, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, June 1976), pp. 70-71; interview with

Huu

Khai, vice-chairman, provincial Administrative Committee, Thanh Hoa ProvJanuary 1975. 141. See Dien Khanh, "Let Us Oppose the Tendency to Make False Declarations of Production, Nhan Dan, June 8, 1961, FBIS, Far East Daily Report, June 30, 1961, p.

Le

ince,

JJJ20. 142. White, "Role of Collective Agriculture," pp. 100-101.

Political Institutions

97

The

year 1988 brought an unprecedented widening of the boundof the SRV's political system and of its assumptions by party members, including those of some ideological specialists. Significantly, some of that criticism found its way into leading jouraries of criticism

including the party's

nals,

own

theoretical monthly,

Tap Chi Cong

San. Such heterodox views, influenced in part by the evolution of

thinking in the Polish, Hungarian, and Soviet parties, provided the ideological bases for unprecedented demands for political pluralism

SRV.

in the

criticism of the SRV political system centered on its undemocratic nature and its restrictions on fundamental political rights. Tran Bach Dang, a prominent NLF official during the war

The new

and perhaps the most prominent independent-minded intellectual in the VCP, wrote in 1988, "If the working class does not control its general staff [the VCP], the general staff can easily become detached from its class nature." That detachment, he argued, was the origin of the problem of bureaucratism. He further asserted that the voice of the working class in Vietnamese society had been weakened by the fact that "freedom of opinion is not respected, and open expression

is still

One

more

restrained." 143

ideological specialist boldly suggested a reassessment of the

much-maligned political system of "bourgeois democracy." He found some things that Vietnam needed to emulate, including bourgeois freedoms of speech, press, and assembly that always had been dismissed by party officials as having no real content in capitalist societies. Vietnam's concept of socialism, he wrote, "must include achievements scored by the modern bourgeois state including the systematization of democracy, law, and human rights." 144 Another ideological specialist noted that Vietnam had never gone through the "school of bourgeois democracy" and was, therefore, having greater difficulty in attempting to democratize the system. He posed the problem of preventing the proletarian state from "transforming itself into the people's master" and noted that Lenin's answer (that the state would gradually wither away as class differences faded and people's needs were fulfilled by the socialist economy) was not sufficient "for the present stage of socialism." 145 .

.

,

143. Tran Bach Dang, "Giai Cap Cong Nhan va Doi Moi" [The working class renovation], Lao Dong, special Tet issue, 1988. 144.

Nguyen Dang Quang, "What

is

and

Socialism?" Tap Chi Cong San, January 1989,

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, April 21, 1989, p. 55. 145. Nguyen Ngoc Long, "Contradictions between the Economic Bases and the Political Institutions 'The Key Link' of the Current Process of Social Renovation in

—

Vietnam

98

Those who

criticized the lack

of freedoms were not necessarily

advocating a multiparty system. However, pluralism had become a lively issue in party circles by 1989. Critics both inside and outside the party shared a feeling that the party's political monopoly created an inherent tendency toward abuse of power. As the upheavals in Poland and Hungary revealed the shortcomings of ruling Communist parties in

those countries,

that the "negativism, disorder in socialist countries

some Vietnamese intellectuals argued and sluggishness" that had occurred

was linked with the absence of

tion for the ruling party.

political

competi-

146

Many VCP members were aware

had approved and different points

that Soviet writers

the existence of different political organizations

—

of view even those that differed from the party's official position provided that they did not oppose socialism. They also knew that Hungary had accepted a multiparty system in which the leading role of the

Communist

Party had to be accepted, whereas Poland had

even endorsed opposition

parties' right

not to support socialism. 147

Taking their cues from Soviet documents, some party members argued in favor of allowing parties other than the Communist Party to exist if they accepted its leading role or even of permitting more than one Communist Party. 148 One of the arguments offered by proponents of pluralism was that because Vietnam was committed to the long-term existence of a multisectoral economy, it should allow pluralism in political parties and ideology as well. 149 It is doubly significant, therefore, that one ideological specialist noted in a 1989 article the lack of fit between Vietnam's economic and political systems. Applying the concept of contradictions between the "superstructure" of political institutions and the economic "substructure" to Vietnamese society, he implied that political institutions needed to be adjusted to the economic realities,

including the existence of capitalist as well as socialist produc-

tion relations. 150

gument

Reading between the

one could discern an

lines,

ar-

for political pluralism in that line of analysis.

Our Country," Tap

Chi Cong San,

March 1989, FBIS,

East Asia Daily Report, pp.

54-

55.

Tran Trong Tan, "Why We Do Not Accept Pluralism," Hanoi Domestic SerMay 31, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 6, 1989, p. 69. 147. Ha Xuan Truong, "Plurality and Pluralism," Tap Chi Cong San, July 1989, 146.

vice,

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 148. 149.

12, 1989, pp.

69-70.

Tran Trong Tan, "Why We Do Not Accept Pluralism," p. 69. Nguyen Van Linh speech, September 1, 1989, VNA, September

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 6, 1989, p. 68. 150. Nguyen Ngoc Long, "Contradictions," p. 55.

2,

1989,

Political Institutions

The VCP

99

leadership reacted with strong warnings to evidence of

propluralist ferment in the party.

A

leading party official com-

who had demanded "abdemocracy and openness as well as press independence from the party committee and other leading echelons." Such "extreme democracy," he charged, would "allow the movement to develop in a chaotic and anarchic situation" and play into the hands of those who opposed the reforms already brought about. 151 Nguyen Van Linh plained in early 1989 about "some people"

solute

unnamed people at the Sixth Plenum in March 1989 for arguing that the party's overweening role in society was an obstacle to democratization, clearly implying that the argument was being heard inside the party itself. 152 Some of the sharpest official counterattacks on proposals for pluralism were aimed at making it clear that the solutions being explored in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were unacceptable in Vietnam. Suggestions of a socialist "loyal opposition" were characterized as "schemes to lessen or neutralize the party leadership, thus creating political counterbalances in society against the party" and were linked with efforts by imperialists to undermine socialism in the world. 153 When the Polish and Hungarian parties gave up their control over their respective governments to non-Communists, VCP leaders made it clear that they believed pluralist ideas had played into imperialist schemes to undermine socialist regimes and restore criticized

capitalism.

154

The argument

on the existence of a multisecprominent by September 1989 that General-Secretary Linh felt obliged to answer it publicly. He asserted that the state sector still played the dominant role in the Vietnamese economy and that all sectors were being "transformed by the state in the direction of socialism." 155 Because there would be no conflicts of interests between classes, he argued, there was no reason for the nonsocialist sectors to be represented in the political system. But toral

for pluralism based

economy had become

so

Tran Trong Tan, "How to Clearly Understand the CPV Central Committee Bureau's Conclusion on Ideological Work," Nhan Dan, January 23, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, March 1, 1989, p. 72. 152. Speech by Nguyen Van Linh at the closing session of the VCP Sixth Central Committee Plenum, March 20-29, 1989, Hanoi Domestic Service, March 31, 1989, 151.

Political

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report,

p. 70.

Tran Trong Tan, "Why We Do Not Accept Pluralism," pp. 69-70. 154. Ibid.; Maj. Gen. Tran Xuan Truong, "Revolutionary Violence and New Background of the Class Struggle," Hanoi Domestic Service, September 25, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 27, 1989, p. 70. 155. Speech by Nguyen Van Linh, September 1, 1989, VNA, September 2, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 8, 1989, p. 68. 153.

Vietnam

100

he took another tack a few weeks later, asserting that there was "no middle path" between "capitalist dictatorship" and "proletarian dictatorship."

156

Support for a multiparty system apparently came from within the Political Bureau itself from mid- 1989 to early 1990 as Tran Xuan Bach, director of the VCP's Foreign Affairs Department and one of the most knowledgeable leaders on Soviet and Eastern European political

reforms, emerged as the closest thing to a Boris Yeltsin in politics. He gave an interview on the eve of the Eighth

Vietnamese

Central Committee Plenum in March 1990 in which he equivocally opposed the introduction of a multiparty system "haphazardly." 157

He was

ousted from the

Political

Bureau

at the

Eighth Plenum, re-

158 portedly because of his advocacy of political pluralism.

The Soviet

concession to popular pressures for a multiparty system by

Communist

Party General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in

February 1990 provided new encouragement for Vietnamese party members and officials to continue to push for political pluralism.

The VCP opments

leadership tried to distance the party and state from develin

other Socialist or formerly socialist countries by arguing must decide the issue based on its own peculiar

that each country

But the Soviet decision to move toward political pluralism could only strengthen the determination of /dissenters in and outside the party. Henceforth, the VCP's resistance to political liberalization would isolate it even more dramatically in world politics, leaving only China, North Korea, and Cuba as ideological allies. As the 1990s began, the VCP leadership was firmly committed to a political system under tight one-party control and still determined to manage and deflect pressures toward a multiparty system. But the trends both within Vietnamese society and in the world system will continue to bring pressure for change. Vietnamese society will continue to undergo "creeping pluralism" as the end of the Soviet Communist regime and Vietnam's integration into the global economic system further weaken the legitimacy of one-party authoritarian

conditions.

rule.

156. Speech by Nguyen Van Linh, September 30, 1989, Hanoi Domestic Service, October 2, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, October 3, 1989, p. 70. 157. Bangkok Post, March 31, 1990; AFP Report by Jean-Claude Chapon, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, March 29, 1990, p. 64; interview with Tran Xuan Bach, Mainichi

Shimbun, March 13, 1990.

158.

Kyodo News

pp. 67-68.

Service dispatch, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report,

March

28, 1990,

Leadership Selection

4

and Policy-making

The model of the bureaucratic polity, in which major decisions are made entirely within the bureaucracy and are influenced by it rather

—

than by extrabureaucratic forces in the society whether parliamenaptly describes tary parties, interest groups, or mass movements how the Vietnamese political system works. Not only the determination of major policies but the power over the selection of political and governmental leadership is confined to a small group of party officials. The only significant political process on most policy issues has been debate within the conferences of the VCP Political Bureau and Central Committee and the maneuvering by the party-state bureaucracy in various echelons seeking to shape the interpretation of

—

1

leadership decisions.

Because there

is

no sharp

distinction

between policy-making and

policy implementation, various central bureaucratic organs

and

local

cadres have real opportunities to influence the direction of policy on

key socioeconomic issues. The relationship between the local "models" of implementation of policy documents and ongoing policy debates at the central level is dynamic. Although extrabureaucratic forces are excluded from formal policy-making processes, popular pressures in the form of economic resistance to existing policy and even active pursuit of an alternative model at local levels have, in practice, influenced the policy-making process. Leadership Selection

Leadership selection in the Vietnamese system is supposed to be guided by the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. The "cenFor a discussion of the concept of bureaucratic polity and its application to the region, see John L. S. Girling, The Bureaucratic Polity in Modernizing Societies: Similarities and Differences and Prospects in the ASEAN Region (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1981), pp. 9-39. 1.

ASEAN

Vietnam

102

element of that principle requires unconditional implementaorgans and of the decisions of the majority by the minority. The "democratic" aspect of the principle requires election of leading party organs at each level by delegate congresses. In practice, however, the "democratic" side of democratic centralism has been largely a facade in which the election process legitimizes consultation and negotiations between the core leadership and the higher ranks of the party. The Political Bureau, which assumes authority over major policy matters between sessions of the Central Committee, is the core of the party leadership. Following the 1982 and 1986 party congresses it comprised thirteen full members and one or two alternates. It is formally elected by the Central Committee at each party congress although members are occasionally dropped or added between congresses. In fact, however, the members of the Political Bureau dominate membership selection. Because the Political Bureau is responsible for choosing, training, and assigning high-ranking cadres in the party, it also controls the career paths of senior cadres into the tralist"

tion of the decisions of higher organs by lower

Central Committee and assigns Central Committee party or state positions. Central Committee

holden

to the Political

members

Bureau and are responsive

to

members

to

are thus beits

collective

will.

Party leaders increased the size of the Central Committee pro-

from 53 full members and 24 Third Congress in 1960 to 101 full members and 32 alternates at the Fourth Congress in 1976 to 129 full members and 49 alternates elected at the Sixth Congress in 1986. This increase reflected both the growth of the party and the increasing complexity of the problem faced by the Vietnamse revolution. In particular, the party felt the need to strengthen its leadership in economic management, which meant having more leading cadres in key economic assignments. 2 The party's Central Committee is selected by co-optation through a complex series of consultations. Although it is technically elected by the gressively with each party congress

alternates elected at the

National Congress of party delegates, in

fact,

the delegates have never

had much choice because the number of candidates is only slightly higher than the number of seats on the Central Commitee. The real selection process is carried out by the Central Committee and the Political Bureau. Well in advance of a national party congress, a personnel subcommittee of the Central Committe circulates

2.

William

(March- April

S.

Turley, "Vietnam since Reunification," Problems of Communism 26

1977), 38,

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

103

of Central Committee members to the members themon who should run and who should step down. Meanwhile, cadres at various echelons and in various branches are invited to criticize specific Central Committee members and to nominate new members. The personnel subcommittee collects all the opinions and nominations and investigates the comments it received. When the subcommittee finally decides upon a new slate of the full

list

selves for opinions

candidates,

it

presents the slate to the Political Bureau and the Cen-

Committee for approval. Only after these leadership organs have approved the new list is it presented to the Congress and passed unanimously. The same system is used by party executive tral

committees leaders.

at

lower echelons to determine the

slate

of new party

3

The selection of Central Committee members obviously has been influenced heavily by personal relationships between powerful Political Bureau members and younger proteges. Earlier general secreTruong Chinh (1941-1956) and Le Duan (1960-1985) promoted some party members whom they had come to trust or whose thinking was in line with their own ideological orientations. Younger party members who were promoted to Central Committee membership in 1976 by Le Duan included Tran Phuong, a former antiFrench resistance cadre and prominent economist who had championed more pragmatic economic policies, and Vo Van Kiet, one of Le Duan's top aides in the Southern party apparatus during the war as secretary of the party in Saigon. Others got to the Central Committee with the support of other Political Bureau members; Nguyen Co Thach, who had been a staff officer under Vo Nguyen Giap in the anti-French resistance war and later part of Le Due Tho's negotiating team in negotiating the Paris peace agreement, was apparently promoted with the support of both Giap and Tho. Le Duan never had the kind of political power that allowed him to purge members arbitarily and to stack the Central Committee with taries

member Hoang Van Hoan, who defected to China in 1980, that Le Duan had dismissed one-third of the members of the Central Committee at the Fourth Party Congress in 1976 and replaced them with men personally loyal to him misrepresented the actual situation: most of the fourteen full members and sixteen alternate members of the Central personal supporters. Charges by former Politburo

Le Due Tho, Xay Dung Dang trong Cach Mang Xa Hoi Chu Nghia o Viet Nam Su That, 1986), pp. 334-35. Although the membership of the Personnel Subcommittee has never been published, it is reasonable to assume that Le Due Tho, chairman of the Central Committee Party Organization Department for many years, played the key role in it. 3.

[Party building in the socialist revolution in Vietnam) (Hanoi:

104

Vietnam

Committee who were replaced at the congress were old or had already withdrawn from active service. The replacement of one-third or more of the Central Committee membership at each congress was 4

practiced by the

VCP

because

in part

was considered standard

it

5 practice in other socialist states.

In the mid-1980s the country's socioeconomic crisis and the apparent immobility of the party leadership brought pressures for reform of the selection process in preparation for the Sixth Party Congress in

December 1986. Many

lower-level party officials complained that

the old selection process used at

members of a

all levels

real choice in their leaders

pation by the rank and

file

as well.

6

The

of the party deprived party

and demanded result

real partici-

was a broadening of

the consultative process as well as of the choices available to the delegates to the Congress. The list of Central Committee candidates to be presented at the Sixth Congress was circulated to lower-echelon party organs in advance for suggested amendment, and many of the names on the initial list were dropped. Moreover, for the first time the final list to be voted on by the congress was twice as large as the number of seats on the Central Committee. 7 Orderly succession in the party and state leadership has been a serious problem for Leninist regimes. In the Soviet Union as well as in China the concentration of power in the hands of a secretarygeneral or party chairman who has also held an important state position made it inevitable that his death or removal would trigger a struggle for succession that could paralyze policy-making and create political instability. In the Vietnamese Communist regime, however, the first leadership succession was not disruptive, because the party leadership had firmly established the principle of collective leadership within the Party Politburo. Chief of State and Party Chairman Ho Chi Minh, who was nearly twenty years older than the next generation of Vietnamese Communist Party leaders, dominated the party and government because of his unique status as the party's founder and most experienced statesman and, thus, had no need to manipulate organizational levers of power to weaken or eliminate potential rivals. 8

4.

See Turley, "Vietnam since Reunification,"

5.

Le Due Tho, Party building,

p.

p. 40.

335.

6. See, for example, the article by Nguyen Hoa in the "Contributing Opinions to the Party Congress" column, Saigon Giai Phong, October 11, 1986, p. 1. 7. Motoo Furuta, "The Sixth Party Congress in the History of Vietnamese Com-

munism,"

in

Tadashi Mio,

ed., International Relations

around Indochina (Tokyo: Japan

Institute of International Affairs, 1988), p. 24. 8.

For a comparison of Ho's leadership

style

and

relations with Political

Bureau

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

105

The entire first generation of party leaders were members of the ICP when it was established in 1930, were members of the Central Committee before the August Revolution, and became

Political

Bu-

They included General-Secrereau members National Assembly Standing Comof the Chairman tary Le Duan, Pham Van Dong, and Defense Chinh, Premier mittee Truong Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh, Nguyen Giap, Minister Vo Hung, Vice-premier and Chairman of the First Vice-premier Pham Le Thanh Nghi, and chief of the Party State Planning Commission Organizational Commission Le Due Tho. Under Ho's influence, this group came to regard as illegitimate either in 1951 or 1960.

any attempt by an individual to accumulate predominant power. Ho's death in 1969 did not result in a power struggle, therefore, but introduced a more formal collective leadership in the Political Bureau. 9 Party General Secretary Le Duan did not obtain any state function, and the existing distribution of major party and state positions continued through the 1970s. By the beginning of the 1980s, it was already long-established tradition in the VCP that no leader could accumulate both the post of secretary-general of the party and a top government position, whether prime minister or the newly created position of chairman of the State Council. 10 Moreover, the party leadership core exhibited remarkable stability during and after the Vietnam War. The Politburo members who had been elected to the Third Party Congress in 1960 all remained twenty years later except for Ho Chi Minh and Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, who had died, and the elderly Hoang Van Hoan, who defected to China in 1980. Only six new members were added during those two decades. Because of the stability and continuity of the first generation of party leadership, therefore, the issue of succession arose when leadership was to be transferred from one generation to another. The Political Bureau had agreed in principle as early as 1973 to a gradual and orderly phaseout of the first generation of leaders in favor of younger men." But the succession process moved with excruciating slowness in the mid-1970s, and before the first-generation leaders colleagues with those of

Mao

Tse-tung, see David W.

P. Elliott,

"Revolutionary Rein-

Comparison of the Foundations of Post-Liberation Political Systems in North Vietnam and China" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1976), pp. 336-90. 9. See David W. P. Elliott, "North Vietnam since Ho," Problems of Communism 4

tegration:

(July-August 1975), 42.

Hoang Tung, Le Figaro, May 30, 1981, p. 2. Huynh Kim Khanh, "Revolution at an Impasse: Impressions of Vietnamese Communism Circa 1990," in Richard Stubbs, ed., Vietnam: Facing the 1990s (Toronto: 10.

Interview with

11.

Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1989), p. 24 n. 22.

106

Vietnam

had been retired from the

Political

Bureau, the conflict with China

intervened and further delayed it. The "second generation" party leaders were all about fifteen years younger than the first generation of leaders, had joined the party during the August Revolution or after, and had not become Central Committee members until 1976. They included such figures as alternate Politburo member Vo Van Kiet and Central Committee members Lieutenant General Nguyen Due Tarn, General Dong Si

Nguyen, and Nguyen Co Thach. A third group of leaders in the Political Bureau, including Nguyen Van Linh, Do Muoi, and Vo Chi Cong, were in between the first and second generations of leaders in party seniority (although Do Muoi is actually in the same age bracket as the second generation). All three joined the party in 1939, were elected to the Central Committee in 1960, and joined the Political Bureau in 1976. 12 Each would go on to occupy one of the top party or state positions after the

first

generation of leaders retired.

As the Sino-Vietnamese conflict become a major preoccupation of the VCP, senior party leaders were impressed by the fact that the elderly Chinese party leadership was very experienced.

They

report-

edly feared that the second generation of Vietnamese leaders lacked

the experience needed to deal with the

crisis

with China.

The

Viet-

namese party elders were determined to carry out the generational transition "gradually and slowly" to project an image of continuity and stability to the Chinese. They decided, therefore, to keep the most senior party officials, Le Duan, Truong Chinh, Pham Van Dong, Le Due Tho, and Pham Hung in their respective party or state posts beyond the Fifth Party Congress of 1982. Six other firstgeneration Political Bureau members who no longer occupied key party or state positions, including former Defense Minister Vo 13

12. For the official biography of Vo Chi Cong, see VNA, June 18, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 19, 1987, pp. N7-8; for the official biography of Nguyen Van Linh, whose real name is Nguyen Van Cue, see Hanoi Domestic Service, December 18, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, December 19, 1986, p. K 15; for the official biography of Do Muoi, see Hanoi Domestic Service, June 22, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 23, 1988, pp. 43-44. 13. Interview with Hoang Tung on Budapest Domestic Television Service, March 4, 1982, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, March 10, 1982, p. K7. The experience of the Chinese leadership was noted by Le Due Tho in a speech to a cadre conference, November 26-27, 1981, in Party building, p. 333. On the role of the conflict with China in leadership succession plans, see also the interview with Hoang Tung, Le Figaro, May 12, 1981; Nayan Chanda, "Shake-up at the Bottom," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 16, 1982, p. 15.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

Nguyen Giap, stepped down at the Fifth Congress. The second generation of leaders began to take over

107

14

state

party positions in 1980 and 1981. Deputy foreign minister,

and

Nguyen

Co Thach replaced the elderly Nguyen Duy Trinh as Foreign Minister and Nguyen Due Tarn took over the party's Organization Department, replacing Le Due Tho. General Van Tien Dung (actually in between the first and second generations) replaced Vo Nguyen Giap as minister of national defense. One year later, Vo Van Kiet became

a vice-premier with responsibility for the economy. At the Congress Vo Van Kiet, Lieutenant General Nguyen Due Tarn, and Lieutenant General Le Due Anh (who was believed later to be in charge of military operations in Cambodia) were promoted to full membership in the Politburo, and Nguyen Co Thach was elected as an alternative member. But the second generation was not to inherit the key party and state positions. The plan was for the two most senior leaders to hand over power gradually to Politburo members who were either part of the first generation or very close in age and slightly lower in seniority. Le Due Tho, who was seventy-two at the time of the Fifth Congress, was to begin to assume more of Le Duan's responsibilities as party chief while Vo Chi Cong was to take over more of Truong Chinh's duties as Chairman of the Council of State. 15 The second round of retirements from the Politburo at the Sixth Party Congress in December 1986 nearly eliminated the first generation of party leaders from the Political Bureau although it did not strip them of all power. General Secretary Le Duan, who was scheduled to give up his leadership posts at the Sixth Party Congress in Fifth

December 1986, died Chinh,

six

months before the congress. Truong

Pham Van Dong, and Le Due Tho (who was

still,

apparently,

gave up their Central Committee memberships "for reasons of age and health" at the Sixth Congress, leaving Pham Hung as the only surviving first generation leader in the body. All three remained as "advisers" to the Central Committee who would participate in Political Bureau meetings "when necessary" and were given extraordinary powers, such as the ability to intervene on "important questions" without being asked, to "get the authorization of the Politburo to resolve certain concrete problems," and access to all in

good health)

all

14. See Gareth Porter, "Vietnamese Communism: Internal Debates Force Change," Indochina Issues, no. 31, December 1982, pp. 1-2. 15. Kyodo dispatch, September 21, 1984, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, Sep-

tember 27, 1984,

p.

K5.

Vietnam

108

16 party documents.

bers

Three other younger

Political

Bureau mem-

— Van Tien Dung, To Huu, and Chu Huy Man — were removed 17

from the body for political reasons. At the Sixth Congress, the leadership turned to

fill

to

Nguyen Van Linh

the post of party secretary-general. Linh, then seventy-one,

had been secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Party Committee from late 1981 to 1986, during which time he supported bold economic experiments in the South. In 1982 he had been dropped from the Politburo in for undisclosed political reasons. 18 He was reelected to the the only Vietnamese leader ever to Politburo in 1985, however make such a comeback and was appointed to head the Secretariat's Standing Board the following year, thanks in large part to the sup-

—

—

port of the soon-to-be-retired

The

Truong Chinh.

generational transition in leadership,

19

first

discussed in the

more than a decade to complete. The group of VCP leaders who had worked closely with Ho Chi Minh in the 1950s and 1960s achieved the continuity in the transition it had desired to imearly 1970s, took

press the Chinese but at the cost of a sluggish response to the need

reform the economic management system. The majority of the Political Bureau membership agreed that the reforms were not issued earlier because the old men of the first generation had stayed on too long. The Central Committee resolutions and related documents that were passed in 1985 and after, Vo Chi Cong charged in 20 1986, "should have been promulgated several years earlier." The Sixth Party Congress political report included a remarkable stateto

new

16. Agence France Press (AFP) dispatch, January 7, 1987, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, January 8, 1987, p. K10. These privileges were used by Tho to continue to exert power over leadership decisions. Tho reportedly had the support of Nguyen

and promoted by Tho to head of the Central CommitDepartment, and Le Due Anh, a senior general, who had worked under Tho when the latter was in charge of all Cambodian operations. See AFP dispatch, October 12, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, October 14, 1987. Whether Tho's brother Mai Chi Tho, former chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee and then minister of interior, was part of a group loyal to him is

Due Tarn, now

a major general

tee Party Organization

more

debatable.

To Huu was blamed for Dung was removed because of 17.

the disastrous currency exchange in 1985; Van Tien involvement in corruption, which had been

his wife's

publicized by the press.

According

Vietnamese party leaders interviewed by a Vietnamese was accused of having passed state secrets to a Chinese woman working for a PRC spy network set up by a Chinese businessman in Ho Chi Minh City. 19. Interview with an SRV official who requested anonymity, Fall 1988. 20. Speech by Vo Chi Cong to the Hanoi Conference of Cadres, April 17-21, 1986, Hanoi Domestic Service, April 23, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, 18.

to several

visitor in 1987, Linh's son, a university student,

May

1,

1986, p. K4.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

109

ment that the "delay in correctly effecting a transition in the nucleus of leadership was a direct cause of the inadequacy of party leadership in recent years in meeting the requirements of the new situation."

21

The

selection of leading state officials

the National Assembly.

mine the

selection,

The replacement of

is

officially carried

out by

party leadership has continued to deter-

however, through

who make up

cials

The

its

control over the party offi-

the vast majority of the assembly membership. the

first

generation of party leaders in top state

positions since the Sixth Party Congress has reflected the desire of

Bureau

the Political

to

emphasize continuity and experience wher-

ever possible.

The replacement of Pham Van Dong

as

premier

in

1987 after a

record-setting thirty-two-year tenure illustrates the leadership's caution.

Instead of promoting one of the younger generation of leaders

Bureau chose Pham Hung, the only remaining foundof the party in the Political Bureau, to succeed Dong. Although some National Assembly deputies pushed for a more drathe Political

ing

member

matic overhaul of the government, backing

Co Thach

Vo Van

Kiet or

Nguyen

for premier, the official vote reflected the preferences of

Pham Hung was elected by 99 percent of the votes. Because of continued struggle over the reform program, the Political Bureau felt that a figure with great prestige would be needed to lead the government. 22 When Pham Hung died in early 1988, Southern reformer Vo Van Kiet was named acting premier, becoming the first second-generation party leader to take over a top state position. As party chief in Ho Chi Minh City from 1975 to late 1981, Kiet had supported innovative economic schemes that helped bring about a mild economic recovery in Ho Chi Minh City, for example, joint state-private import-export companies to find markets for exports from Southern provinces. 23 He had thus endeared himself to critics of central govthe leadership:

ernment policies in the South. In June 1988 the National Assembly elected Do Muoi the new premier on the recommendation of the Political Bureau after the Council of Ministers under Kiet's leadership was heavily criticized 21.

Political

report of the Central Committee to the Sixth National Party Congress,

p. 42.

22. AFP dispatch, June 18, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 19, 1987, pp. N4-5; Mainichi Shimbun, June 17, 1987. FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 23, 1987, p.

N3.

Interview with Nguyen Xuan Oanh, August (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), pp. 97-98. 23.

1987; Robert Shaplen, Bitter Victory

Vietnam

110

for having failed to anticipate the seriousness of the shortfall in food

warnings from lower echelons. 24 Muoi, then seventyone, had been vice-chairman of the council in charge of capital conin 1988, despite

and material supply. Despite his defeat, Kiet reAs executive secretary of the Council of Ministers, he was in charge of most of the day-tostruction, industry,

mained

a powerful figure in the government.

day business of the council.

The selection process for the new premier was the first instance of lobbying within the party against the Political Bureau's choice. The "Club of Resistance Veterans," reflecting a widely shared perception among members in the South, felt strongly that replacing Kiet with Muoi would represent reform.

The

a step backward for economic

and

political

club sent a letter to the Central Committee and the

National Assembly urging a genuinely democratic election for premier without pressure from party leaders, hoping that it would help the reformist Kiet defeat the party leadership's choice. The letter suggested that Muoi had committed "serious errors which have had long-term disastrous consequences" a reference to his role in the campaign for the socialist transformation of trade in the South after

—

1978. 25

Truong Chinh had dominated the Council of State named chairman of the new institution in 198 1. 26 The

since he was Political

Bu-

reau again opted for continuity rather than generational change or new thinking when it replaced him as chairman of the Council of State. His successor in the state post was Vo Chi Cong, who had also directed a major socialist transformation campaign in the South the 1978 drive for agricultural cooperativization and was, thus, regarded with suspicion by many Southern party members.

—

Party Policy-making: Congresses, Plenums, and Politburo Meetings all VCP policy is based on the decisions of the NaCongress as reflected in the political report of the Cen-

In principle, tional Party tral

Committee and the resolution of the congress. These documents

24. For an account of Vo Van Kiel's self-criticism before the National Assembly, see Tien Phong, July 5-11, 1988. 25. Murray Hiebert, "Against the Tide," Far Eastern Economic Review, September 14, 1989, p. 30; Nayan Chanda, "Force for Change," Far Eastern Economic Review,

October

5,

1989, pp. 25-26.

Truong Chinh's dominance over

these institutions was logical considering his having been given primary responsibility for "National Assembly work" by the Political Bureau in 1960. For Truong Chinh's official biography, see Tap Chi Cong San, no. 7, July 1986, pp. 16-17. 26.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

111

contain the "general line" and "orientation and tasks" of the party during the period before the next congress. The political report presents only broad objectives and outlines the general thrust of socioeconomic development strategy, seldom resolving debates over specific

policy issues within the leadership.

The

political report to the Fourth Party Congress in 1976, for example, declared that the party's policy was to "carry out cooperativization of agriculture" in the South but said nothing about how rap27 At the idly and by what means that objective should be achieved. Sixth Congress, the political report called for the renovation of the "mechanism of economic management." But as Truong Chinh conceded, the report only "pointed out the main orientation" for a new mechanism and provided no guidance about "content, form, and the 28 specific steps and methods to be adopted." The party congress itself has never been the forum in which the major issues of line and policy have been determined. Party congresses at national and lower levels have been characterized by what the VCP calls formalism, meaning that the entire procedings were preplanned and without any serious debate on policies. Before the Sixth Congress, party leaders always presented long reports that were heavily weighted toward recounting the party's accomplishments while downplaying serious problems. Delegates routinely expressed "complete agreement" with the reports, and everyone avoided difficult subjects. 29 The delegates could not reject or amend the documents presented by the party leadership. The Central Committee's political report, the key document setting forth the goals and strategy for the Vietnamese Communist Party for the next five years or more, was always approved after only brief, formal discus-

sion.

Although discussions within the party on the draft report may have been a formality in preparing for previous congresses, by the Fifth Party Congress of March 1982 criticisms of party organs surfaced that were considered too harsh by some party leaders. 30 In preparation for the Sixth Congress of December 1986, the draft re27.

Communist

Party of Vietnam, 4th National Congress: Documents (Hanoi: Foreign

Languages Publishing House, 1977), p. 93. 28. Political Report of the CPV Central Committee, Sixth National Party Congress of Delegates, Hanoi Domestic Service, December 19-20, 1986, "Sixth Congress of Communist Party of Vietnam," JPRS-SEA-87-066, May 7, 1987, p. 34. 29. For a critique of the traditional format of party congresses, see Thanh Thanh, "Ideological Life: The Congress Season," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 6, June 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-171, September 23, 1986, pp. 81-82. 30. Le Due Tho, Party building, pp. 403-4.

112

Vietnam

—

—

although not yet published in summer 1986 port was completed and circulated for three months to party cells, district and province party committees, and mass organizations. The Drafting Commission for the congress incorporated those amendments that it considered to have merit into a revised draft report. 31 During the preparatory period for the Sixth Congress party organs published unprecedently candid criticisms from party members in an attempt to influence the forthcoming congress. The complaints covered subjects ranging from coercive tactics used to force families

procurement prices for agricultural

to join cooperatives to unfair

produce. 32

The

decision to encourage this outpouring of party policy

widespread discontent among rank members about the regime's socioeconomic policies and file feelings of many higher-ranking VCP officials that the party but the had become seriously isolated from popular aspirations leadership criticism reflected not only the

party

and views. Normally the

political

report

mittee before the congress.

A

is

approved by the

last

Central

Com-

particular issue in the political report

has sometimes provoked such sharp debate within the Central mittee and Political Bureau, however, that

it

Com-

has required special

Central Committee meetings to reach agreement. In 1982 the issues

of production contracts for farmers and the strategy for agricultural

of the South necessitated the convening of three plenums within four months to arrive at the positions to be incorpo-

collectivization

rated into the political report to the Fifth Party Congress the following April. 33

The political report for the Sixth Congress was unusual because fundamental changes were made in the draft report even after it had been approved by the Central Committee. The draft report, as "unanimously adopted" by the Tenth Central Committee Plenum in May-June

1986, held that the party's line

and points of view regard-

ing economic development adopted at the Fourth Party Congress in 1976, as "reinforced

and concretized" by the

Fifth Party

Congress of

1982, had been "correct." But this view was so heavily criticized

within the party that major revisions had to be

made

in the draft

While accepting that the two previous congresses had adopted some correct points of view, the revised text emphasized report.

31. Transcript of interview with a

VCP

official

by John McAuliff, Hanoi, April

12,

1987. 32. A summary of letters containing these complaints was published in Saigon Giai Phong, September 24, 1986. 33. Nayan Chanda, "Shake-up at the Bottom," p. 15.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

113

that the Fourth Congress report had reflected an erroneous tendency by the leadership toward "skipping over stages," especially in trying to

Vietnam had the necessary conditions to do so. 34 Central Committee plenums are convened at least twice a year, with the subjects to be covered in a plenum often planned as much 35 A plenum held late in the year normally as two years in advance. determines the socioeconomic tasks and targets for the following year. Central Committee plenums also must decide the general orientations on all fundamental issues regarding three- or five-year 36 plans but do not decide specific tasks, norms, or investment priorities. Plenums usually last ten to fourteen days but, occasionally, much industrialize before

longer.

The Tenth Plenum of October-November

1981

twenty-five days, reflecting the extent of the disagreements

lasted

and the

of achieving a consensus. They are extremely lengthy bemember presents a report on his area of responsibility that may take up to three hours, after which each member of the Central Committee has the right to speak up to one hour and to ask questions of the Politburo member who gave the report. 37 In addition to meeting intensively before each Central Committee plenum, the VCP Political Bureau normally confers every week. 38 It has the authority to consider any issue from broad theoretical questions to details of policy implementation. Because plenums of the Central Committee can only resolve a few general issues, it is up to the Political Bureau, the Secretariat, the Council of State, and the Council of Ministers to translate the resolutions into policies. A Political Bureau resolution circulated to all party branches is usually followed within a few months by a decision from the Council of Ministers that gives relevant orders to all state agencies and echelons. When deciding on major socioeconomic issues, the Political Bureau goes through a lengthy and complex process of study and consultation with various sectors of the state apparatus and levels of difficulty

cause each Politburo

34.

For an analysis of

uta, "Sixth Party

this important change in the Sixth Congress report, see FurCongress," pp. 14-18. See also Pierre Rousset, "A Watershed Party

Congress," International Viewpoint, January 26, 1987, p. 8. 35. Major internal or external developments may, of course, force the consideration of unanticipated issues. The Fourth Plenum of July 1978, for example, focused primarily on the "new situation" in relations with China that had risen in the previous few months, and preparations for the plenum on that issue began only a few weeks earlier.

example, the opening speech by VCP General Secretary Nguyen Van Fourth Plenum, Nhan Dan, December 20, 1987. 37. Interview with then-Central Committee member Tran Phuong, Hanoi, No-

36. See, for

Linh

to the

vember 38.

6, 1978.

Ibid.

114

Vietnam

When

on greater autonomy up a Central Mechanism Subcommittee, headed by Vo Chi Cong, to formulate policy party leadership.

drafting

its

resolution

for state enterprises in 1986, for example,

it

set

The subcommittee then studied the experiences of many production units, conferred with research and management cadres, and studied the experiences of other socialist countries before compiling its initial proposal. That document was sent to provincial and municipal party committees as well as to state committees and ministries for comments. Finally, after considering those comments, the draft was presented to the full Political Bureau for approval in April 1986 and served as the basis for temporary regulations by the Coun39 cil of Ministers. In late 1986 and early 1987 the issue was further studied by a Central Mechanism Improvement Study Group, which was also chaired by Vo Chi Cong in his dual role as Chairman of the Political Bureau Subcommittee and vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers. The group traveled to Ho Chi Minh City and other localities to meet with directors of basic economic units as well as state and party officials to review their experiences. Finally, at its Third Plenum in August 1987, the Central Committee approved a new system of production and business autonomy for basic economic units that had been submitted by the Political Bureau. 40 The collective character of policy-making in the Vietnamese Political Bureau has been unique among ruling Communist parties. The VCP leadership officially embraced the principle of collective leadership in the late 1950s after the de-Stalinization campaign in the Soviet Union and the mistakes of the land reform campaign emphasized the dangers of key decisions being made without the participation of the entire Political Bureau. 41 Then General Secretary Le Duan explained the rationale for collective leadership by saying, "Only with a collective decision based on collective intelligence will we be able to avoid subjectivism that leads to errors and sometimes proposals.

39. Speech by Vo Chi Cong, Hanoi Domestic Service, April 23, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, May 1, 1986, p. K2; Saigon Giai Phong, January 27, 1987, JPRS-SEA-87-056, April 20, 1987, p. 101. 40. Saigon Giai Phong, January 27, 1987; Nhan Dan, March 31, 1988; Hanoi Domestic Service, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 15, 1987, pp. 30-36. 41. "Bao Cao ve Viec Sua Doi Dieu Le Dang," [Report on amending the party statutes] Van Kien Dai Hoi [Congress documents](Hanoi: VWP Central Committee, I960), 2: 36. This document reflected the fact that then-party secretary-general Truong Chinh had made key policy decisions on implementing the land reform with-

out consulting the

full Politburo.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

115

dangerous consequences." 42 The practice of collective decisionmaking was pervasive among party leadership organs at lower levels to

as well. It

43

was widely believed

Bureau was divided

in the 1960s that the

Vietnamese

Political

into factions by personal rivalries and/or con-

toward the Soviet Union and China. 44 The externally oriented factional model was contradicted, however, by evidence that the Vietnamese leadership had consciously pursued independence from both the Soviet and the Chinese. Another interpretation of DRV leadership politics suggested that factions had flicting orientations

formed around divergent priorities assigned to revolution in the South and to building socialism in North Vietnam. 45 Reacting to these interpretations, which sometimes strained to find evidence of factionalism, David

the "consensus"

W.

model

P. Elliott

as

an

put forward what might be called

alternative.

He emphasized

that there

has been no true factionalism in the sense of stable, enduring rival

groups cutting across a range of foreign and domestic issues. 46 The policy-making style of the Vietnamese leadership forged under the influence of President Ho Chi Minh in the 1950s and 1960s subordinated other considerations to the maintenance of unity. The Vietnamese leadership learned to avoid confrontation and to achieve consensus by compromise. Unlike their counterparts in the Chinese party, the Vietnamese leadership eschewed for many years the prac47 tice of "criticism and self-criticism" as divisive. The Chinese used

and self-criticism to resolve "internal contradictions." These methods were part of a system that assumed that one side of the

criticism

Le Duan, "Duoi La Co Ve Vang cua Dang, vi Doclap Tu Do, Vi Chu Nghia Xa Len Gianh Nhung Thang Loi Moi" [Under the Glorious Party Banner for Independence, Freedom, and Socialism, Let Us Advance and Achieve New Victories], in Cach Mang Xa Hoi Chu Nghia o Viet-Nam [The socialist revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Su That, 1976), p. 113. 43. The emphasis on collective decision making was so strong in 1960 that Le Due Tho complained that in some places leading Party cadres had evaded their individual responsibilities (Report on amending, p. 38). 44. See Bernard B. Fall, "Power and Pressure Groups in North Vietnam," in P. J. Honey, ed., North Vietnam Today: Profile of a Communist Satellite (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 61-63; P. J. Honey, "The Position of the DRV Leadership and the Succes42.

Hoi, Tien

sion to

Ho

Chi Minh,"

in North Vietnam Today, pp.

56-59.

Donald Zagoria, Vietnam Triangle (New York: Pegasus Books, 1967), pp. 104-12; Thomas K. Latimer, "Hanoi's Leaders and Their South Vietnam Policies, 1954-1968" (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1972). 46. See Elliott, "North Vietnam since Ho," pp. 41-44; Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," pp. 406-7. 47. As Central Committee spokesman Hoang Tung explained in 1974, "We don't have a policy of 'aggravating' things by criticism and self-criticism" (interview by the 45. See

author, Hanoi,

December

31, 1974).

Vietnam

116

contradiction was "correct" and the other "incorrect."

The

Viet-

namese chose the opposite approach, assuming that neither was necessarily wholly correct and that each side should strive to accommo48 date the other. This policy-making style meant that major policy differences could

an extended period without a deVietnamese policy-making has been aptly characas maintaining a "balanced tension between oppo-

coexist within the leadership over finitive resolution.

terized by Elliott

When considering the cooperativization of agriculture 1950s and early 1960s, for example, Le Duan and Truong Chinh, the two most influential party leaders apart from Ho himself, took divergent positions that could have seriously divided the leadership. Truong Chinh argued for the formation of fully socialist cooperatives within a short time and put priority on class struggle against those peasants who opposed cooperatives, especially middle peasants. Le Duan argued that formation of fully socialist cooperatives should await greater technological advances in production and opsing views."

49

in the late

middle peasants. 50 The compromise between these two tendencies demonstrates how divisive ideological differences within the leadership have been prevented from becoming a source of factionalism. In Marxist-Leninist regimes ideological issues always revolve around conflicts between revolutionary principles, such as the necessity to wage class struggle or expand the state's role, and economic considerations, that is, the need to increase production. The Vietnamese Party Central Committee, howevever, passed a series of resolutions that failed to take a posed

class struggle against

position

on the larger question, thereby allowing the debate

to con-

tinue without any final resolution.

The

first

such resolution in November 1958 called for a step-by-

step approach to begin with semisocialist cooperatives during the first

year,

some of which would be upgraded

to fully socialist cooper-

48. The one exception to this generalization is the self-criticism that Truong Chinh, who had been general secretary of the party since 1941, was forced to undertake because of serious mistakes in the implementation of the land reform program. That decision, reached by the Tenth Central Committee Plenum in September 1956, reflected the most bitterly divisive debate in the history of the Vietnamese party, over whether it was necessary to wage violent struggle against the entire landlord class. 49. Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," pp. 404-7. 50. For representative expressions of their views, see Le Duan, speech in Thanhhoa, December 1958, Giai Cap Vo San voi Van De Nong Dan trong Cach Mang Viet Nam [The proletariat and the peasant problem in the Vietnamese revolution] (Hanoi: Su That, 1965), p. 257; Truong Chinh, "Van De Hop Tac Hoa Nong Nghiep o Mien Bac Nuoc Ta" [The problem of cooperativization of agriculture in the North], Hoc Tap, no. 5, May 1959, pp. 7-14.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

atives. It

did not take a position on the ideological issue of the main

"contradiction" in agriculture, nor did socialist

117

it

preclude proceeding to

fully

phase in I960. 51 Bureau sought to resolve differences

cooperatives at the end of the

first

In the 1970s, as the Political over the issue of production contracts in agriculture, the insistence on maintaining party unity prevented early action. Although the majority had become convinced by 1978 of the need to introduce material incentives to families to work harder, party leaders refused to make the decision by majority vote in deference to the strong objections of a minority of Political Bureau members who believed that production contracts violated the definition of socialism in agriculture. It was not until those holdouts could be persuaded to go along with the change that the new orientation toward agriculture was officially approved by the Central Committee at its Sixth Plenum in Sep-

tember 1979. 52

The

leadership's willingness to sacrifice effective policy responses

socioeconomic problems for the sake of unity between party came under criticism by party cadres, both privately and publicly, in the 1980s. One ideological specialist explained the prolongation of erroneous economic policies as the result of "compromising resolutions and feudal leadership behavior" while another cadre called the tendency to accommodate the most extreme opponents of economic liberalization the "cult of solidarity." 53 In the mid- to late 1980s, the practice of consensus decision makto

leaders

ing appeared to decline; the Political Bureau

made

little

effort to

on economic management. One group advocated much greater observance of "objective laws" in the economic sphere, whereas another group put primary emphasis on protecting the state's dominant role in the economy. In general, liberals were publicly criticized for "making light of the planning character of the commodity-money relationship" and "tending to the spontaneous market" although they were not accused of ideological deviance. 54 The intensity of the debate within the leadership was indicated, however, by the party newspaper's admonition after the Fifth Plenum of paper over

conflicts

51. Nghi Quyet Hoi Nghi Trung Uong Lan Thu 14 [Resolution of the 14th Central Committee Plenum], November 1958 (Hanoi: Central Committee of the Vietnam

Workers' Party, 1959). 52. 53.

Interview with Tran Phuong, Hanoi, January 5, 1981. Nguyen Dang Quang, "The Lessons Learned from Respecting

the Objective Laws," Triet Hoc, September 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-062, April 29, 1987, p. 91; interview by the author with a party cadre who asked to remain anonymous, 1982. 54. Nguyen Van Linn, Some Pressing Problems on the Distribution and Circulation of Goods (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1987), p. 28.

Vietnam

118

1988 that "we should not brand one another with

name just because of

this

name

or that

differing views."''

After the initiation of the limited political reforms associated with program of the VCP, debate on key political issues

the renovation

broadened perceptibly beyond the Political Bureau and Central Committee. With the increased freedom of opinion encouraged since the Sixth Congress, some ideological specialists advanced ideas that were clearly at odds with the Political Bureau majority, both in print and in meetings with the leadership. The party leadership was clearly less insulated from broader currents of public opinion than it had been before renovation. For example, the widespread negative reaction of party members, writers and intellectuals, and others in meetings with Political Bureau members to the strong anti-Western line expressed in the Seventh Plenum of August 1989 was one of the influences on the decision two months later to reverse the foreign policy line and drop such language from the Eighth Plenum Resolution.

56

From

Resolutions

to

"Models": Policy-making and Implementation

The Vietnamese party has applied two divergent models of implementation of major policy decisions: the first, the "mobilization campaign" model, was characteristic of its implementation of Central Committee resolutions on the collectivization of agriculture in both North and South Vietnam. The central feature of the model was the setting of target dates for completion of a revolutionary transformation campaign, which created pressure on cadres to use "administrative measures" to get farmers to join collective organizations. The second, or "incremental," model depended on experiments with different methods of implementation by different localities, leaving room for adjustment in the policy itself. This style of implementation was used for the economic reforms that began in 1979. Although these two models emphasize different styles of implementation, they are not mutually exclusive. When implementing the collectivization campaign in the South, the VCP also encouraged local methods and mechanisms for applying the collectivization policy. The implementation of the resolutions calling for the reform of the 55. "Thoroughly Understand the Resolution of the Fifth Party Central Committee Plenum," Nhan Dan, July 28, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 29, 1988, p. 63.

56.

Interview with a Vietnamese government source

mous, January 1990.

who asked

to

remain anony-

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

economic management system

also

119

used target dates for the comple-

tion of various phases of the transition.

However

the target dates

were central to the implementation of the collectivization drive and were less important in changing the old economic management system. The mobilization campaign model emphasizes the need to avoid delay, whereas the incremental model stresses the need to explore reality cautiously through experimentation. The latter model has become characteristic of the VCP since 1985 as it shifts from socialist transformation campaigns to restructuring of the state economic management system itself. When implementing resolutions on socialist transformation, especially in agriculture,

the

VCP

leadership has worried that without

the spur of a target date, the campaign would be prolonged indefi-

During

of agriculture in the South the first Bureau in its April 1978 resolution: the majority of the peasants in the South were to be organized in production collectives (groups of two or three dozen families who would exchange labor and purchase fertilizer collectively) by the end of 1979. 57 Party cadres failed to form collective organizations rapidly enough, however, even though coercion was widespread. Both problems were blamed on the failure of cadres to "thoroughly understand" (quart triet) the line and policy and not the combination of socioeconomic realities in the South and the pressure of a deadline. 58 The hastily formed production groups collapsed within one year, and the ratio of peasant families in some sort of collective organization fell to only 9 percent by 1981. 59 The party leadership then decided to slow the application of the collectivization policy but to continue using target dates as a management tool. A December 1982 Central Committee resolution affirmed that the organization of peasants into production collectives and agricultural cooperatives "must be basically completed by 1985." 60 But because cadres were nitely.

collectivization

target date was set by the Political

57. Vo Nhan Tri, "Socialist Vietnam's Economic Development 1975-1985: Policies and Performance," paper for conference on Postwar Vietnam: Ideology and Action at

the University of Sussex, October 1985, p. 12. 58. Address by Vo Chi Cong, chairman of the Central Committee Department for Transformation of Agriculture, at a cadre conference reviewing agricultural collectiv-

5-9, 1979. Ho Chi Minh City Domestic Service, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, May 17, 1979, p. 16. ization, April

May

14, 1979,

FBIS,

59. Le Thanh Nghi, "Develop New Factors, Advance Socialist Transformation in Agriculture in Nam Bo Provinces Vigorously and Steadily," Nhan Dan, November 910, 1981, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, November 17, 1981, pp. K2-3. 60. Editorial, Nhan Dan, April 15, 1983, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, April 20, 1983, p. K6. "Basically completed" was again defined as introducing the majority

Vietnam

120

of "voluntarism," the process slowed dramatically, and again the deadline was not met. 61 The negative consequences of setting deadlines for completing transformation campaigns provoked a new debate within the party over the usefulness of that management tool. The secretary of the Cu Chi District Party Committee, for example, ascribed the low quality of cooperatives in his district to the fact that his committee had been ordered to complete the task of agricultural collectivization criticized for violating the principle

He argued that the criterion for success in implementation should have been production rather than a time dead-

ahead of schedule. line.

62

For most policy issues, the VCP leadership has applied the incremental model of policy implementation. 63 The adoption of most Central Committee or Political Bureau resolutions is only the beginning of a long and complex interaction among various levels of the party and state bureaucracies that shapes policy in practice. As one Political Bureau member observed, "A Central Comittee resolution Therefore party cannot put forward every concrete problem. committees at all echelons, and in all branches must concretize the 64 resolution in accordance with their own branch or locality." Central Committee and Political Bureau resolutions in the 1980s were often couched in ambiguous terms, especially in the early stages of addressing a major socioeconomic policy issue. The ambiguity may have signaled the leadership's failure to agree on what concrete measures should be taken. But it also permitted flexibility in applying the policy under different local or regional socioeconomic circumstances and in new areas of policy where the leader.

.

.

ship had no practical experience.

In the incremental model the party leadership encourages the ap-

new policies experimentally in a number of test sites (thi before deciding which method or methods of application should be generalized more widely. And it may put forward a policy plication of

diem)

on a

trial basis to

gated.

When

see

how

it

works before the

final version

is

promul-

the Political Bureau issued a draft resolution guaran-

of peasants into at least production collectives. Editorial, Nhan Dan, December 19, 1982. FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, December 28, 1982, pp. Kll-12. 61. Nguyen Van Linh, Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh: 10 Nam [Ho Chi Minh City: 10 Years] trans. JPRS-SEA-87- 104, August 26, 1987, pp. 72-73. 62. Saigon Giai Phong, April 23, 1986. 63. For a detailed account of how this approach operated in the 1950s and early 1960s in regard to agricultural collectivization, see Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," pp. 64. Le

445-520.

Due Tho,

Party building, p. 475.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

121

teeing the rights of basic economic units to autonomy in production and business in May 1986, it also announced that the implementation would be reviewed at the end of the year to "draw experience" and that the document would then be revised before it was promulgated as an official resolution. The results obtained from "model" applications of a policy line in the localities thus fed back into debates within leadership bodies.

The reform of the system of economic management has produced number of cases of reliance on local experiments to find "models" for broader application. The implementation of the party's Eighth Plenum resolution on the reform of wages, prices, and money in June 1985 illustrates how both political differences and lack of expea

from the center. Although everyone could agree on getting rid of the system of "bureaucratic centralism and state subsidies," six months after the resolution was passed, there were still different interpretations of what this meant in practice. The leadership conceded that these issues presented "very complex and difficult problems" about which it lacked sufficient knowledge to prescribe a set of policies and institutional mechanisms. So its approach was to "seek out test sites and rience ruled out concrete, specific guidance

build things gradually." 65

When decide

the Political Bureau and Central Committee have failed to

how

to

implement

a general policy line, either the initiative

has shifted away from the center to the provinces, halt.

The

districts,

and even

or policy implementation has been brought to a party leadership finally agreed at the Sixth Central Com-

production

sites,

plenum of September 1979 to strengthen material incentives and to give greater responsibility and autonomy to localities and production installations, but it was unable to agree on what measures were necessary to implement these moves. The Political Bureau and Central Committee did not sponsor spemittee

for individual peasants

"test sites" for experimental applications of the general line adopted at the Sixth Plenum. Instead, many individual factories experimented with new working methods, while most production facil66 ities continued to use the old methods. Meanwhile, various models of contracts between the cooperative cific

VCP Central Committee Secretariat official Nguyen Due Ly Luan, March 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-167, September 18, 1986, p. 87; "Evaluate the Results Correctly, Adhere to the Guidelines and Continue to Implement the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee," Giao Due Ly Luan, December 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-090, May 28, 1986, p. 80. 66. Summary of speech by Nguyen Lam, p. 82. 65.

Summary

Lam, January

of a speech by

30, 1986, Giao

122

Vietnam

and individual households for output, work points and expenses were implemented in different localities, with or without official sanction. Two districts in Nghe Tinh province carried out their own version of a production contract system;

Some

cooperatives in Hai-

phong, with the backing of the city party committee, experimented with such a contract system in vegetable gardening and animal husbandry, and other coops tried the system on rice land on their own initiatives. After the experiments produced positive results, the Haiphong Party Committee issued a resolution in June 1980 that called for the application of one form of contractual incentive system or another by other coops where appropriate. Seventy-five percent of the cooperatives in Haiphong decided to apply the new system. 67 Officials in Vinh Phu Province, where experiments with production contracts had been tried before the Sixth Plenum resolution, authorized its use for nonrice crops. Provincial and district cadres also decided to throw their support behind thirteen cooperatives that had tried the system on their own. 68 The reports from Haiphong, Vinh Phu, and elsewhere were used by supporters of the product contracts system on the Central Committee to buttress their argument that the new system would both raise production and strengthen the cooperative. The Central Committee then moved to support further application of the production contracts model. In the resolution of the Ninth Plenum in December 1980 it decided to "broaden the implementation and perfect the form" of production contracts. 69 But the real turning point came when the Central Committee Secretariat and the State Council's standing committee sponsored a conference for provinces and cities at which cadres from provinces, districts, and cooperatives could express their views on production contracts. That conference helped, in the words of a party account, "create a high level of consensus on the policy of extending the production contract system among the agricultural cooperatives." The party Secretariat then issued instruction no. 100 to "improve the contract system," and the Ministry of Agriculture issued specific guidelines for implementation, thereby making the production contract system a nationwide policy. 70 The issue of material incentives policy in agriculture production

67.

Doan Duy Thanh, "A Major Step

to

Improve Agricultural Management,"

Viet-

nam

Courier, no. 3, 1981, pp. 16—18. 68. Nhan Dan, July 10, 1981, and

November 28, 1981. Nhan Dan, January 20, 1981. 70. Nguyen Yem, "Contracted Work and Contracted Produce in Agricultural Cooperatives," Vietnam Courier, no. 3, 1981, p. 15; Nhan Dan, August 28, 1981. 69.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

illustrates

how

123

the focus of policy struggles has shifted from the gen-

what "mechanism" (co che) should be Experimental models in one or more localities are central to the process of change in economic policy. The proponents of change use the positive results of experiments with the model to advance the policy departure, and opponents of the policy attempt to obstruct or reshape the policy initiative by making the case that the negative consequences of the model outweigh its advaneral orientation to precisely

used to implement

it.

tages.

On

the issue of wages

and

prices local officials have influenced the

leadership to go farther in the direction of policy change by inter-

preting a resolution liberally.

Whether

to

permit prices of goods

ra-

tioned by the state trade sector to cadres and workers to reflect real

had been debated among economists and party figures in the Bureau had not yet adopted the idea when it passed a resolution in June 1980 on improving "circulation and distribution work." The resolution called for subsidizing the basic necessities for cadres, workers, and civil servants and said nothing about shifting from ration coupons and subsidized prices to market prices and wage subsidies. costs late

1970s, but the Political

Nevertheless, leaders in Long An Province south of Saigon interpreted the resolution to authorize elimination of the state trade sector's role entirely. It

to carry out

its

was quietly encouraged by the VCP Secretariat in suspending the system of ration

own experiment

coupons and subsidized prices and to let prices of meat, rice, and other basic consumer goods reflect market prices. Any increases in the prices of previously rationed goods was compensated by increases in wages. The experiment was initiated in 1980 and achieved immediate economic success: production of meat and rice doubled and tripled respectively, and inflation was held in check. The province delivered to the state from five to ten times more grain and agricultural produce than was required. 71 The fate of the Long An experiment depended, however, on how party leadership bodies and various bureaucratic institutions evaluated it and on the relative strengths of competing political forces.

The

came in March 1981 when the party and Council of Ministers dispatched a joint delegation representing various ministries and agencies to study it for two first

high-level evaluation

Secretariat

71. Interview with Nguyen Xuan Oanh, economic adviser to the Ho Chi Minh City party Committee, Ho Chi Minh City, August 1982; Nguyen Thanh Binh, "Let Us Face the Truth, Think Seriously, and Step Up Production on the Key Front," Dai

DoanKet, November 20, 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-033, February 21, 1986,

p. 145.

Vietnam

124

weeks. The conclusions of the mission were positive about its impacts on production, inflation, corruption, and the livelihood of cadres, civil servants, and workers. The delegation suggested that other localities

with similar conditions

— especially

in the

Mekong

Delta

should apply the Long An "model" to their wage and price policies. But when the mission returned to Hanoi, the report was toned down on the insistence of one or two powerful bureaucrats. 72 The Long An "mechanism" represented a threat to those who wanted to keep the existing price system and mechanism for distributing goods, and they did not passively wait for it to gain credibility. Various government agencies quietly tried to have the experiment terminated, but the Political Bureau supported the Secretariat's decision. Rumors were circulated in those provinces and cities who were considering applying the "Long An model" that it was a dismal failure and that the Long An party committee had a large cache of confiscated gold that was being used to produce apparent successes. Other localities tried the Long An model on a smaller scale but kept 73 it quiet so as not to attract the attention of conservatives. But in late 1983 a Political Bureau member visited Long An and taped a statement that called for "summing up" the Long An mechanism, that is, evaluating it as a more general model. In 1984 the Central Committee passed a resolution on wages and prices that could easily be read as approving the Long An model. 74 A number of provinces in both North and South then felt safe enough to apply it openly. Finally, the Eighth Plenum of July 1985 called for elimination of goods distribution through ration cards and the adoption of a single price system. It thus gave the Long An experiment new, implicit Central Committee credibility as a generally valid model. 75 The press has been used as a means of boosting certain models and keeping others in obscurity. When a story appears about a certain model, it is because higher level officials have given the word to cover it. The Long An model, on the other hand, was subjected to a press blackout for years. Only in 1984 did a central-level newspaper first mention the Long An experiment and then only in a single 72. 73.

Nguyen Thanh Binh, "Let Us Face the Truth," p. 145. Tran Dinh Van, "Tu Thi Diem Long An" [From the Long An experiment], Dai

DoanKet, July 3, 1985. 74. For the communique describing the

line of the Sixth Plenum, see VNA, July FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, July 19, 1984, p. K10. 75. Tran Dinh Van, "Long An Van Dung Vung" [Long An still stands firm], Dai

18, 1984,

Doan

Ket,

September

24, 1986.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

125

passage in an article on a wider subject. And that newspaper was unprincipled because of the story, which discouraged

criticized as

example. 76 Other "models" or policy experiments in the South during the early 1980s were also the subject of heated debates within the party. In Ho Chi Minh City, Mrs. Ba Thi, a decorated heroine of the war in South Vietnam who was then deputy director of the city food department, formed a food-purchasing company that violated fundamental economic policy as well as the prerogatives of the state trade sector. It hired rice merchants to buy rice from farmers at market prices instead of the lower state purchase prices and distrib77 uted it through the local women's association. Certain state and party officials tried to intimidate her by surrounding her office with security forces in early 1982, but she was protected by her close ties others from following

its

member Pham Hung. 78 what had come to be known as the "Ba Thi model" was

with Political Bureau

By

1986,

being considered by other cities. In the period of preparation for the Sixth Congress, it was one of the issues under debate in the party leadership. Party and state officials who were determined to maintain the state's existing role in trade were unable to eliminate it but tried to prevent its spread. Le Due Tho, soon to be retired from the Political Bureau, warned against the assumption that it was necessarily applicable outside

Ho

Chi Minh

City.

79

The degree

to which Central Committee and Political Bureau resimplemented by party echelons depends on their clarity and completeness as well as the understanding and the motivation of cadres at various levels. The Political Bureau sometimes has failed to reach agreement on crucial issues that are necessary for implementation of a broad policy. For example, Central Committee and Political Bureau resolutions from 1985 through 1988 endorsed a gradual move away from a pricing system under which goods were sold at two different prices. But to apply the resolutions, state organs needed to know which goods were to remain under the two-price system and which should be put under the two-price system. The

olutions are

76. Thai Duy, "Whom Does the Press Serve?" Dai Doan Ket, June 18, 1986, JPRSSEA-86-180, October 3, 1986, p. 93. 77. Bangkok Post, May 20, 1987. 78. The Nation (Bangkok), January 26, 1989; interview with an SRV official who requested anonymity. 79. Le Due Tho, "Satisfactorily Carry Out Ideological Work in Preparation for the CPV Congress," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 7, July 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-193, October 29,

1986, p. 29.

Vietnam

126

party leadership could not reach a quick agreement on the question

and so the new

The

policy

on

prices could not be implemented. 80

party leadership uses a variety of devices to ensure that the

and to minimize either gross errors in implementation or simple inaction on the resolution. The Secretariat of the party sends directives to all party echelons on how to organize implementation; the Central Committee's Propaganda and Training Department sends them guidance documents explaining the fine points of the resolution. Cadre conferences are held for leading resolutions are understood

cadres at central and provincial levels to further elucidate

its

mean-

ing.

Nevertheless, the ideological orientations or socioeconomic and political interests all

of party committees and cadres

at different levels

create varying degrees of unwillingness or inability to carry out

When

the party and state

first ordered the party appafood to the state at below-market prices in North Vietnam in the early 1960s, most rural party members were themselves small landowners. A survey conducted in three provinces revealed that many local Party committees and chapter executive committee members were themselves refusing to sell surplus food to the state. 81 Similarly, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, many party committees in the South were unenthusiastic about or actually opposed to the Central Committee's policy toward collectivization in the South because the vast majority of the rural party members came from families who were oriented toward individual

resolutions.

ratus to motivate people to

sell

farming. 82

Some Sixth

party committees "misintepreted" the Central Commitee's

Plenum

resolution,

carried out "steadily" to

which stated that

mean

collectivization

should be

that the process should be stopped.

83

"Errors and irregularities" in applying the new mechanism of production contracts were said by party authorities to stem from "deliberate misinterpretation of party lines and policies" by party cadres. 84 Many party chapters apparently went along with the practice of "blank check" contracting contracting with families without guide-

—

80. "Thoroughly Understand the Resolution of the Fifth Party Central Committee Plenum," Nhan Dan, July 27, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 29, 1988, p. 60.

81. Ung Phong, "Rural Chi Bo Must Be Consolidated while Purchasing Food," Hoc Tap, no. 12, 1960, FBIS, Far East Daily Report, April 5, 1961, pp. JJJ 1 1-19. 82. David W. P. Elliott, "Vietnam: Transition in a Time of Crisis" unpublished paper, September 1978, p. 30. 83. Editorial, Nhan Dan, May 26, 1980. 84. Nhan Dan, August 12, 1983.

Leadership Selection and Policy-making

127

—

production plans, norms, or supervision despite warnings by higher echelons that they were unacceptable. 85 And many managers in cooperatives and village and hamlet cadres failed to pay taxes, making it impossible to get payments from the local peasants. 86 Central party leaders have also encountered resistance to policies that infringe on the power and interests of provinces, districts, or localities. In South Vietnam in the late 1970s the province, district, and village committees set up checkpoints, using militia units under their control, to prevent peasants from transporting their rice to Ho Chi Minh City and other cities and, thus, to maintain larger supplies and lower rice prices within their provinces. In August 1978 the state reversed an earlier policy decision to prohibit the circulation of goods between provinces and districts and ordered provincial, dislines,

trict,

and

village officials to dismantle these checkpoints.

areas, officials defied the orders

and continued

to

But

in

some

maintain the

They explained their failure to carry out the new policy by saying that they did not read the party newspaper. 87 checkpoints.

85. 86.

Hanoi Mot, July 30, 1982, JPRS 81998, October 15, 1982, no. 2488, p. 36 Phan Huy, "Price Procurement in Hau Giang," Hanoi Radio, May 14, 1988,

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, May 23, 1988, p. 71. 87. Interview with Tran Phuong, Hanoi, November "Correcting Past Mistakes," Far Eastern Economic Review,

16,

May

1978; Francois Nivolon, 16, 1980, pp. 61-62.

Bureaucratic Centralism and

Economic Liberalization

Vietnam has paid a heavy price for its system of centralized state economic management. That system, which was supposed to ensure not only rapid socioeconomic development but the maintenance of a strong state, led instead to economic stagnation and a dramatic weakening of the state itself. Yet even the seriousness of Vietnam's economic crisis in the 1980s did not, by itself, bring a decisive shift in economic management policy by the VCP leadership. Only with the passing of the first generation of VCP leaders from the scene was it possible for the Political Bureau to reject the orthodox Leninist scheme of centralized state economic management. Rolling back the bureaucratic centralism in state management of the economy became the major preoccupation of the VCP leadership in the 1980s. The system had deep roots in the ideology of the VCP and in the bureaucratic character of Vietnamese Communist politics. The dismantling of the system was long postponed, largely because of the ability of the bureaucratic elite to fend off challenges to

its

interests. In this

chapter

I

describe the system of bureaucratic

centralism and outline the phases of leadership debate and policy

development on the issue, noting the key turning points on the way to economic liberalization.

An Anatomy

of Bureaucratic Centralism

The VCP,

following the lead of the Soviet

Communist

Party, be-

former system of economic management the "bureaucratic centralism and state subsidies system" (co che tap trung quan lieu hanh chink bao cap). Under that system, state-owned industrial enterprises were given no responsibility for planning their own production or procurement. The State Planning Commission imposed detailed production plans, complete with dozens of binding gan

in the 1980s to call

its

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

129

norms, on hundreds of individual production units, provided all the materials to the enterprises, took all of their profits, and subsidized their losses.

1

In short, the system attempted to substitute administrative conover production, circulation, and distribution for the economic

trols

incentives inherent in relations between supply and demand. The consequences were severe economic imbalances and production inefficiency. And because market and quasi-market relations developed to supplement this cumbersome system, the corruption of the state 2 sector was not far behind. Finally, the system caused a serious drain of resources from the state treasury. Thus it contributed to reduced living standards and weakened the very foundations of the Viet-

namese revolutionary

state.

The

system required numerous reports and long waits for supplies to wind their way through the various levels of the bureaucracy. Enterprises were unable to procure the necessary materials to complete their plans without the cooperation and support of higher level

bureaucrats

who

controled the distribution of raw materials,

spare parts, and other supplies. State organs were never punished for failing to provide goods or money they had promised, so the economic bureaucrats had the unilateral power to make or break a factory's ability to meet its plan norms and, thus, power over the director's future career. That power was translated into frequent payment of bribes by factory managers to higher level officials in

return for cooperation in obtaining the supplies necessary to suc-

Some factories known for shoddy work nevertheless regularly exceeded their plan norms and received commendations, whereas others who had done good work never received the supplies they needed and were unable to fulfill their plans. 3 Moreover, state enterprises sought to hide their true capacities and to bargain with the bureaucratic organ supervising them to get the lowest possible quotas for deliveries to the state. Those who were lucky enough to get artificially low norms and access to state supplies ceed.

In 1981 a small proportion of state enterprises were permitted to purchase all of their supplies and sell all their production in the free market. But the bulk of transactions involving industry were still determined by plans originating in the central state bureaucracy. See W. Evers, R. Baban, F. Le Gall, and A. Pera, "So1.

some or

Republic of Vietnam: Recent Economic Developments," International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., May 14, 1982, p. 13. 2. See Adam Fforde and Suzanne H. Paine, The Limits of National Liberation (Londom: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 1-3. 3. Saigon Giai Phong, May 7, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-146, August 22, 1986, pp. 99-

cialist

101.

130

Vietnam

would be able to produce more for disposition outside the plan while receiving commendations from the state. The central factor shaping the functioning of the Vietnamese management mechanism, however, was the maintainance of official prices on goods sold by the state that were less than those on the free market. The price system was the single most important spur to official corruption and to redistribution of income in favor of state and party bureaucrats. It constituted a windfall to the state economic bureaucracy that was neither returned to the central state treasury in the form of revenues nor benefited the population. As one veteran of the state trade sector observed, "The more the two prices differ, 1

more openly blatant the pilferage." By the early to mid-1980s, the prices of production 5

the

supplies, such

raw materials, electricity, and coal provided by the state to enterprises, were as little as one-tenth of the market price in order to subsidize the cost of goods produced by those enterprises. Factories and localities always tried to obtain larger quantities of the supplies than they needed for production so that they could trade them. 6 Commodities produced or imported by state agencies and enterprises were also subsidized by the state. Official prices of imported consumer goods, such as television sets, sewing machines, motorbikes, and domestically produced goods such as bicycle tires, were often as little as one-sixteenth of the free market price. Because the authority to purchase such an item from the state was worth tens of thousands of dong more than a skilled worker makes in an entire year that authority was one of the most valuable prerogatives allocated by the society. 8 Officials who controlled goods could line their own pockets by selling them on the black market, distributing them to cadres and workers, or bartering them with other enterprises for other goods and still claim enough profit for their own unit to earn a commendation from the state. In 1981 the State Inspection Commission discovered that two-thirds of the production of 626 units that they investigated during a single quarter as

7

—

—

4. Vu Huy Tu, "Some Thoughts on Guaranteeing the Production and Business Independence of the Basic Economic Units," Tap Chi Cong San, August 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-007, December 1, 1987, pp. 7-8. 5. Quoted in Tran Dinh Van, "Tu Thi Diem Long An" [From the Long An experiment], Dai Doan Ket, July 3, 1985, p. 3. 6.

See, for example, the investigation of the Federation of Textile Enterprises in

Hoang Lan, "Things That

are Legal but Irrational," Hanoi Domestic Service, June 4, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 18, 1987, pp. N6-8. 7. Thieu Mai, "A 'Fever' for Bicycle Tires," Lac Dong, August 13, 1981, JPRS 79218, October 15, 1981, p. 62. 8. Lao Dong, May 22, 1986.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

131

was used to generate profits for their cadres and workers in these ways. Everyone in the enterprise usually got a share of the produc9 tion in order to reduce the potential for whistle-blowing. Five years later, the SRV officially reported that only 30 to 40 percent of the goods produced by the state consumer goods industries and collective handicraft enterprises, whose production expenses were subsidized by the state, passed through the state trade network. 10 The official mechanism for setting prices sold by the state trade sector was extremely slow and cumbersome, because decisions by state trade units on prices had to be approved by the Price Commission at the central level. As a result, goods piled up in warehouses awaiting approval, including millions of meters of muslin cloth, thousands of tons of soap powder, electric fans, sewing machines, and bicycles. Even after the prices were officially approved, they were mostly ignored by localities and state trade units, who also de12 liberately withheld goods from the market to increase their profits. As inflation grew more severe in the 1980s, the reluctance of the state to increase the exchange rate of the dong against the dollar added yet another subsidy to state agencies. The State Bank maintained a multiple exchange rate system that kept the value of the dong artificially high. To keep Vietnamese products competitive in the world market the state had to provide large subsidies to exporters. Meanwhile, local governments had great incentive to get their hands on foreign exchange to import goods that were arti13 ficially cheap. The system contributed to the distortion of Vietnam's trade balance and income distribution. In an economy in which the quickest and surest route to profit was exploiting the price system and inflation, not only economic installations but every other state agency and political unit tried to get into the business of buying and selling commodities either legally or illegally. By 1986 more than 750 state organs, from the ministerial, provincial, municipal, village, and corporate levels were reportedly in11

9. Thanh Hai, "Prevent Collective Corruption," Nhan Dan, May 12, 1981, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, May 28, 1981, p. K7. 10. Vo Van Kiet, report to the National Assembly on the 1987 socioeconomic de-

velopment plan, Hanoi Domestic Service, December 26, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Daily Report,

Pacific

December

30, 1986, p. K9. 11. V.H.L., "Irrationalities in the Prices of Materials and Industrial Products," Saigon Giai Phong, April 15, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-1 1, June 30, 1986, p. 65. 12.

ket

Nguyen Dang Khanh, "Why Are Rapid Price Changes Occurring on the Marat State Stores?" Quan Dot Nhan Dan, January 13, 1987, JPRS-SEA-87-060,

and

April 27, 1987, p. 63. 13. Text of remarks by Nguyen vard University, October 1988.

Xuan Oanh, economic

adviser to the

SRV, Har-

Vietnam

132

volved in trade tricts,

activities in

Ho

Chi Minh City alone. 14 Provinces,

and urban precincts formed

their

own

dis-

corporations to pur-

chase goods, usually hiring private merchants, to purchase goods at the most favorable prices so they could profit from price differentials.

15

The

subsidization of state enterprises was one major source of soaring budget deficits in the late 1970s and 1980s that contributed 16 State enterprises were allowed to hide the incurred by the state in subsidizing them and could even claim a profit for the state. The textile sector, for example, turned over about three billion dong to the state in 1986 as profit. Had the actual cost to the state been figured, however, the textile sector would have shown a net loss of fifty-seven billion dong. 17

to massive inflation. losses

and

had the effect of weakening the on the commercial sector, which had been the main source of private profit in the economy. Socialist transformation of trade and industry was accompanied, ironically, by an increase in the number and socioeconomic role of private merState controls

subsidies also

state's capability to collect taxes

The two-price system created a corrupt nexus between offiof the state trade and production sectors and illegal merchants purchased goods from them. The officials provided the political

chants. 18 cials

who

protection for the merchants, so that

medium and

big merchants

paid only about one-third of their actual incomes in taxes. 19

Had

it

not been for the two-price system and the dependence of merchants Doc Lap, May 28, 1986. On illegal business by collective and state units using and transportation from the state, see Hong Hai, "About the Task of Fighting against the Negative Aspects in Our Country's Economy Today," Triet Hoc, no. 4, December 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-1 17, July 16, 1986, p. 86. 15. Bui Anh, "Improper Export Activities," Quan Doi Nhan Dan, May 27, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-145, August 20, 1986, p. 57. 16. Nguyen Van Linh asserted in 1988 that this situation of "false profits and real losses" by state enterprises was a large part of the reason for the collapse of the Vietnamese economy. Hanoi Domestic Service, June 14, 1988, FBIS, June 24, 1988, 14.

capital, materials,

p. 57.

17. 18.

Hoang Lan, "Things That Are Legal but Irrational," p. N7. Truong Chinh was quoted as commenting, "The number of

private merchants

has increased in proportion to the expansion of socialist transformation" (Duong Van Dieu, "Democracy, A Great Popular Demand," Saigon Giai Phong, October 28, 1986,

JPRS-SEA-97-019, February 6, 1987, p. 106). 19. Nguyen Van Linh talk to internal trade cadres, June 1987, Nhan Dan, September 23, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, October 14, 1987, p. 54; Linh interview with Hanoi television, December 16, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, December 19, 1986, annex, p. 3; Nhan Dan, May 8, 1988. Joint state-private enterprises similarly have been formed willingly by private businessmen precisely in order to continue making a profit while they avoid control by state agencies and reduce their taxes through protection by state cadres. See Ngoc Son, "A Look at Joint Enterprise," Doc Lap, December 11, 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-061, April 10, 1986, pp. 62-65.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

133

on corrupting state cadres to do the bulk of their business, the amount of taxes collected from the trade sector probably would have been greater. As the two-price system was severely restricted after 20 1987, tax revenues from the private sector began to increase. Finally, the provision of subsidized consumer goods to urban workers and cadres increased by nearly four times after 1981 to become the largest single item in the budget (except for defense expenditures). As of 1987 state subsidies consumed nearly one-third of the budget. 21 Vietnamese central budget expenditures were consistently 25 to 30 percent greater than its revenues during the 19761984 period, so state subsidies were clearly the direct cause of its 22 deficits and the weakening of the Vietnamese dong. Bureaucratic centralism was also evident in the relations between the state and the peasantry. The state apparatus exploited the peasants' labor through artificially low procurement prices, built a large cadre structure on the cooperatives at the peasants' expense, and imposed a wide array of local taxes that added up to an onerous burden. The state used its coercive power to extract what it viewed as the peasants' "surplus" in order to subsidize the urban population and carry out national security functions. 23 As of 1978— 1979, peasants had to sell a quota of paddy rice to the state at a price that was subsidizing the rice rations sold to the urban population at one-tenth of the open market price. 24 In theory, low procurement prices were supposed to be balanced by the state's delivery of agricultural supplies, such as fuel, fertilizer, and pesticides, at subsidized prices. In the late

1970s, however, supplies of these commodities

David Dollar, "Vietnam: Successes and Failures of Macroeconomic StabilizaBorje Ljunggren and Peter Timmer, eds., The Challenge of Reform in Indochina (Cambridge: Harvard University Press for the Harvard Institute of International Development, forthcoming). 21. Evars et al., "Socialist Republic of Viet Nam," p. 19; Nguyen Van Linh, Some Pressing Problems on the Distribution and Circulation of Goods (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1987), p. 15. 22. For data on Vietnamese budget revenues and expenditures, see Max Spoor, "State Finance in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam," table 1, in David G. Marr and Christine P. White, eds., Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas in Socialist Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1988), p. 125. 23. As Christine White notes, procurement prices were based in theory on the average cost of agricultural production plus a fixed profit margin, but in practice the "surplus" for a given cooperative, in the form of taxes and required sales to the government, was deducted from the crop before the "cost of production," defined as the value of work points, was determined. Christine Pelzer White, "Agricultural Planning, Pricing Policy, and Co-operatives in Vietnam," World Development 13, no. 1 (1985), 20.

tion," in

104. 24.

Ngo Vinh Long,

Postwar Vietnam,

p. 170.

"Cooperativization in the

Mekong

Delta," in

Marr and White,

Vietnam

134

became increasingly scarce, and up to one-half of those 25 plies were siphoned off by the economic bureaucracy.

scarce sup-

In response, the peasants increasingly resorted to falsifying their evade taxes. 26 The SRV then raised procurement prices

yields to

sharply in 1980 to halt a disastrous decrease in food procurement.

Beginning in 1981, contracted sales to the government were supposed to be negotiated between farmers and the state trade organs rather than be imposed on the farmers unilaterally. In fact, however, the prices were negotiated "with the guidance of the state" and remained far below the market. 27 The situation steadily worsened during the next several years: by 1986 the state was supplying only one- fifth the volume of fertilizer 28 to cooperatives that it had supplied in 1980. Moreover, the state raised the prices of agricultural supplies without further raising pro-

curement

By 1986 production

costs per kilogram of paddy near Hanoi were 35 percent higher than the procurement price for the same kilogram of paddy rice. Meanwhile, the state was increasing contract quotas on foodstuffs. 29 The number of farmers who failed to meet their quotas for grain sales to the state 30 steadily increased, and many farmers stopped growing rice beyond the needs of their own families or simply left farming altogether. Local officials were forced to pay market prices for the rice even prices.

rice for cooperatives

though that violated

official policy.

31

Peasants also faced a heavy burden of miscellaneous taxes and fees

and contract sales to the state. These payments to the state for water conservafeeding troops, supporting hydroelectric power projects, and

beyond

their agricultural taxes

extras included separate tion,

25.

Policy

Dang Quang Van, "Concerning Today," Tap Chi Cong San, no.

the Unity between Economic Policy and Social 2,

February 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-001, June 22,

1987, p. 63.

Jayne Werner, "Socialist Development: The Political Economy of Agrarian ReVietnam," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 16 (April-June 1984), 51; Max Spoor, "State Finance in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam," in Marr and White, Postwar Vietnam, p. 118. 27. Dang Quang Van, "Economic Policy and Social Policy," p. 82; Doan Trong Tuyen, Mot So Van De ve Chinh Sach Gia Ca Hien Nay [Some problems of contempo26.

form

in

rary price policy] (Hanoi:

Su That,

198-1), p. 82.

Nhan Dan, October 6, 1986. 29. Dai Doan Ket, May 1, 1987. 30. Do The Tung, "Mot So Bien Phap Hoan Thien Khoan San Pham trong Nong Nghiep" [Some measures to perfect the product contracts in agriculture], Nhan Dan, 28.

October 6, 1986. 31. Excerpt from a statement by Nguyen Thi Rao [Ba Thi], "Correct Errors and Shortcomings, Strengthen the Worker-Farmer Alliance," Saigon Giai Phong, October 27, 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-022, February 17, 1987, p. 101.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

135

tuition and other cooperative fees. Provincial, district, and local governments all required "contributions" of various kinds that went beyond central state regulations. 32 By the mid-1980s the combination of agricultural taxes, contracted sales, and these additional contribuand tions, usually paid in paddy rice, often took 60 to 70 percent of the total grain in some villages in the North up to 85 percent

—

—

crop.

33

The

peasantry also had to support a local party-state bureaucracy huge by Vietnamese historical standards. Ngo Vinh Long

that was

number of cadres at the village level in the who were paid out of village funds either partly or

has estimated the

Mekong fully

—

at

delta

between

only three village

—

and one hundred per village. By comparison, officials were paid by the village population during fifty

34 the French colonial period.

The Origins and Development of Bureaucratic Centralism

As the

DRV

established

its

industrial base in the

1955-1965 pe-

bureaucracy whose interests lay in maintaining control over the economy and avoiding competition from the pri-

riod, a central state its

became a new political factor in economic policy-making. During the first three years, there was little difference between official prices and free market prices, but by the early 1960s, the ratio had begun to widen considerably as official prices no longer reflected real costs to the state or the forces of supply and demand. 35 Party leaders were aware that objective socioeconomic laws were being violated. When the issue of price policy for consumer goods vate sector

arose in the early 1960s, the party leadership agreed in principle that prices should be based

on "economic

they should reflect real costs. 36

The

cost accounting," that

party was unwilling to act

principle, however, in part because

was

on

is,

that

of ideological orthodoxy. The idea of allowing some prices to be determined by supply and demand rather than by administrative measures was first proposed in 1964 by a leading economist at the Institute of Econom32. 33.

Phai

it

in the grip

Ibid.; Dai Doan Ket, May 1, 1987. Dang Quang Van, "Economic Policy and Social Policy"; Thai Duy, "Nong Dan Duoc Lam Chu Nong Thon" [Peasants must become the masters], Lao Dong, March

24, 1988. 34.

Ngo Vinh Long,

"Cooperativization in the

Mekong

Delta," pp. 167-68.

35. White, "Agricultural Planning," p. 110. 36. The Tenth Central Committee Plenum in 1964 conceded that the prices for important goods were "not on the basis of cost accounting becoming precise" (Doan

Trong Truyen, Contemporary

price policy, p. 18).

Vietnam

136

Tran Phuong. But the Soviet Party and other ruling parties in condemning market socialism defined as the belief that market forces rather than state planning and administration should 37 be the main factor in regulating the economy. The debate was abruptly halted after the war with the United States began. 38 During the war economic laws could be even more easily disregarded, as domestic production of consumer goods was replaced by foreign aid, and food for the urban population had to be imported. The main role of centralized planning and the state economic bureaucracy shifted from control over industrial production to control ics,

—

the bloc were

over distribution of foreign aid commodities, which constituted about one-half the gross national product of the DRV, at heavily subsidized prices. 39 The prices of basic goods were fixed by the state for the duration of the war. Despite the inefficiencies and irrationalities of the system, the large amount of foreign aid held down prices, prevented any major economic disruption, and neutralized pressures for reform of the management system. 40 By the early 1970s it was officially recognized that the violation of socioeconomic laws had brought deteriorating production, a serious weakening of agricultural cooperatives, worsening standards of living and a rise in corruption. 41 In 1972 the Twentieth Central Committee Plenum resolution recognized that the existing system of management was responsible for these developments and called for switch

a

from

the

"state-subsidy

administrative

management

42

But nothing was done to implement this resolution because the Political Bureau was preoccupied with more immediate issues of war and peace and reluctant to take on an

method"

to "socialist business."

37. See Tran Dinh But, Nhung Van De Co Ban cua Cong Tac Phan Phoi Luu Thong [Some fundamental problems of distribution and circulation work] (Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, 1981), p. 13. 38. Interview with Nguyen Huu Dong, who had been a professor at the University of Hanoi and a consultant on economic policy for the DRV/SRV, Paris, November

1981.

Nguyen Dang Quang, "Economic Policy and Social Policy," p. 90; interview Nguyen Huu Dong, November 1981. 40. See "The Principle of Democratic Centralism in Economic Management," Nhan Dan, August 12, 1983, FBIS, August 17, 1983, p. K5. Le Due Tho later recalled that 39.

with

the price of fertilizer for farmers was so low that it was "virtually given away" ("On the Question of Developing New Factors and Perfecting the New Management System in Agricultural Cooperatives," Hanoi Domestic Service, September 4, 1982, FBIS, Asia

and

Pacific Daily Report,

September

21, 1982, p. K6).

Nguyen Dang Quang, "Economic Policy and Social Policy," p. 92. 42. Nguyen Lam, "Renovation of Economic Management Is an Urgent Task for Development of Our Economy," Giao Due Ly Luan, March 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-167, 41.

September

18, 1986, pp.

81-82.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

137

some bitter and divisive struggles with CenCommittee members. With the end of the war and reunification the international conditions that had sustained the system quickly disappeared. The SRV inherited a South Vietnam with enormous economic potential but heavily dependent on external assistance for the import of agricultural supplies as well as raw materials and machinery for industrial production. The cutoff of U.S. assistance to the South meant that Vietnam needed twice as much assistance from the socialist states to compensate. Instead, however, the Soviet Union reduced its commodity aid from about $350 million annually during the war to about $200 million annually during the 1976-1980 five-year plan 43 period, with the bulk of its assistance in the form of repayable loans. Grant aid from China, which had included annual supplies of some three hundred thousand tons of petroleum products as well as consumer goods, was cut off in 1976. 44 These developments prompted liberal economists and officials to renew the debate that had been terminated early in the war. Tran Phuong and some party leaders argued for curbs on the subsidized distribution of goods and an end to the heavy-handed bureaucratic 45 controls over the economy. But the ability of the VCP leadership to dismantle this system was limited by the orthodox ideological orienissue that could lead to tral

tation of nearly

all

of the

first

generation of party leaders as well as

by the political style and structure of the party-state bureaucracy. More than a decade passed before any decisive action could be taken on the problem. The Vietnamese economic management system was inextricably linked with certain political deformities of the regime. The lack of public accountability of the party-state bureaucracy, its use of secrecy and control over the press, and its freedom from legal restraints all protected the interests of the party-state apparatus in maintaining its controls over the economy and its special privileges. During the 1960s and 1970s, the development of bureaucratic centralism in economic management was paralleled by the rise of a system of patronclient relations that came to be known as the "umbrella" system. That system protected officials at every level of the bureaucracy who

Figures supplied by an official of the World Bank, 1980. Nayan Chanda, "Sino- Vietnamese Conflict: A Domestic Perspective," Paper for seminar on Indochina, sponsored by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn, November, 43. 44.

1981. 45.

Interview with 8, 1982.

August

Tran Phuong, vice-chairman of the Council of

Ministers, Hanoi,

138

Vietnam

were taking advantage of subsidized prices

to

make money. The

sponsorship of a higher-level party official brought lower-level cadres quick promotions, salary increases, and special privileges and allowed them to escape punishment for blatant corruption and 46 thievery by obtaining transfers to other, often higher, positions. The umbrella system exacerbated the existing tendency of the partystate apparatus to disregard the law. Because they viewed the law merely as an instrument of class oppression, high-ranking cadres

were cynical about adhering to legal norms once the party was in power, as General Secretary Linh later admitted. 47 The practice within the VCP of dealing with cases of violations by party cadres internally without publicity and formal prosecution or with a trial in secret made it easier for those under an "umbrella" to escape prosecution and for the organs that employed guilty cadres to avoid embarrassment. 48 Investigations and prosecutions were obstructed or simply stopped because of the intervention of other organs. 49 In basic party units, although ordinary party members were sometimes heavily punished, cadres in key positions almost always escaped with 50 little or no punishment. Those who dared to report wrongdoing by a cadre with political connections risked retaliation by the cadre, whether by transfer, blocked promotions, or even arrest on trumped-up charges. 51 Despite the massive violation of state laws by state cadres, economic crimes constituted only 3 to 4 percent of all of the criminal cases brought to trial, and nearly one in five convicted of such crimes were absolved by the courts. 52 The party leadership, accustomed to mortal struggles with its class enemies, had long relied heavily on secrecy, maintenance of party

— —

46. Nguyen Trung Thuc, "Umbrella," in "Ideological Activities" column, Tap Chi Cong San, April 1981, broadcast on Hanoi Radio, May 10, 1981, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, May 12, 1981, pp. K3-4. 47. See Linh address to National Assembly, VNA, June 17, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 17, 1987, p. Nil. 48. Tran Dinh Van, "The Truth is Strength," Saigon Giai Phong, March 23, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-087, May 22, 1986, p. 105; Dai Doan Ket, May 21, 1986; Hong Hai,

"Fighting against the Negative Aspects," p. 90. 49. Do Xuan Do, "Expediting the Prompt and Strict Adjudication, or Law Violations is a Responsibility of All of Us," Phap Che Xa Hoi Chu Nghia, no. 5, December 1986, JPRS-87-060, April 27, 1987, pp. 17-18. For a case study of how the security chief of one precinct discovered that he could not touch a case of blatant illegality in the precinct because of the local party secretary, see Saigon Giai Phong, September 17, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-213, December 6, 1986, p. 92. 50. Hanoi Moi, February 10, 1988. 51. Summary of speech by Nguyen Van Linh (no date given), Hanoi Domestic Service, February 6, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, February 9, 1988, p. 58. 52. Hong Hai, "Fighting against Negative Aspects," p. 87.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

139

and the manipulation of information to maintain popular consent to its policies. Party cadres who knew about the seriousness of abuses were not permitted to organize public pressures for change by expressing their views publicly through the press or public meetings. In 1984 Le Due Tho, who still dominated the Party Organization Department, warned party members that "speakunity at

all costs,

ing in a disorderly

manner

outside the [party] conference

is

a viola-

Only within the organization do we have freedom to speak." 53 Even within the party, however, networks of graft and corruption could not be attacked publicly by party members, because of the alleged need to "protect the unity and consensus within the party and state apparatus." 54 The party leadership also used what critics called "unilateral propaganda" in the communications media to make the party and state look good. Newspapers reflected the prevalence of what journalists tion of discipline.

later criticized as "illustrationism"

the arguments

made by

—

stories created only to illustrate

the top leadership. 55 Until 1986 journalists

could not publish specific stories without the

VCP

Secretariat

first

getting the approval of

and the Press Division of the Propaganda and

Training Department. Correspondents who wrote penetrating stories on unpleasant social and economic realities in specific localities found that their stories either were not used or had to be toned

down. 56

An

atmosphere of optimism about the success of the was also fostered by the tendency for party officials to promote cadres who flattered them and kept quiet about disturbing socioeconomic developments. Officials dismissed as "demagogic" those who focused too much on negative realities and pass them over for promotion or discipline them in retaliation. 57 Thus, reports to top-level officials tended to gloss over the serious consequences of bureaucrat centralism and subsidies. By the early 1980s it had become accepted practice for cadres accompanying a senior artificial

party's general line

53. Le Due Tho, Xay Dung Dang trong Cach Mang Xa Hoi Chu Nghia o Viet Nam [Party building in the socialist revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Su That, 1985), p. 477. 54. Nguyen Trung Thuc, "Ideological Life: Words and Actions," Tap Chi Cong San,

no. 4, April 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-003, September 3, 1987, p. 105. 55. Vu Kien, "A Press Phenomenon?" Vietnam Courier (Hanoi), October 1987, pp.

25-26. 56. Thai Duy, "Whom Does the Press Serve?" pt. 1, Dai Doan Ket, June 18, 1986, JPRS SEA-86-180, October 3, 1986, p. 92; pt. 2, Dai Doan Ket, July 2, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-195, October 31, 1986, pp. 1 1-12. 57. Report by Le Due Tho to the Fifth Party Congress on party building work, March 27, 1982, Hanoi Domestic Service, April 2, 1982, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, April 8, 1982, p. K9. 1

Vietnam

140

leader on a

visit to

a province to ask local party committee

members

not to report difficulties. One unnamed elderly Political Bureau member was said to be surrounded by cadres who actively shielded

him from harsh

realities

whenever he

visited provinces or

producwas in

tion units, ostensibly to avoid upsetting him. This practice

sharp contrast to

warning

Ho

localities in

Chi Minh's well-known admonition against advance that he was visiting, so that he could

learn the real situation. 58

Leadership Debates on Economic

Management

Throughout most of the 1980s, debate continued within the VCP Bureau between those who believed that the state violated

Political

economic laws by maintaining tight controls over producand trade and those who were primarily concerned with the supremacy of the state sector in the economy. The debates involved price policy, the relative roles of the state sector and private sectors in industry, the degree of autonomy to be permitted state enterprises and the roles of supply and demand, on one hand, and on the other, administrative measures in distribution. 59 These major issues were closely intertwined through each stage of the policy debate. At the beginning of the 1980s, the proponents of economic liberalization were outnumbered and outranked. The first generation of Vietnamese party leaders was deeply imbued with the orthodox Soviet view that "commodity relations," that is, the exchange of commodities and money based on the "law of value" (supply and demand), were merely remnants of prerevolutionary society. Although objective tion

they accepted that such relations could not be entirely avoided, they

were strongly disposed

58.

to view

them

a necessary

evil.

60

Tran Dinh Van, "Dialogue-Monologue (The Story of Butakhin)," Dai Doan

Ket,

1986, JPRS-SEA-86-085, May 19, 1986, pp. 95-96. 59. Except where otherwise indicated, this analysis of the leadership debate is based on an interview in November 1981 with Nguyen Huu Dong, a Vietnamese economist familiar with the internal debate and on the following sources, which suggest, directly or indirectly, the conflicting views held within the Political Bureau: Doan Trong Truyen, Contemporary price policy, pp. 102-6; Dao Duy Tung, "Some Problems of the Resolution of the Fourth Plenum of the Vietnam Communist Party (Fifth Term)," in Nam Vung Quan Diem Chi Dao cua Hoi Nghi Trung Uong Lan Thu 4 [Firmly grasp the guiding viewpoint of the Fourth Plenum] (Hanoi: Thong Tin Ly Luan, 1983), p. 66; Nguyen Van Linh, Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh: 10 Nam [Ho Chi Minh City: 10 years], trans. JPRS-SEA-87- 104, August 26, 1987, p. 178; Vo Van Kiel, "Problems of Distribution and Circulation New Solutions Based on New Viewpoints," Tap Chi Cong San, June 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, July 23, 1987, pp. Nl-8. 60. Vu Huu Ngoan, "Scientific-Practical Conference on Socialist Business: Some

June

4,

—

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

141

Political Bureau was more concerned about the renewed vitalof the bourgeoisie in the South as a result of liberalizing reforms there than with dismantling the system of bureaucratic centralism. Collusion between dishonest state cadres and bourgeois traders was viewed less as evidence of the degenerative nature of the bureaucratic-subsidizing system itself than as a manifestation of the threat from class and national enemies. 61 The majority believed that the state had the power to prevent the tendency of free market prices to increase spontaneously by broadening the role of the state in commerce and increasing efforts to punish and deter speculation and smuggling. So its highest priority was the elimination of private

The

ity

trade.

Economic

liberals

Vo Van

and Nguyen Van Linh argued, on had been a

Kiet

the other hand, that the socialist transformation of trade

They held

serious mistake. trade, because

it

that the state could not eliminate private

was unable

to

meet the needs of the masses for

could not meet those needs, in part because

consumer goods. It was violating economic laws with trative

controls over production

its

pricing policies

and

trade.

and

its

it

adminis-

They advocated

the

rapid elimination of the subsidized distribution of goods through

and workers and an end to providing and political units. Tinkering with the system of subsidies, they argued, would only encourage more speculation on price differences and contribute to the cycle of rising prices; the abolition of the system was the only way to stabilize prices and gain control of corruption. Finally, they called for making ration cards to state cadres

supplies at subsidized prices to economic

the state sector

dom

more

efficient

by giving state enterprises the free-

market for raw materials and by allowing small-scale capitalist enterprises to supply state and collective industries as well as to compete with them in production. The Political Bureau majority initially embraced the conservative argument that encouraging a free market in supplies and a competing small capitalist sector would enhance the economic status of the to

go

to the free

Matters of Methodology concerning Socialist Business in Our Country Today," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 10, October 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-021, February 17, 1987, pp. 63-64.

Dao Duy Tung, "The Initial Stage of the Transition Period and the StrugTwo Roads," Nhan Dan, June 28 and 29, 1982, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, July 20, 1982, pp. K8-12; Hoang Tung, "Some Views on Thoroughly Understanding the Resolution of the Fourth Party Central Committee Plenum," Nhan 61. See

gle

between the

Dan, August 30-31, 1983, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, September 14, 1983, pp. K7-10; "Some Pressing Problems in the Struggle between the Two Paths in Our Country," Nhan Dan, August 10, 1983, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, August 15, 1983, pp.

K2-5.

142

Vietnam

urban bourgeoisie and that eliminating the system of supplying goods to workers and cadres at subsidized prices would create great hardships for those who depended on the state for their livelihoods. In mid- 1983 the Central Committee, still focusing on ideological issues related to the "struggle between two paths" between socialism and capitalism and the conflict with China, deliberately postponed dealing with problems of reforming economic management. 62 Over the next two years, however, as the preoccupation with China abated and the need for far-reaching change in management became clearer, the balance shifted to the importance of "objective laws" in economic management. At the Eighth Plenum in June 1985, however, the VCP leadership defined bureaucratic centralism as the biggest hindrance to development and clearly called for an end to it.

The Eighth Plenum

resolution

announced

for the

first

time that

it

an end to managing the economy mainly with administrative orders and switch to a period of managing the economy on the basis of correctly perceiving and applying the objective laws." It called for the establishment of the financial autonomy of basic economic units and an end to state subsidies, citing the system of artificially low prices for producer goods as the most serious form of state subsidies. The resolution demanded a true and accurate calculation of the value of material by state enterprises as the most ur-

was necessary

to "put

gent reform. 63 At the time of the Eighth Plenum, the Political Bureau was still dominated by first-generation leaders and General Secretary Le

Duan. But pressures had been building from lower ranks of the party for immediate action to deal with the country's mounting socioeconomic crisis. The urgency felt by the leadership to deal with is suggested by the decision to recall Nguyen Van Linh, the Chi Minh City party chief, to the Political Bureau three years after he had been dropped from the body. In translating this resolution into policy, however, the tendency of the party leadership to compromise and move by incremental steps rather than to undertake radical departures again asserted itself. Political Bureau resolution no. 28 on prices and wages, issued in September 1985, was supposed to move away from the old system of

the issue

Ho

Hoang Tung, "Fourth Party Central Committee Plenum," p. K10. The Eighth Plenum resolution was not published. This description is based on Luong Dan, "The Nao la Co Che Quan Lieu?" [How is the bureaucratic mechanism faring?], Lao Dong, April 3, 1986, p. 3; Nguyen Lam, "Renovation of Economic Management is an Urgent Task for the Development of Our Economy," Giao Due Ly Luan, 62.

63.

March 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-167, September 18, 1986, pp. 84-85; "Thoroughly Understanding the Basic Spirit of Resolution 8," Giao Due Ly Luan, October 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-065, pp. 82-83.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

143

bureaucratic centralism and replace consumer price subsidies with wage increases. But the leadership was not prepared to eliminate

immediately the two-tier price system, fearing that it would push market prices to levels that would be "unacceptable to society." Instead it assayed a "transitional solution": establishment of a new system of fixed official prices for key commodities that would reduce the cost of subsidies to the state budget while keeping price increases to consumers at "acceptable" levels. State grain procurement prices would still be substantially lower than free market prices, and the state would still supply housing, medicine, and other social welfare 64 benefits without regard to labor.

Although "the largest portion" of subsidies would be eliminated under the new plan, certain types of goods would still be rationed. Some imported goods and manufactured consumer goods would be sold at subsidized prices (although subsidies would be reduced); other goods, such as iron and steel, gasoline and oil, would be sold at prices that more realistically reflected their cost to consumers and the state-operated production sector, with the higher prices to be offset by larger loans to state enterprises.

But these administratively

be fixed for the duration of the five-year plan. 65 Apart from ambiguities and ambivalence built into the new resolution, other difficulties developed while implementing it. Although the resolution endorsed the idea of gradually moving away from a pricing system under which goods were sold at two different prices, the critical issue of which goods were to be remain under the twoprice system and which should be put under the one-price system at each stage was not yet addressed. The party leadership could not reach agreement on the question, so the economic bureaucracy could not implement what should have been the most important Poset prices

litical

were

still

to

Bureau resolution on economic management up

to that time.

66

In addition, the "readjustment" in the price system was accompanied by an ill-conceived issuance of new currency, limiting each citizen to a minimum of assets in cash with the aim of gaining greater control over the distribution of money in the society. 67 The 64. This description is based on "Grasping the Spirit of the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee," and Tran Xuan, "Thoroughly Understand the Party's Views in the Readjustment Made to the Price System," Tap Chi Cong San,

no. 11, 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-034, February 24, 1986, pp. 34-35, 44-46; "Basic Spirit

of Resolution 8," pp. 83-84. 65. Socialist Republic of Vietnam, State Planning Committee, Report on the Economy of Vietnam (Hanoi: United Nations Development Programme, 1990), p. 16. 66. "Thoroughly Understand the Resolution of the Fifth Party Central Committee Plenum," Nhan Dan, July 27, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 29, 1988, p. 60.

67.

"Grasping the

Spirit," p. 31.

Vietnam

144

was disastrous: whereas many households held most of their and U.S. dollars, state enterprises suddenly ran short of cash and had to borrow much more heavily than before. Prices, wages, money supply, and government deficits all suddenly increased rapidly, creating powerful inflationary pressures and de68 stroying the value of the dong. Prices on the free market for staple goods such as pork and rice tripled between September 1985 and result

savings in gold

March 1986. 69 Plenum resoluBureau resolution no. 28 reflected more fundamental ideological and policy differences among party leaders. 70 Liberal reformers argued that the policy had failed because the Evaluations of the implementation of the Eighth

tion

and

Political

leadership was

when

still

violating objective laws.

They pointed out

that

market prices rapidly increased, enterprises had to wait for permission to adjust their prices, causing a serious slowdown in production and commerce. Meanwhile, private traders were able to take advantage of shortages to make more profit. The state trade system still could not purchase paddy rice at the prices it was instructed to apply because they were too unrealistic. As VCP Secretariat official Nguyen Lam noted, the policy of trying to determine prices at the central level was "basically in accordance with the bureaucratic centralist method." 71 The conservative evaluation of the implementation of the transitional solution emphasized the state's failure to "control the market" through administrative measures against private merchants rather than

actual

its

failure to observe objective laws.

An

editorial in the party's

drew the lesson that "shortcomings and deficiencies" had allowed "the enemy, speculators and smugglers together with some small merchants and private traders" to hoard commodities and to disrupt the market and prices. It argued that readjusting prices without "resolutely and continuously attacking" these enemies, including "deviant and degenerate personnel in the state machinery," and without "exercising the state monopoly control of staple goods" would cause even greater escalation in free market prices. 72 In April 1986 the VCP Political Bureau turned to the issue of daily

Economy of Vietnam, p. 17. 69. Robert Shaplen, Bitter Victory (New York: 68. Report on the

Harper and Row,

1986), p. 104.

"Evaluate the Results Correctly, Adhere to the Guidelines and Continue to Implement the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee," Giao Due Ly Luan, December 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-90, May 28, 1986, p. 79. 71. Nguyen Lam, "Renovation of Economic Management," p. 83. 72. Nhan Dan, November 19, 1985, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, November 20, 1985, p. K5-6. 70.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

decentralization of economic decision making.

The

Soviet

145

Commu-

Twenty-seventh Congress in January 1986 had given reformers a boost by identifing the expansion of the rights and responsibilities of the enterprises and federations as a necessity for economic management reform. 73 The majority agreed that state ennist Party's

terprises lacked the authority to

make

the decisions necessary for

and rational management of production and distribution. Some members, however, still opposed allowing state enterprises greater freedom to obtain materials and market their products on the ground that it would inevitably strengthen the collective and priefficient

74 vate sectors relative to the state sector.

Liberal reformers, prises to

make

on the other hand, wanted to permit the enteron the basis of market demands:

decisions primarily

they proposed that the enterprises be allowed to choose their

own

products and to sell products at market prices. They also wanted the purchase of goods by the state to be limited to negotiated economic contracts with the enterprises. This position, which approached the hitherto forbidden concept of market socialism, was still rejected by the majority. 75

The Political Bureau's April 1986 draft resolution on the autonomy of state economic installations was a compromise that required far-reaching changes in relations between those units and the state bureaucracy, but not full autonomy. 76 Enterprises still had to submit plans for production and finance to the next highest management echelon for approval. But the new system would eliminate most of

norms formerly imposed on the enterprises by the state. would be assigned only one or more of three basic norms by the state: total output value, total quantity and quality of

the binding

All enterprises

73.

and

Speech by

Vo Chi Cong, Hanoi Domestic Service, AP-DR, May 1, 1986, p. Kl.

April 23, 1986, FBIS, Asia

Pacific Daily Report,

74. Speech by Truong Chinh at Cadre Conference to Study the Draft Political Report to be presented at the Sixth National Congress of the Party, July 7-10, 1986, Tap Chi Cong San, August 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-208, December 1, 1986, pp. 11-14. 75. Vo Chi Cong criticized this position in "The Autonomy and Responsibility of Basic Economic Units in Production and Business," Tap Chi Cong San, June 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, August 4, 1986, p. K15. 76. This description is based on the text of a draft resolution on "Ensuring Basic Economic Units' Right to Autonomy in Production and Business," Nhan Dan, April 23, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, May 20, 1986, pp. Kl-15. For further interpretation, see the speech by Vo Chi Cong, pp. Kl— 21 Nguyen Binh, "Understanding the Main Elements of the New Direction of Thinking Charted in Political Bureau Resolution 306 (Draft)," Tap Chi Cong San, March 1987, JPRS-ATC-87-002, July 30, 1987, pp. 94-98. For the Council of Ministers' Decision no. 76-HDBT, June 26, 1986, see Nhan Dan, July 2, 1986, JPRS-SEA-186-140, August 13, 1986, pp.' 75;

Vietnam

146

key products, and budget revenue contributions. Enterprises produced goods not on the state's list of essential goods and procured most of their supplies from nonofficial sources would their contribution to the state only one obligation to the state

—

that that

have bud-

get.

At the same time, enterprises would no longer be supplied uniby the central state bureaucracy but would have to sign contracts with state material supply organizations. Enterprises would have to cover their own costs from their production and business activities. If they could not operate efficiently enough to make a profit, enterprises would ultimately face being disbanded. The state material supply organizations, which had not in the past been held responsible when they failed to deliver timely and adequate supplies, would be responsible for honoring their contracts and would suffer material penalties for failures to do so. With some exceptions, such as perishable products, enterprises still had to distribute their production through the state trade organization under contracts. The state retained full control over the pricing of products it considered centrally important. For other important products, it established a standard price, and enterprises had to justify any departures from it to the Price Commission. The economic units themselves could establish prices on goods of lesser importance but were expected to avoid "running after" free market laterally with materials

prices.

The

Political

Report

to the

VCP's Sixth National Congress,

first

drafted in mid- 1986, laid some of the ideological groundwork for further liberalization of the economy. abolishing private trade except by

perform"

it.

It

It

noted the impossibility of

making the

state trade sector "out-

further warned that an irrational price policy would

not stop goods produced by the state from flowing into the free market economy by devious routes and that artificially low procure-

ment

prices

would simply cause peasants

state. It called for

to withhold grain

from the

the application of a single price policy but

temporary exceptions

in

made

the purchase of farm produce and the

re-

of consumer goods. 77 The new tone and content of the report reflected the serious illness and death in July 1986 of Le Duan, who had previously obstructed fundamental change in the party's concept of socialism. Also important in shifting the intraparty debate, however, was the tail

sale

77. "Sixth Congress of Communist Party of Vietnam, 15-18 December 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-066, May 7, 1987, pp. 63-65.

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

147

new ideological line taken by the Soviet Communist Party under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet Party's Twentyseventh Congress in January 1986 had concluded that the previous understanding of socialism had been marked by a tendency to "skip over stages" and that there could be no specific time limit on the completion of the "initial stage" of transition to socialism. These Soviet conclusions had an immediate impact on Vietnamese thinking. 78 Whereas the VCP Political Report to the Fifth Party Congress had said definitively that the "initial stage" of building socialism, in which the state was accumulating the capital for socialist industrialization, would end in 1990, the Political Bureau agreed when revising the draft Political Report that no time limit could be set on completion of that stage. 79 It now held that "transitional economic forms" and "transitional production relations" (meaning private sector ownership) would "remain in existence for quite some time." 80 But despite agreement on the need to renovate economic thinking, major differences remained within the Political Bureau. The reformers nenewed their call for the replacement of legal economic norms vis-a-vis state enterprises with indirect economic instruments, such as contracts with the enterprises. They also called for free trade in supplies between the state sector and the private and collective sectors and the application of a single price system to all kinds of goods, not just those considered less important. 81 New urgency was lent to dismantling the existing economic management system by widespread alienation over growing injustices in the society that it had spawned. By 1986 increasingly bitter public criticisms of the socioeconomic privileges of the party-state bureaucracy were finding their way into the press. Some critics even argued that the party-state elite constituted a official

new

"ruling class." 82 After the

announcement of the "broadening of democracy," discusmedia about the "social justice issue" proliferated, creat-

sions in the

78. See excerpts from the speech by Hoang Tung to the All- Vietnam Propaganda and Training Conference, Giao Due Ly Luan, May 1986, JPRS-SEA-86- 198, November

1986, pp. 107-9. "Fully Incorporating Economic Views in the Teaching of Political Theory," Giao Due Ly Luan, October 1986, JPRS-SEA-97-051, April 21, 1987, pp. 82-83. 7,

79.

Ho Van

Chieu, "Understanding the Special Characteristics of Our Party's Ideoin the Present Stage," Giao Due Ly Luan, October 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-057, April 21, 1987, p. 86. 81. These positions were attacked by Nguyen Van Linh in an address to the Third Central Committee Plenum, August 24, 1987, Hanoi Domestic Service, August 31, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 2, 1987, p. 40. 82. See, for example, Tran Dinh Van, "Having the People Is Having Everything," 80.

logical

Work

DaiDoanKet, May

21, 1986,

JPRS-SEA-86- 148, August 27, 1986,

p. 88.

Vietnam

148

ing a

more

Bureau

favorable political atmosphere for those in the Political

calling for rapid liberalization of the

ment. 83 In 1987 the

Political

economic manage-

Bureau finally accepted the reformers' view procurement must be the result of genuine

that state prices for food

negotiations with the farmers rather than coerced negotiations. 84

And

after the Second Central Committee Plenum of April 1987, the leadership increased the prices of supplies to state enterprises. But it

did not yet eliminate subsidies in capital and credit or increase their

autonomy. 85

And

the Political Bureau majority continued to hold

had to remain the dominant influence on economic development and that the inflation rate had to be brought under control through increases in production before a complete that the state plan

elimination of bureaucratic centralism was possible. 86 Meanwhile, in

on which goods were to be placed under a and which were to remain under a two-price system,

the absence of agreement single price

progress toward the objective of gradual implementation of a singleprice system was slow.

The majority supported maintaining a transitional system for "a number of years" before instituting a completely new economic management mechanism. During the first two to three years the VCP was only conducting "pilot tests" to see how the transitional mechanism would work in practice. 87 The Third Plenum of August 1987 decided that actual implementation of the new transitional system would begin

in 1988 and would only apply to those enterprises doing business with foreign countries and those that received nearly all of their supplies of materials from the state. During 1989-1990

the entire state sector

would

"basically" shift to the

"new manage-

ment mechanism." 88 But with the Vietnamese economy plunging 30 percent per month

(the inflation rate rose to

83. See, for

Bang Xa Hoi" Khanh Van,

example,

89

the

Nghi, "Chinh Sach Xa Hoi va Van De Cong problem], Nhan Dan, April 15, 1988; Quan Doi Nhan Dan, January 10, 1987,

Pham Quang

[Social policy

"Social

into hyperinflation in early 1988),

and the

Fairness,"

social justice

JPRS-SEA-87-060, April 27, 1987, p. 98. 84. Nguyen Van Linh, Some Pressing Problems, pp. 23-24. 85. Nhan Dan, May 3, 1989. 86. Ibid.; Nguyen Van Linh address to Third Plenum, August 24, 1987, p. 39. 87. Interview with Tran Due Luong, vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers, Hanoi Domestic Service, December 23, 1987, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, January 6, 1987, p. 66. 88. Nguyen Van Linh address to Third Plenum, p. 40. In 1989 party leaders post-

poned the deadline

until 1992.

89. Dollar, "Vietnam."

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

VCP

leadership was forced to

in industry

move

and family production

decisively

on the private

in agriculture.

The

149

sector

Political

Bu-

reau took a big step toward abolishing bureaucratic centralism in agriculture by issuing Resolution 10 in May 1988. Land allocations under the production contract system, which had previously consisted of scattered fragments, took the form of single parcels of land and were fixed for a period of fifteen to nineteen years. Thus, the peasants were given something approaching ownership rights to the land. Land was no longer to be allocated on the basis of the number of laborers per family but according to the relative skill and efficiency of each household in crop cultivation, providing more to those who had met quotas and taxes and less to those who had failed to do so. The resolution also guaranteed the cooperative member "approximately 40 percent of contracted production volume," thus providing protection against the worst exactions by the state appa90 ratus. The old fears of "spontaneous capitalist development" in agriculture, which had still been the subject of intense debate in the early 1980s, thus vanished from the policy debate. The orthodox Marxist bias against the private economy in industry was also dealt a major blow. In 1986 party leaders had held a long debate before deciding to let private capitalists hire up to thirty workers, indicating continuing fears that the private sector might grow too strong. But in March 1988 the state issued decrees recognizing the long-term importance of private industry, guaranteeing its existence as part of a "multi-component economy," and lifting all limitations on its hiring of labor. 91 During the early phase of implementation in 1988, only a small number of enterprises had adopted the new method of business accountability. That prompted the VCP leadership to remind state-run economic units that they would be dissolved or put under a different form of ownership if they failed to switch successfully to business accounting. 92

Meanwhile, government revenues continued

90.

Text of the

Management port,

May

6,

VCP

Political

in Agriculture,"

Bureau Resolution no.

Nhan Dan, April

10,

12, 1988,

to decline as a per-

"Renovation of Economic FBIS, East Asia Daily Re-

1988, p. 44.

Understand the Resolution of the Sixth Plenum of the Party CenCommittee," Nhan Dan, April 20, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, May 17, 1989, pp. 63-64. For the text of the Council of Ministers decree no. 27, March 9, 1988, on individual and private economic units, see Hanoi Domestic Service, March 23, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, March 31, 1988, pp. 55-60. 92. "Thoroughly Understand Resolution of the Fifth Plenum," p. 58; editorial, Tap Chi Cong San, May 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, July 22, 1988, p. 58. 91. "Seeking to

tral

150

Vietnam

centage of

GDP, from

13.2 percent in 1986 to just 11.3 percent in

1988, even as government expenditures increased from 13.4 percent

of GDP in 1986 to 14.1 percent of GDP in 1988. The result was a budget deficit that spiraled out of control. 93 This worsening fiscal crisis probably galvanized the VCP leadership to accelerate its timetable for completing the dismantling of bureaucratic centralism and to implement a series of much bolder economic liberalization measures. At its Sixth Plenum in March 1989, the VCP leadership decided to end budgetary subsidies to state enterprises immediately, reducing government expenditures by nearly 2 percent of GDP. The state enterprises were hard hit by this cutoff, and revenues from the enterprises declined by one-third between 1987 and 1990. 94 The dismantling of the special privileges for state enterprise came as part of a broader package of liberalizing reforms in 1989. At the same March 1989 Central Committee plenum, the VCP broke completely with orthodox Leninist economic policy on prices. It pledged that the state would, henceforth, use only economic levers, such as tax and fiscal policies, rather than administrative measures to influence prices. 95 Although three years earlier the Political Bureau majority had feared that shifting goods from artificially fixed prices to near market prices would make prices soar higher, by the end of 1989 about 80 percent of the value of production by state enterprises was being sold at or near market prices an increase of 60 percent over just one year earlier. 96 These measures were accompanied by two other economic stabilization measures: a raise in interest rates and a currency devaluation. Both measures, which are usually advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as methods of stabilizing economies threatened by inflation and balance of payments deficits, were undertaken without any financial support from the IMF. The package of stabilization and structural measures succeeded in sharply reducing inflation, reducing expenditures and the budget deficit and boosting Vietnamese exports. Following a visit in July 1989, an International Monetary Fund team praised the SRV for dismantling domestic monopolies and linking domestic prices to world prices through the de-

—

93. Dollar, "Vietnam."

94.

Ibid.

Plenum Resolution, March 20-29, 1989, "The Process of Renovating the Mechanism of Developing a Planned Commodity Economy," FBIS-EAS-89-081, April 28, 1989, p. 86. 96. Report on the Economy of Vietnam, p. 43. 95. See part 4 of the Sixth

Bureaucratic Centralism and Economic Liberalization

valuation.

97

In just eighteen months the

SRV

151

regime had gone from

cautiously edging toward economic liberalization to carrying out a

package of adjustment and stabilization measures that even the basbanking found exemplary.

tion of conservative capitalist

Conclusion

The Vietnamese

system of "bureaucratic centralism" mocked the VCP. Along with economic stagnation, it pro-

ideological aims of the

duced a bureaucratic structure whose actual socioeconomic function became the siphoning off of economic resources from the working population. Even after the ideological contradictions and political dangers of this system were admitted by the leadership, the paradoxical abundance of wartime (from foreign assistance) and the deformities and rigidities built into the Vietnamese Communist political structure sapped the party's will to take decisive action. Against this background, the rapidity of evolution in the Vietnamese economic management mechanism from an orthodox Stalinist system to a real mixed economy in the latter half of the 1980s is all the more remarkable. Although the triumph of economic liberalization was helped by the ascendance of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and his sponsorship of ideological revisionism on the economy, it was driven primarily by developments in Vietnam itself.

The

willingness of the

VCP

leadership to dismantle a system to

which it had been ideologically and politically wedded for so long must be attributed in part to the final generational succession in the party leadership in the mid-1980s.

But the backdrop

to the

key turning point in 1985 as well as to

its

1988—1989 was the relentless pressures of worsening budget deficits, inflation, and the stagnation of agricultural and industrial production. Despite the heavy weight of ideological orthodoxy on most Political Bureau members, resistance to the unprecedented pricing, monetary, privatization, and decentralization measures needed to destroy bureaucratic centralism ultimately ultimate conclusion in

melted 97.

like ice in the

Susumu Awanohara,

ber 28, 1989,

p. 22.

summer

heat.

"Fiscal Interdiction,"

Far Eastern Economic Review, Septem-

6

Political Participation

and

Officially

Human

Rights

approved extraparty

political participation in the

SRV

is

confined to narrow forms that can, at best, only provide feedback on party policies and their implementation and help the state control individual cadre behavior. sions

on personnel and

These forms generally

policy.

One

ratify party deci-

analyst of Leninist political sys-

involvement in such processes "coproducsponsored opportunities for political participation include voting for state organs, consultation between the state or mass organizations and citizens, filing grievances and complaints, and involvement in investigating corruption and malfeasance. Citizens have other means of political action that fall outside the formal political system, however. They covertly or overtly resist the implementation of certain policies and create socioeconomic realities to which the state must adjust. They also articulate their positions on policies that infringe on their interests. These unauthorized political actions have sometimes forced the state to adopt different policies. As the political atmosphere in Vietnam has perceptibly relaxed since the Sixth Party Congress, the scope for such protest actions has widened. That trend could continue as a process of pluralization the emergence of social groups and institutions that are effectively outside the immediate control of the VCP unfolds. The institutionalization of independent popular political activity has been inhibited in the past by the absence of legal guarantees for the most basic individual rights and freedoms. The political culture of the Vietnamese Communist movements has legitimized state infringement on those rights and freedoms on the grounds that any opposition to the proletarian state and its policies is an expression of

tems has called tion."

1

citizen

Officially

—

—

1. Philip G. Roeder, "Modernization and Participation in the Leninist Developmental Strategy," American Political Science Review 83 (September 1989), 861.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

153

overthrow the state. Despite efforts in power of security forces, the state deal with political dissent. Nor has there been

efforts by the bourgeoisie to

recent years to curb the arbitrary

has broad leeway to any move toward dismantling the state's pervasive interference with the activities of religious communities. Thus, as increasing public political dissent confronts a political structure that cannot tolerate the existence of independent sources of power, the likelihood of a major incident of violent political repression also grows.

Officially

The

Sponsored Participation

Marxist-Leninist theory of democracy

tion that the

VCP

is

is

based on the assump-

the "genuine representative of the working peo-

ple." In that sense the

VCP

insists that

only a "proletarian dictator-

which "carries out democracy for the people and dictatorship 2 for enemies," is truly democratic. The VCP views popular elections for legislative organs as a means of "ensuring that the state organs correctly carry out the will of the people" but also as a means of ship,"

government in the international arena. Truong Chinh exhorted citizens to vote during the campaigning for the 1964 National Assembly elections by noting that if the election is carried out successfully, "our state's prestige on the international legitimizing the

3

be heightened." 4 In Marxist-Leninist theory elections are not supposed to determine the general direction of state policy. Because enemy classes have already been defeated, all the candidates in the election are supposed to represent the same class point of view. Party leaders justify restricted electoral choice by referring to the nature of parliamentary elections in capitalist states. "[Capitalists] will never let the Communists win the elections," explained Central Committee member Hoang Tung in 1982, "and they select the main candidates. When the proletariat comes to power, it does the same." 5 Until the "renovation" campaign after the Sixth Party Congress, voters in a National Assembly election chose teams of deputies for scene

will

.

.

.

2. Training and Study Office, Central Propaganda and Instruction Commission, Le-Nin, Ly Luan va Chinh Tri [Theory and politics] (Hanoi: Sach Giao Khoa Mac 1976), vol. 1, Basic Program, p. 165-69, 173.

—

3.

Ibid., p. 169.

Hanoi Domestic Service, April 16, 1964, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, April 23, 1964, p. JJJ3. 5. Text of interview by Kathleen Gough with Hoang Tung, Central Committee spokesman, Hanoi, January 11, 1982. 4.

Vietnam

154

their districts (each district typically having

two hundred thousand

to

four hundred thousand voters) from slates of candidates that were barely larger than the number of seats available. The selection process involved crossing out the

names of the candidates

for

whom

the

voter did not wish to vote. In the elections for the Fourth National

Assembly

in 1971,

529 candidates ran for 420

seats, a ratio

of

1.2

candidates per seat. 6

With the introduction of renovation

into the political process,

there was an effort to increase substantially the

number of

candi-

dates per seat in the National Assembly election of February 1987.

Each

was expected to have at least five candidates for 826 candidates competed for 496 seats, about 1.8 candidates for every seat. 7 VCP General Secretary Linh called this electoral unit

three seats. In

fact,

move "in the direction of the democratization of political life." 8 more meaningful change, however, was that the candidates en-

step a

A

time in lively debates during the 1987 campaign. 9 of candidate selection has elements of central state The process control as well as local negotiation within each district. Although there is no formal provision for it, the central government "recommends" about one hundred candidates to run in various districts throughout the country. 10 These candidates are Central Committee members, alternates, or government ministers who must be elected to hold their jobs." They are expected automatically to win the election. The other candidates are nominated within each district by the Vietnam Fatherland Front in consultations with mass organizations and local administrative committees. Although party membership is not a requirement to be a candidate, most of the candidates selected always are party members. A minority of seats are reserved for nonparty "personalities" and representatives of various religious minorities. In the Eighth National Assembly, at most, 95 of the 496 depu12 ties were not party members. In the past consultations on selection of the slate of candidates had

gaged for the

first

CuuQuoc, May 2, 1971. Saigon Giai Phong, February 20, 1987; report by Vice-chairman Huynh Tan Phat of the SRV State Council, Hanoi Television feed to Ho Chi Minh City, June 17, 1987. FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 22, 1987, p. 6. 8. L'Unita, June 23, 1987. 9. Washington Post, July 14, 1987, p. All. 10. Gough interview with Hoang Tung, January 11, 1982. 11. In the Eighth National Assembly there were at least seventy-four Central Committee members or alternates. See "Members of 8th National Assembly, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, May 1987," JPRS-SEA-87-094, July 22, 1987. 12. Ibid. This count is based on those whose identification did not mention party membership and who did not hold central state positions obviously requiring party 6.

7.

membership.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

155

be carried out "under close leadership of the party committee VFF was supposed to have the primary responsibility, party committees at provincial and district or city levels dominated the selection process, sometimes to the extent of simply handing down a list of candidates without even going through the mass organizations. Often the VFF has taken it for granted that the list of candidates is already "preplanned" and has only gone through the motions of consulting other organizations. After the Sixth Party Congress, "imposition, coercion and commandism" in the choice of nominees was forbidden. 14 Party leaders have been unwilling, however, to give up their control over the electoral process. One of the functions of the party reaffirmed by the party after its Fifth Plenum in July 1988 was "nominating and introducing cadres to agencies elected by the people in order for these 15 In 1989 former Naorganizations to democratically elect them." tional Assembly Chairman Nguyen Huu Tho was still calling for an end to the state "recommending" candidates for local elections, but no official action was taken in response to the proposal. 16 At a time when there were calls for an end to the party's monopoly of power, VCP leaders apparently did not want to relax their control over the composition of the National Assembly. Elections for People's Councils at municipal, district, and village levels, more than those for the National Assembly, are supposed to reflect the composition of the voting constituencies. In the 1975 elections, at the local level, the membership was supposed to be at least half nonparty members; women were supposed to account for about 50 percent of the deputies, and youth were to represent 40 to 50 percent. 17 But the choices offered the voters have been no broader than those offered in National Assembly elections. Before the VCP Sixth Congress, most electoral units had only one more candidate than positions. 18 After the party's commitment to "broaden democto

echelons." 13 Although the

13. Council of Minister's Circular no. 20, January 16, 1981, on the implementation of National Assembly elections, Nhan Dan, February 26, 1981, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, April 3, 1981, p. K6. 14. Saigon Giai Phong, February 20, 1987; editorial, Nhan Dan, March 2, 1987, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, March 5, 1987, p. K8. 15. "Thoroughly Understand the Resolution of the Fifth Party Central Committee Plenum," Nhan Dan, July 30, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 29, 1988. 16. Nguyen Huu Tho, "Renovation of the Mechanism Pressing Needs of the Renovation Process," Tap Chi Cong San, March 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report,

—

May

5,

1989, p. 65. premier's office directive

DRV

on People's Council and Administrative Committee elections at district, village, and corresponding levels. Hanoi Radio, January 26, 1975, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, January 31, 1975, p. K9. 18. Thu Do Hanoi, April 6, 1985. 17.

156

Vietnam

racy," the policy

was to ensure that the

list

of candidates for each

had two more names than seats to be filled. 19 In 1989, however, Nguyen Huu Tho, obviously expressing views endorsed by

electoral unit

VCP

leaders, called for increasing the

number of

candidates so that

would be several times larger than the number of seats to be filled and stressed the importance of having lively debates. 20 As in National Assembly elections, candidates were supposed to be chosen through consultations among the Vietnam Fatherland Front and other mass organizations and the local administrative committee. In fact, however, the state-party apparatus "recommended" candidates in the elections. The party committee unilaterally compiled the list of candidates, and the VFF chairman had to go along with it. Voting was so perfunctory that voters automatically erased the first or last two candidates' names to save time. 21 The "renovation" program unveiled after the Sixth Party Congress was supposed to include the reform of the candidate selection process for local elections. During preparations for the 1987 local elections, the practice of higher echelons handing down candidate lists was condemned as undemocratic, and the Fatherland Front was urged to consult with grassroots organizations to hear recommendations for candidates. But the new procedures were not widely disseminated, and the previous pattern continued. 22 Thus far, the sigit

nificance

of

participation

in

elections

has

continued

to

be

circumscribed by party control over the process of candidate selection.

The VCP

claims that popular political participation

is

not limited

implementation of policy. The model of mass political participation favored by the SRV is the public meeting at which citizens can express their opinions, suggestions, or grievances to officials of the government or mass organizations. The regime has attempted to integrate a variety of such consultative meetings into the political process in connection with elected organs, the writing of a new constitution, and the operation of the mass organizations. Such meetings are consistent with the SRV slogan, "letting the people know, debate, implement and control." The most ambitious formal process for the expression of public opinion was the campaign to debate the draft constitution, which took place over several months in 1979. The SRV organized the to elections or to the

19.

20.

Huynh Tan Phat, Dai Doan Ket, February 13, 1987. Nguyen Huu Tho, "Renovation of Mechanism," p. 65.

21.

Ibid.; Saigon Giai

22.

Editorial,

Phong, February 26, 1987.

Nhan Dan, March

3,

1987.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

157

campaign in two stages. In the first, the secretariat of the party Central Committee obtained reactions to and suggestions for revision of the draft from high- and middle-level cadres of the party, state, armed forces, and the VFF, National Assembly deputies, and members of Peoples Councils of provinces and municipalities directly subordinate to the center. In the second, after these suggestions

were integrated into revisions of the draft, a Constitutional Drafting Commission organized discussions of the draft in every locality and production or work unit in the country over two months. 23 Another form of mass consultation is the meeting between voters and deputies to the National Assembly or local People's Councils. In the past, many deputies have failed to hold such meetings, and most of the meetings have taken place just before elections as incumbents run for reelection. But in the context of deepening socioeconomic crisis and increased party emphasis on the role of the National Assembly, meetings before the 1987 National Assembly elections brought to light significant demands from voters for urgent legislative action. In Cuu Long province, voters asked for changes in policies toward agricultural, trade, and industrial taxes; those in Ho Chi

Minh

City

and

in

Quang Ninh

Province asked their deputies to pass

legislation to protect laborers against layoffs, especially those that

result

from

vindictiveness.

And

in other provinces, voters

expressed

the desire for legislation to provide jobs for youths. 24 Such meetings alerted party officials to strong public sentiments

and

clearly influ-

enced the policymakers' choice of options. But if people cannot vote party leaders who control the legislative agenda out of office, the link between such consultations and actual policy remains weak. Local party committees and administrative organs are supposed to meet with and solicit the opinions of the people before making any decisions that directly affect people's lives. But that practice does not appear to be widespread or effective. Despite party directives calling for correcting the situation, the party-state bureaucracy continues to be oriented primarily toward ensuring the implementation of policy decisions already made. In a command economy such as Vietnam, the issues about how housing and consumer goods are distributed or labor is organized

23.

The campaign,

initially

planned for the summer and political crises in 1978-1979.

poned because of economic and

of 1978, was postwas restarted in Au-

fall

It

gust 1979. 24. Vu The, "Through Various Meetings with Voters," Nhan Dan, no date given, Hanoi Domestic Service, April 11, 1987, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, April 14, 1987, p.

K6.

158

Vietnam

are settled by a political process within the production unit rather

than by the market. Workers are represented by the trade union executive committee in consultations with unit chiefs and state agen-

on the distribution of consumer goods or the construction and assignment of housing to workers. But the executive committees have usually done little to protect the workers' interests because they are dependent on the directors of the enterprises. 25 Participation by workers in decisions affecting their interests in their factories or other production or trade units is limited to the conference of workers and civil servants. The conference is supposed to be convened at least once a year by the trade union executive committee of each unit, with two-thirds of the delegates being workers directly involved in production. Together they are to discuss the production plan for the unit and the implementation of state policies and procedures. The conference elects by secret ballot a standing committee whose head is always the representative of the trade union executive committee. 26 However, it is the state-appointed director of the enterprise and the party committee who wield the real power over the production plan. The new regulations governing the autonomy of state enterprises issued provisionally in 1986 and permanently in late 1987 give full authority to the director to formulate the plan of the enterprise, thus cutting out even formal participation by workers in the process. 27 To compensate for this shift, the VCP decided to make appointment of directors subject to confidence votes by workers and civil servants on an experimental basis in those enterprises where party organizations and trade unions are both strong. 28 Until the privatization reform of 1989 the choice of cooperative management committee and brigade leadership and the determination of work norms were important political decisions in which cooperative members themselves were supposed to participate through the congress of the cooperative. In practice, however, this system of management has seldom, if ever, functioned democratically. The party maintains control over the Management Board and the bricies

25. See the discussion in

Chap. 3. "Text of Council of Ministers Regulation on Right of Socialist Collective Ownership of Workers and Civil Servants in the State-Run Production and Business Units," Nhan Dan, April 1979, Supplement, JPRS, 73659, Translations on Vietnam, 26.

June 27. vice,

12, 1979, p. 39.

Text of Council of Ministers Decision No. 217-HDBT," Hanoi Domestic Ser-

December

15, 1987,

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, December 22, 1987,

p. 50.

Speech by Vo Chi Cong, Hanoi Domestic Service, April 23, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, May 1, 1986, p. K17. 28.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

159

gades through the director, who by "custom" is always a member of 29 the party committee. The election of the director depends on "diabove," and the director then chooses the disposal from rection and deputy director and other members of the Management Board. 30 The Management Committee, which handles the day-to-day business of the cooperative, tends to dominate cooperative decisions. 31 In many cases, the congress does not meet regularly as called for in the statutes.

32

The power of local party leadership in cooperative affairs has tended to discourage most members of the coop from exerting influence on key decisions. The one sociological study of a cooperative available suggests that the majority of the members felt that decisions on such issues as organizing production and fixing norms were made by the coop Management Board rather than by the congress of members. Most women, members who are not party members, and Catholics (85 percent of the

ing been

coop members) regarded these decisions as havthe Management Board, whereas most party

made by

members asserted that the congress of members made the decisions. The survey also revealed that members coming from middle-class peasant families were more likely to believe that the decisions were made by the congress, whereas those from poor peasant families were more likely to attribute them to the Management Board. 33 Filing complaints with Administrative ters to state

and party

specific cases

of abuse by

officials

state

Committees and sending

let-

or to newspapers complaining about

— law — are the

or party personnel

violations, cor-

most comforms of popular involvement in the political process. They have been strongly encouraged by the party leadership as an additional mechanism for controlling abuses ("negative phenomena") by cadres. The 1980 constitution guaranteed the right of citizens to complain directly to any state agency. One implementing regulation specifies that citizens may present their complaints orally to any organ of the state from local to central levels. 34 Procedures for review and resolution of grievances and complaints require that even comruption, theft of state property, or favoritism

mon

29. Francois Houtart and Genevieve Lemercinier, Hai Van: mune (London: Zed Books, 1984), p. 73. 30.

NhanDan,

April

7,

Life in a Vietnamese

Com-

1988.

Houtart and Lemercinier, Hai Van, pp. 61—64. 32. Quang Truong, "The Collectivization of Agriculture thesis, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, 1976), p. 60. 33. Houtart and Lemercinier, Hai Van, pp. 60-68. 34. Nhan Dan, November 4, 1987. 31.

in

Vietnam" (Master's

160

Vietnam

35 plex cases be resolved within six months. Chiefs of production or work units are required to respond to criticisms, complaints, or sug-

gestions from workers within twenty days and to spend at least half a 36 day each month listening to workers' opinions. The system for handling complaints bogged down, however, in bureaucratic delays and stonewalling. The complaints and denunciations continued to pile up in government offices as some agencies tried to shift responsibility to others, and cautious low-level bureaucrats avoided confrontations with the accused. In many cases, cadres in positions of power refused to resolve the complaints, sought to cover them up, or even retaliated against the complainant. To obstruct or disregard the resolution of grievances

take reprisal against the author of a complaint

and complaints or is

now

37 a crime.

to

The

that Must be Done Immediately" by General SecreNguyen Van Linh, which gave publicity to some of the most

column "Things tary

egregious complaints against state and party personnel, encouraged an even greater outpouring of complaints, which increased by 63

percent in 1987 over those in 1986. 38 Another channel for public opinion was created in 1987 when the VCP announced the unlimited right of every citizen to publish in the press articles criticizing official organs, bureaucrats, or cadres and to have a public response from those criticized. In the wake of the Sixth Congress mandate for "renovation" of state and party affairs, a directive from the VCP Secretariat in 1987 obliged editorial boards of newspapers to publish critical articles in their pages and to guarantee those attacked in the press equal space to respond. 39 Up to that point the policy of the press in the North had differed markedly from that in the South: Saigon Giai Phong had taken the lead in publishing such criticisms, but the press in the North had not followed 40 its example. Participation outside the

Formal System

Vietnamese also act individually and collectively outside the formal political system to influence policy-making or implementation. 35.

Hanoi Moi, April 17, 1987. on Right of Socialist Collective Ownership," pp. 37-38.

36. "Regulation 37.

Ibid.

38.

Hanoi Domestic

Service,

March

22, 1988, p. 56. 39. Hoang Nguyen,

18, 1988,

FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, March

"Can Co Som Mot Phap Lenh ve Phe Binh tren Bao Chi" [The need for an early decree on criticism in the press], Lao Dong, October 15, 1987. 40. Agence France Press (AFP) dispatch, June 21, 1986, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report,

June

25, 1986, p. K2.

Political Participation

Through

and

Human

Rights

161

passive or active resistance to party socioeconomic policies,

they have forced party and state organs to adjust those policies. And by protesting against specific administrative measures or demanding

changes, groups of peasants, workers, consumers, and religious communities have gotten authorities to rescind the offending measures to adopt new ones. Because the state depends heavily on peasant surplus to support its activities, farmers have a variety of ways of frustrating policies that would reduce their consumption. Cooperatives in the North have hidden paddy rice to avoid selling it to the state and refused to pay taxes or to repay loans as passive resistance to low procurement 41 The refusal of most prices for grain and other state policies. farmers in the South to join collective organizations and occasional acts of forceful opposition, such as the burning down of a model cooperative in Ben Tre Province in 1979, helped to convince a reluctant party leadership to delay temporarily their plans for an early completion of collectivization. 42 Strong protests by urban residents have caused the state to retreat from interference that is widely regarded as particularly obnoxious. When police in Ho Chi Minh City began handing out fines of one hundred to three hundred dong (one to three U.S. dollars) to youth wearing long hair or American-made T-shirts and blue jeans in the early 1980s, they met strong public opposition, and the practice was stopped. 43 Similarly, market customers protesting the arrest of private pork merchants by market management personnel and peasants protesting taxation of agricultural products brought to the city for sale brought pressure on the government in the mid-1980s to relax gradually its "market management." 44 Workers have economic clout that may bring about change in policy implemention: the direct method of a work slowdown. In 1975 workers at the coal mines at Hon Gai deliberately slowed production to protest the lack of consumer goods in the state stores. Because coal is an important export commodity, party officials were quickly sent to investigate their complaints, and supplies were increased. 45

and

41. Christine White, "Agricultural Planning, Pricing Policy, and Cooperatives in Vietnam," World Development 13, no. 1 (1985), 111-12. 42. Wall Street Journal, March 27, 1985, p. 29. 43. AFP dispatch, April 23, 1983, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, April 25, 1983, p. K6. 44. Dinh Khuyen, "Changes in Prices," Doc Lap, January 11, 1986, JPRSSEA-86-142, August 15, 1986, p. 97. 45. Le Monde, January 3, 1976; dispatch by Colin Hoath, correspondent for the

Vietnam

162

By

acting with unity

and determination,

local religious

commu-

have also successfully resisted what they regard as unjust orders. The district of Hai Tri in Quang Tri Province directed all hamlets to begin working on irrigation works on Easter morning in nities

1977. The district Administrative Committee had rejected a written request from the predominantly Catholic hamlet of Tri Buu that they be allowed time to attend religious services Sunday morning to work instead in the evening. But the people of Tri Buu went mass Easter morning instead of going to work on the irrigation project. They did complete the irrigation project in half the time allotted, however, thereby earning a commendation by the district

and to

committee. 46 A 1986 incident

illustrates

how

peasants in one

Mekong

delta

vil-

lage succesfully carried out active, physical resistance to a policy

about which they felt very strongly. The district in which the village is located had adopted a plan to grow coconut trees in certain villages where rice fields had produced low yields. The plans for switching to coconut trees were sent down to the villages for dissemination to the farmers who would be affected. In Phuoc Loc village, however, the people were convinced that rice cultivation would provide more secure income than would coconut trees. In a typical instance of "commandism" the village party committee simply went ahead with their plans for planting coconut trees on the land. When the village cadres arrived to begin building mounds for the coconut trees, they were greeted by one hundred protesting farmers who grabbed the wire, stakes, and crowbars from their hands. The violent incident brought the bureaucratism of the local party organ to the attention of higher authorities, who required the party committee to

undergo

a self-criticism. 47

form of

were virtually ferment of the late 1980s. But the anger generated by unfairness in land allocation reduced peasant inhibitions about taking to the streets. In October 1988 farmers marched on the provincial capital of Cuu Long Province in the Mekong delta, protesting "injustice and corruption" with regard Street demonstrations as a

nonexistent in the

SRV

political protest

until the political

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, transmitted by Associated

Press,

September

1,

1976. 46.

Today

Speech attributed to Msgr. Nguyen Kim Dien, April 22, 1977, Being Christian in Vietnam, Second International Assembly for Healing the Wounds of War,

Zurich, April 11-13, 1978, p. 30. 47. Saigon Giai Phong, July 4, 1986, JPRS-SEA-86-169, September 22, 1986, pp.

77-80.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

163

should have been returned to them after the collectivization policy and demanding the earlier of the rescinding personnel. Several hundred farmers government of local dismissal southern provinces demonstrated in others in various representing Ho Chi Minh City in November over the same issue. The VCP orto land they claimed

dered

problem through public discussions Despite grumbling about some "bad

local officials to settle the

with the peasants themselves.

elements"

who

48

allegedly instigated demonstrators, the party leader-

ship acknowledged that

it

was "legitimate for people

to

complain, to

sue and to air their grievances." 49 Equally important as evidence of an emerging form of unpolitical participation are the first unofficial meetings by Vietnamese students. In 1989 Saigon students for the first time organized "teach-ins" to air complaints about their curriculums and 50 Along with demonstrations by farmers, these living conditions. meetings constitute the first signs in the SRV political system of interest groups organizing to advance specific grievances. Public protests against local abuses and injustices were on the rise by the beginning of 1990s as indicated by a Ministry of Interior analysis emphasizing the necessity to "promptly isolate instigators and disperse the mob" whenever one gathers. 51 The vast majority of unauthorized political protests appear to have been carried out by southern farmers, students, and merchants. The contrast between a southern population that is relatively unafraid to assert its political interests and northern and central Vietnamese populations that remain politically more timid is striking testimony to the divergence of social structures in the south from the longer-settled north and center. The open villages of the south have encouraged greater individual entrepreneurship and political independence than the closed villages of the north and center. Moreover, the experiences of southerners with a relatively pluralistic political system in which political dissent was widespread has undoubtedly contributed to greater boldness, especially in urban areas. Fundamental sociopolitical trends are likely to give further impe-

authorized

48. David Marr, "Whither Democratization?" Vietnam Today (Canberra), no. 48, February 1989, pp. 5-6; AFP dispatch, November 23, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report,

November

25, 1988, p. 64.

Linh interview, Hanoi Domestic Service, December 7, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, December 8, 1988, pp. 53-54. 50. Far Eastern Economic Review, July 20, 1989, p. 36. 51. Article by Pham Van Thach, "Heighten Vigilance, Firmly Maintain Political Security and Social Order and Safety," pt. 2, Hanoi Domestic Service, FBIS, East Asia 49.

Daily Report,

November

27, 1990, p. 56.

Vietnam

164

unauthorized political activities. Vietnamese society has been undergoing a process of "creeping pluralism," which is bound to accelerate in the 1990s. A significant turning point was reached when the first private university, Thang Long University, was permitted to open in Hanoi in 1989, and several state-run universities in the south were permitted to elect their own rectors, rather than having them imposed by the state as in the past. Plans exist to open other 52 private schools for medicine and social work in Ho Chi Minh City. further enhanced by Vietnamese efforts will be to This trend create the institutional infrastructure needed to attract foreign investors in tus to

the 1990s.

Restraints on Individual Freedoms

The freedoms

required for the individual Vietnamese citizen to

carry out independent political activities have been given

no protec-

by the Vietnamese legal system in the past. The SRV constitution of 1980, like previous charters, provides for basic freedoms of thought, press, assembly, association, and even demonstration, but these freedoms are qualified in a very restrictive way: their exercise must be "consistent with the interests of socialism and of the people," and "no one can exploit democratic freedoms to violate the interests of the state and of the people" (Article 67). The interests of socialism, the state, and the people have been defined, in effect, to mean the preservation of the party's monopoly of political power. During the late 1950s the party made it clear that advocacy by intellectuals of freedom from party control was forbidden. When the DRV encouraged writers to air their views openly in a Vietnamese version of the "hundred flowers" campaign inspired by Mao Tsetung in China, it discovered that many writers and intellectuals wanted to be rid of the party's interference in the literary world. The Nhan Van (Humanistic literature) affair, named after a magazine published by a group of dissident writers in 1956, was the first significant challenge to the principle that the expression of opinions must not contravene the party line or question party authority. 53 A group of prominent intellectuals who gained control of the Writers' Association called for unconditional freedom of expression and ortion

52.

Ibid.

For a synopsis of the dissident views and literature published in Nhan Van and a see Tram Hoa Du No tren Dat Bac [One hundred flowers bloom the North] (Saigon: Mat Tran Bao Ve Tu Do Van Hoa, 1959).

53.

number of documents, in

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

165

54

After hesitating for two years to act forcefully, the party in 1958, arrested the key group that published it, closed and compelled hundreds of writers, artists, and intellectuals to take a ganization.

Nhan Van

reeducation course and undertake self-criticism regarding their "bourgeois viewpoints." 55 After the repression of some dissenting voices and the intimidation of others, party control over the content of art and literature in North Vietnam operated primarily through a combination of prior censorship and self-censorship. Publishing houses had to operate on party guidelines, and when the committees that decided what to publish

made judgments

from those of party leaders, as specialists on culture attacked had a "negative" or "harmful" theme or tone as well different

frequently happened, the party's the works that

own

any magazines that published them. Writers who consistently from acceptable themes either were not published or were forced to rewrite parts of their works. Upon taking power in South Vietnam in 1975, the revolutionary government suspended almost all private publications and compiled a list of banned books including the complete works of fifty-six Southern authors. 56 They also prohibited listening to radio broadcasts from capitalist countries and urged citizens to report those who listened to such broadcasts or spread news heard on them to author57 ities. "Cultural army units" were formed in each neighborhood to wipe out the vestiges of the "neocolonial culture" left behind by the as

strayed too far

54. During the same period, certain non-Communist intellectuals who belonged to the Fatherland Front proposed that the North pass through a period of capitalist development before proceeding to socialism. With the end of the period of relative freedom, party leaders forbade the expression of such heterodox notions. See Truong Chinh, "The Strategic Line of Our Party," Hoc Tap, special issue, January 1960, FBIS, Far East Daily Report, February 5, 1960, p. EEE25. 55. See David W. P. Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration: Comparison of the Foundation of Post-Liberation Political Systems in North Vietnam and China" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1976), pp. 189-206; Nhu Phong, "Intellectuals, Writers, and Artists," in P. J. Honey, ed., North Vietnam Today (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 8089. Some party cadres and members openly sided with the dissidents in their demand for an end to party interference in arts and literature. See "Bao Cao ve Viec Sua Doi

Dieu Le Dang," Van Kien Dai Hoi [Congress documents] (Hanoi: Central Committee, Vietnam Workers' Party, 1960), 2:56-57. 56. Amnesty International, U.S.A., Vietnam: "Renovation" (Doi Moi), the Law, and Human Rights in the 1980s (New York: Amnesty International, U.S.A., 1990), p. 21. 57. Still Confined: Journalists in "Re-Education" Camps and Prisons in Vietnam (n.p.: Asia Watch and Committee to Protect Journalists, 1987), pp. 6-9. The prohibition on listening to foreign broadcasts was impossible to implement, and many people continued to listen to BBC and Voice of America anyway. See "Tu Troi Bien" column, Tin Sang, February 28, 1978.

Vietnam

166

old regime, including tapes, records,

and

publications. 58 In

Hanoi

the Municipal People's Council sent inspection teams into hundreds

of households in 1980 to play tapes and records to check their acceptability and confiscated hundreds of them "for further consideration."

59

After the Sixth Party Congress, with its frank admission of errolines and the need for wider debate and discussion,

neous policy writers

and

and

artists

had greater freedom

political realities in a critical

reflect the social

society as writers

to write about socioeconomic way. 60 Novels and plays began to

and moral conflicts in contemporary Vietnamese became free to choose their own themes and styles

rather than follow a party line.

Some of

the most popular plays in

the latter half of the 1980s were critical of Vietnamese society the

Communist regime, portraying war heroes returning

under

to spiritual

emptiness and alienation, for example, or depicting party officials as petty, narrow-minded, and arrogant. For the first time, theater groups in Hanoi played to packed houses. 61 And films that previously had not been allowed to be shown publicly because of forbidden themes, such as the privileges of the bureaucratic elite, were 62 tolerated. The film The Young Girl in the River by Dang Nhat Minh, who became the secretary general of the Vietnam Filmmakers' Union, portrays a former prostitute being betrayed by a Communist cadre whose life she saved and then being saved by a former South

Vietnamese army officer. 63 At a meeting with Nguyen Van Linh in October 1987, writers and artists complained that party leadership over culture had been "undemocratic, despotic and overbearing" and called for an "untying" of culture from party control. Instead of condemning that demand, Linh pledged to take "remedial action and institute legal documents." 64 The Political Bureau resolution on cultural policy issued a few weeks later put new emphasis on freedom for writers and artists. 58.

Tin Sang,

March

7,

1978.

59.

Hanoi Moi, June

5,

1980.

one artist wrote that the situation of "so many obstacles and conimposed by "narrow" party officials presiding over the arts had changed "in the past year or two" (Nguyen Minh Chieu, "Tinh Trung Thuc Nghe Si" [An artist's true feelings], Nhan Dan; December 6, 1987). See also Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1988. 61. For an insightful summary and analysis of recent plays by Hanoi playwrights, see David Hunt, "Hanoi Renaissance," Indochina Newsletter (Boston), no. 57, May-June 60. In late 1987,

straints"

on

artists

1989. 62. Washington Post, July 28, 1988. 63. Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1990, p. F4. 64. "Summary" of Nguyen Van Linh's address to the meeting, October 6-7, 1987, Hanoi Domestic Service, October 13, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, October 15,

1987, p. 47.

Political Participation

"Creative freedom values in culture that

do not

is

and

the

vital

and

Human

Rights

167

condition for the creation of genuine

literature," said the resolution. "Literary

works

violate law, are not reactionary (antipeople, antisocialist,

or antipeace) and are not degenerate ... all have the right to be freely circulated, placed under the assessment and judgment of pub-

opinion and criticism." 65 During 1987-1988, many of the restrictions on literary publishing were dropped. Popular literary works by anti-Communist authors of the prerevolutionary period, such as Nhat Linh and Khai Hung, which had been banned, were again allowed to be published or shown. 66 And five of the writers banned during the "one hundred flowers" period were quietly rehabilitated in late 1987 after a prominent literary critic traveled to Moscow and came back impressed by the opening up of Soviet society. 67 But in 1989 the party leadership cracked down once again on printing and distribution of books in the South that were originally published or translated before the lic

Communist victory. 68 The Communist regime has never allowed

periodicals to be pub-

lished except by party or state organs or official

mass organizations.

The one historical exception to this rule occurred after May 1975 when the party permitted the daily Tin Sang, whose editor was Ngo Cong Due, a non-Communist businessman and prominent figure in the anti-Thieu "Third Force," to continue publishing. Tin Sangs operation as an essentially independent newspaper, exercising self-cen-

sorship rather than being subject to daily government censorship,

was an unprecedented experiment in the Vietnamese Communist press regime. Although Due never opposed socialism or VCP policies, his paper did criticize the bureaucracy for its blunders and abuses, and it quickly made enemies in the party hierarchy. It was accused of having "openly encouraged the backward masses to complain." Tin Sang was closed in 1981 on the pretext that "complete unity of will and voice" were needed and that Tin Sang did not represent any particular social class. 69 Party controls on press publishing have meant tight restraints on 65.

Full text of Political

Bureau Resolution

no. 5,

Nhan Dan, December

5,

1987, p

1.

66. To Hoai, "Salient Features of Contemporary Literature," Tap Chi Cong San, April 1989, FBIS-EAS-89- 109, June 8, 1989, p. 70. 67. Twenty other writers still remained banned, however. See Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1988.

68. Bangkok Post,

September

27, 1989.

Confined, pp. 9—11; "Night Falls Review, July 17, 1981, p. 20; interviews by 69.

Still

Hoang Nguyen, Hanoi, May

15, 1982.

on Morning News," Far Eastern Economic John McAuliff with Hoang Tung and

Vietnam

168

One feature of the 1986 was the removal of some of the constraints on journalists who wrote for party, state, and mass organization organs. In the first phase of the new press policy, newspapers were encouraged to write truthful stories about the negative aspects of Vietnamese society and the operations of the party and state. Newspapers such as Saigon Giai Phong (Liberated Saigon), Tuoi Tre (Youth), Lao Dong (Labor) and Dai Doan Ket (Great solidarity), and Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People's army) began publishing in-depth investigative stories, and some peppered party officials with embarrassing questions about questionable practices in their localities. The press revealed the corrupt activities of a few high-level party officials or their families. It exposed Defense Minister Van Tien Dung, a Political Bureau member, whose wife exploited her husband's position to carry out smuggling; Dung was dropped from the Political freedom of journalists

the

to write the truth.

"renovation" adopted by the

VCP

in

Bureau and lost his ministerial position. 70 The independence of the press was still sharply circumscribed by high-level interference, however. Party censors had to approve both the subject of a story and the text before it could be published. Journalists who had investigated and published stories about the corruption of the VCP secretary of Thanh Hoa Province, Ha Trong Hoa, in 1986 were ordered by party officials to stop publishing such articles, apparently because it had been decided to elevate Hoa from candidate member to full member of the Central Committee. Only after Hoa continued to abuse his power were newspapers permitted to publish reports of the provincial committe's corruption, which reflected Hoa's defeat after an eighteen-month internal power strug71

gle-

72

In 1988 the press was allowed for the first time to publish stories without clearing them first with party watchdogs. 73 Having gained this much freedom, some journalists were hungry for more. At a public meeting, the chairman of the Vietnamese Journalists' Association complained about interference by party leaders with coverage of individual abuses of power. And the editor of the army daily 70.

Huynh Kim Khanh,

"Vietnam's Reforms," Indochina

Issues

84 (September

1988), 5. 71. AFP dispatch,

June 21, 1988, FBIS, June 21, 1988, p. 63. Some newspapers were actually closed down temporarily by authorities after publishing stories about the

Hoa

affair (Doan Ket [Paris],

June 1988,

p. 9).

Thai Duy, "An Abscess Has Been Lanced," Dai Doan Ket, April 2, 1988, JPRSSEA-88-026, June 7, 1988, pp. 26-28. 73. John Spragens, "Vietnam Grapples with Dissent," News Journal (Daytona Beach, Fla.), January 14, 1989, p. 6A. 72.

Political Participation

Quart Doi

and

Human

Rights

169

Nhan Dan expressed regret that the press was allowed only means of applying policies" instead of the correctness

to debate "the

74 of the policies themselves. In response to such pressures,

VCP leaders actually tightened conover the press in 1989. The Ministry of Information prohibited publication of any newspaper or periodical not specifically authorized by the ministry, thus stripping local organs in the South of 75 At the Fifth National their power to authorize such periodicals. Congress of the Vietnamese Journalists' Association in October, Premier Do Muoi retreated from the concept first presented at the Sixth Party Congress that the press should be a "forum of the people" as well as a tool of the party. "Generally speaking," he said, "the press in our country is the voice of the party" and "should reflect the party's viewpoints and stance." He qualified the role of the press as a popular forum, noting that "bad elements" had to be prevented from using the press to "create trouble and disturb internal security." He said party organs would not control the press by ordering journalists to write specific articles, but they would hold regular meetings with journalists to notify them of the party's "policies and guidelines for each specific period." 76 But the journalists did not retreat from the demand for wider freedom. They elected several editors who had been fired from their positions by the party, or who had survived efforts to oust them, to 77 positions of leadership in the association. Nevertheless the quality of press declined noticeably; stories about higher-ranking cadres were fewer and tamer than before. One clear sign that periodicals had been warned to soften their coverage was that names were no longer used in such stories. 78 Although publishing any book or periodical without specific government license remained illegal, in the new atmosphere of relatively free debate in the late 1980s many individuals and groups began to publish without official approval. According to an investitrols

74. AFP dispatch, June 21, 1988, FBIS-EAS-818-1 19, June 21, 1989, pp. 63-64. Meanwhile, newspaper circulation was down sharply in 1988, prompting one writer to suggest that the government may have ordered cutbacks in press runs to retaliate for exposes of corruption in high places. See Doc Lap, May 25, 1988. 75. Bangkok Post, September 27, 1989. 76. Hanoi Domestic Service, October 16, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, pp. 53-60. Another commentary published at the same time argued that the press "must reflect the unanimity between the party and the masses" and that it should not become an "independent" voice. Quan Doi Nhan Dan, October 4, 1989. 77. Murray Hiebert, "Eat First, Talk Later," Far Eastern Economic Review, January 11, 1990, p. 18.

78.

Bangkok

Post,

September 27, 1989.

170

Vietnam

more than 400 newspapers were

gation by the Interior Ministry,

be-

ing circulated by 1988, of which only half were licensed, and nearly 40 percent of 162 books printed in 1987 were "illegal." 79 The magni-

tude of disregard for the law suggests an implicit

political protest

on publishing. of citizens to form

against restraints

associations, which is central to the The right development of pluralism, has also been nullified in practice by the requirement to have government approval. It has been tested in recent years by the group of resistance veterans in Ho Chi Minh City, which began requesting official recognition in 1985 but was stu80 In diously ignored by the government for more than four years. March 1990 the request was formally approved, and the first stateapproved private association carrying out independent political activities, the Vietnam Veterans Association, was created. Although the association is unique in that its leaders are both VCP members and senior members of the Vietnam People's Army, the decision sets a precedent for others who may wish to form associations independent of the government.

Despite public assurances to the contrary, in practice, individual citizens

have had no protection from

state coercion in the

tation of socialist transformation policies.

The

implemen-

party and state obtain

compliance with their policies with overt and subtle pressures on the individual, even when compliance is supposed to be "voluntary." Mass mobilization campaigns for socialist transformation use two methods to ensure the adherence of the majority of the population to collective institutions: convening large meetings and face-to-face conversations.

At Binh

My

village

near

Ho

Chi Minh

City,

where 93 percent of

the peasants joined a hamlet-level pilot cooperative formed in 1978,

most of the farmers were brought into the cooperative through mass meetings. The Peasant's Union, the Women's Association, and the Youth Union all helped the party hold meetings at which people were asked to join the cooperative. All or nearly all of the members in these mass organizations agreed to do so at the meetings, indicating that social pressures, combined with the authority of the party,

were a

critical

element in getting popular acquiescence to the forma-

tion of the cooperative. 81

79. Mai Chi Tho, "Some Urgent Problems on Maintaining Security and Order and Building the People's Police," Tap Chi Cong San, December 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, p. 57. 80. Interview with a foreign visitor to Vietnam, Washington, D.C., April 1988. 81. Interview with Nguyen Van Trung, agriculture specialist, Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee, November 12, 1978; interview with members of the Management

Political Participation

Those who

and

Human

Rights

171

"hesitated" or refused to agree immediately were vis-

ited privately by party cadres representing the Management Board of the cooperative. The cadres visited some families as many as twenty times so often that, as one cadre recalled, "the dogs didn't bark." 82 Those who dropped their resistance after these repeated visits undoubtedly did so less because of the force of the cadres' arguments than because of the sense of pressure from the party-state

—

bureaucracy.

Beyond these more subtle forms of pressure cadres have commonly used "commandism" or "administrative measures," that is, coercion, to get people to cooperate with party policies, especially with

regard to agricultural collectivization. As an official of the Secretariat admitted in 1986, "In power, we easily tend to be bureaucratic and to rely on orders to the point that we force the masses to do 83 things." Coercion has usually taken the form of implicit but unmistakable threats of punishment for failure to comply. Farmers who refused to join collectives in some villages, for example, were accused by cadres of being "opposition elements," leaving them to be84 lieve that they might be arrested as "counterrevolutionaries."

Law,

Human

Other

Rights,

and

basic rights

the Security

Apparatus

and freedoms

— from

arbitrary arrest, deten-

mistreatment by the state, privacy of mail and phone communications are guaranteed by the 1980 constitution (Art. 69-71). But the political culture of the VCP, which for so long ignored or minimized the importance of legal restrictions on the activities of state and party personnel, and the vested interests of the internal security bureaucracy have, in practice, severely circumtion, physical

—

scribed those rights.

and unjust

arrests, torture, and forced and party reorganization in North Vietnam, coinciding with revelations about the lack of democracy in the Soviet Union under Stalin, prompted the Vietnamese party leadership to promulgate new laws and implement regulations on basic human rights in 1957. The new law on the freedom of the

Revelations of arbitrary

confessions during the land reform

Board and with Dinh Van Minh, Youth Union member, Quyet Thang cooperative, Binh My village, November 12, 1978. 82. Interview with a cooperative board member, Quyet Thang cooperative, November 12, 1978. 83. Nguyen Thanh Binh, "Let Us Face the Truth, Think Seriously, and Step Up Production on the Key Front," Dai Doan Ket, November 20, 1985, JPRS-SEA-88-033, February 21, 1986, p. 147. 84. Saigon Giai Phong, September 24, 1986.

Vietnam

172

person, inviolability of residence, and privacy of correspondence prohibited administrative officials under normal circumstances from

opening mail or from entering one's residence and specified punishment for officials who violated the privacy of mail illegally. But it permitted security officials to censor personal letters if there were indications of a law violation, in cases of emergency, or on the orders 85 of "competent judicial cadres." Village police were prohibited by the law from making arrests, and all arrests were to be authorized by written court orders except for emergency and "national security" cases. In the latter case, a suspect could be confined for up to one year with the approval of the People's Control Organ. 86 During the campaign to collectivize agriculture in North Vietnam that began in 1959, however, the new laws were again widely violated by cadres trying to pressure families into joining cooperatives.

Cadres conducted house searches, made illegal arrests, and imprisoned individuals without proper authorization to put pressure on those who refused to join. Families who applied to withdraw from cooperatives were threatened and arrested, tied up, and their buffalo confiscated. 87

Despite such repeated violations of basic rights, the party was so concerned with the rule of law that the Ministry of Justice was

little

abolished in 1960 and replaced by a government Legal Committee. There was no guarantee of a public trial for the accused because secret trials were used by party officials to avoid serious punishment for abuses. Private legal counsel was considered a feature of capitalist

society

North by the DRV and, after SRV. The assumption underlying "law students only become mandarins." Lawyers

and was abolished

in the

1975, in the entire country by the that move was that were replaced by court-appointed

"Socialist pleaders," who were not expected to present a legal defense on behalf of defendants. 88 After the first CIA-sponsored South Vietnamese commando teams were captured in North Vietnam in 1961, the DRV introduced concentration camps for "educational reform" (giao due cai

85.

Vu Due

Chieu, "Let Us Correctly Implement the law on Ensuring Mail Se10, 1961, FBIS, Far East Daily Report, July 12, 1961, pp.

Nhan Dan, June

crecy,"

JJJ5-6. 86.

Nguyen Van Huong, "Penal Procedure and

Institutions of the Democratic Republic of Viet

Nam

Civil Procedure," in An Outline of (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing

House, 1974), pp. 211-14. 87. Hoang Quoc Viet, chairman of the People's Supreme Control Organ, report the Second National Assembly, Nhan Dan, April 24 1962.

to

7

Interview with Justice Minister Phan Hien, Christian Science Monitor, 1987; Amnesty International, Vietnam, p. 14.

88. 2,

November

Political Participation

tao) as a

The

and

Human

Rights

173

means of dealing with suspected counterrevolutionaries. 89

need sufficient evidence to bring the keep an individual under detention for many years. In 1967, the National Assembly passed new legislation specifying "counterrevolutionary crimes," which included any opposition to 90 a government policy. Communist security officials were accustomed to having a free hand to arrest and punish people. This was especially true after May 1975 in South Vietnam, where local party authorities had operated without law and with little specific guidance for many years. 91 Premier Pham Van Dong sent a delegation to the South to set up a new code covering arrests, courts, and sentencing. But the new code, promulgated by the Southern government in March 1976, was gen92 Security offierally ignored by cadres outside Ho Chi Minh City. security services did not

individual to

trial to

cers routinely

made

arrests without the written permission of a

judge and forced citizens to pay fines to be released. 93 Party leaders began to put more stress on the reinforcement of legality in the late 1970s as they became increasingly aware of the high cost of lawlessness in the state apparatus. The Faculty of Law was reconstituted in 1979, beginning the process of training lawyers

and fifteen hundred lawyers and jurists had graduated by 1987 with another fifteen hundred in school. 94 The Ministry of Justice was reestablished only in 1981. But it was not until the late 1980s that the VCP focused on the violation of fundamental human rights and undertook to remedy in traditional legal concepts,

89.

The

discovery of the

States in 1961

See

Hoang

prompted

Son, Which

commando teams

sent into the North by the United concern with "counterrevolutionaries." Rights? (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House,

first

a heightened

Human

DRV

1980), p. 86. 90. Article 13, November 10, 1967, Regulation on punishment of counterrevolutionary crimes, Nhan Dan, October 16, 1979, Hanoi Domestic Service, October 16,

1979, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, October 23, 1979, pp. Kl-6. Lawyers at the DRV Supreme People's Court claimed to the author in January 1975 that there had been "considerably fewer than one hundred" convictions in the previous five years under the 1967 law and that most prisoners were released before serving their full sentences. But the 1961 resolution on educational reform was also still in force, so the Council of Ministers had the option of sending persons to concentration camps without charges or trial rather than sending them to prison for fixed terms. 91. For a firsthand account of the arbitrary and capricious behavior of party security apparatus in the South, see Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff, The Vietnamese

Gulag (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986). 92. Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), pp. 279-82. 93. Jacques Bekaert, "Eye on Indochina: Police and Civil Rights," Bangkok Post, February 10, 1989. 94. Christian Science Monitor,

November

2,

1987.

174

Vietnam

the situation. For the

first

time the party began to publicize and an-

acknowledged as a problem that village and subward (urban neighborhood) security cadres had no comprehensive legal training and no understanding of the limits of their legal authority. Cases of security cadres making verbal threats, illegal arrests, and detentions, and forcing admissions of guilt through torture were uncovered and brought before courts in Hanoi; torture was reported to be "alarmingly prevalent." Provincial and municipal adminisrative personnel were directed to train and supervise village public security personnel to understand and respect alyze cases of abuse by cadres. Officials

basic legal rights such as habeas corpus.

95

Specific security units at

the district level were singled out for criticism

and forced

to take

measures and to undergo self-criticism. 96 The new emphasis on legality led to the passage by the National Assembly of a new criminal procedure code in June 1988 that for the first time affirmed the presumed innocence of the accused and specified the legal right to a public trial, to have a defense counsel of one's own choice even while in custody during investigation, and to have adequate time and facilities to prepare one's defense. The system of "socialist pleaders" was supposed to be phased out, although the exact timing of the transition remained unclear. 97 The attitude of the Interior Ministry toward these new guarantees was reflected in its decision to try the cases of three brothers, arrested in December 1984 and detained for years without charge, on the day before the new law took effect, so they would not benefit from the new legal rights. Two of the three were charged with coldisciplinary

on alleged human rights violations with the inon to international human rights organizations. The defendants were not told of the trial date until the day before and lecting information

tent to pass

it

could not adequately prepare their defenses. 98 Massive use of incarceration for "reeducation" was again used to deal with those associated with the defeated Saigon government. As many as 300,000 military officers, civilian officials, and political party members were kept in twenty-one reeducation camps for periods ranging from a few months to many years. Hundreds of writers, artists, journalists, 95.

Nhan Dan, February

and publishers were arrested and sent

to

26, 1987.

Hanoi Domestic Service, August 9, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, August 11, 1987, p. N5; Hanoi Domestic Service, September 9, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 17, 1987, p. 33. 97. Vietnam: Law on Criminal Procedure, J PRS-SEA-89-0 19, May 10, 1989; Amnesty 96.

International, Vietnam, pp. 4, 14. 98. News from Asia Watch, August 18, 1989.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

175

the camps in 1975-1976 because of their political points of view as evidenced by past works and affiliations." Initially, the camp personnel attempted to change the political points of view of the camp inmates through "confessions" and collective discussion of their "crimes." But after 1978, with security threats perceived as increas100 the ing because of economic crisis and the overt hostility of China, SRV appears to have viewed the camps as a convenient way to keep the individuals from making contacts with other potential opposition elements in society. 101 Conditions in the camps varied considerably, but in some cases, prisoners were beaten or otherwise tortured for violating camp regulations, and some prisoners were executed for attempting to escape the camp. 102 Food and medical supplies were inadequate, and prisoners who became ill often were not quickly transferred to a hospital and therefore died. 103 The People's Control Organ, which is supposed to ensure that the law is strictly enforced in prisons and reeducation camps, was incapable of preventing or stopping these abuses.

February 1988— nearly fourteen years after the all the original prisoners were released from the camps. 104 Meanwhile, a struggle was under way between those concerned with the rule of law and those concerned with security over whether or not to abolish reeducation camps. The SRV National Assembly passed a penal code in 1984 that eliminated reedIt

was not

until

process began

99.

Still

The

— that nearly

Confined, p. 16. only military resistance organization in South

Vietnam ever mentioned by was the "National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam," organized in the United States in 1980, which never had more than two hundred men inside Vietnam. See Nhan Dan, December 1, 2, and 3, 1987. 101. See the comment of a former camp inmate in the Christian Science Monitor, 100.

the government, apart from

November

2,

FULRO,

1987, p. 12.

Although such executions were undoubtedly numerous, claims of postwar executions reaching sixty-five thousand or far more advanced by Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl D. Jackson based on refugee interviews abuse statistical data in the extreme. See Gareth Porter and James Roberts, "Creating a Bloodbath by Statistical Manipulation," Pacific Affairs 61 (Summer 1988), 303-10. 103. See Ginetta Sagan and Stephen Denney, Violations of Human Rights in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, April 30, 1975— April 30, 1983 (Atherton, Calif.: Aurora Foundation, 1983), pp. 18-33; Neil Sheehan, "Ex-Saigon Official Tells of 'Reeducation' by Hanoi," New York Times, January 14, 1979; Amnesty International, Vietnam, pp. 44-47. 104. FBIS, February 11, 1988, pp. 50-51. After this release, SRV officials claimed that only 159 "political" detainees were still held in detention camps along with an unknown number of detainees charged with crimes unrelated to political security. Human rights monitors believe, however, that thousands more who have been arrested since 1975 remain in reeducation facilities. 102.

Vietnam

176

ucation

camps

as a

form of punishment. 105

It

specified that persons

punished by "resthe convict would have to rewhich idence under surveillance," in live, work, and "reform himself main within a given locality and to 106 under the control of the local authorities. But in 1987 the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City adopted its own regulations, which guilty of "particularly serious violations" should be

called for "concentrated reeducation" for "past or present counter-

revolutionary elements"

who

"refuse to be reeducated." 107 That

move

suggested that some powerful figures in the party were not reconciled to giving up reeducation camps as a tool for managing political security.

Constraints on Religious Communities

The

question of religious freedom in the

SRV

represents a special

who follow one of Buddhism, Cao Dai, or Hoa Hao), but institutions that have potential social and even political influence. Because the SRV regime rejects the possibility of any social institution that could compete with the state and party for social

case because

it

involves not only the individuals

the four major faiths (Christianity,

influence, the interests of the authorities sharply contradict those of

any major religious organization. Although the state guarantees freedom of belief as well as unbelief in the constitution, the political culture of the SRV makes significant constraints on the activities of clergy and others active in religious institutions inevitable.

—

The VCP

—

has always insisted that there

is

no contradiction

be-

tween Communist ideology and freedom of religion. It has told cadres that it "determinedly opposes actions to pressure the masses 108 in violation of the party's policy of freedom of belief." On the other hand, it has viewed all religious organizations as having an essentially reactionary character while differentiating

among

the hi-

and ordinary believers. The VCP has expected religious organizations to oppose the state, to make contact with external foes of the revolution, and to try to maximize their influence

erarchy, the clergy,

over the population. So the Communist regime has tried in a variety 105. See Gareth Porter, "Vietnamese Communism: Internal Debates Force Change," Indochina Issues, no. 31, December 1982, p. 6. 106. Article 25, SRV draft penal code, Hanoi Domestic Service, August 4, 1983, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, August 8, 1983, p. K7. 107. Saigon Giai Phong, July 4, 1987, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, July 24, 1987, p. N2. 108. Pham Quan Hieu, "Tu Do Tin Nguong" [Freedom of belief], Hoc Tap, De-

cember 1961, pp. 55-58

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

177

of ways to reduce religious organizations to docile instruments of party influence.

The

regime's strategy toward religious organizations

and detention of those viewed as "counterrevoluthe "reform of church organizations," and efforts to di-

involves the arrest tionaries,"

vide the religious hierarchies.

The main

target of these efforts in the

North has been the Catho-

church. Party leaders tried not to alienate the Catholic masses after 1954 but to win them over through propaganda and education lic

while striving to eliminate anti-Catholic prejudices

and ensure

among

cadres

had enough time for Catholic parishes were

that Catholics in the cooperatives

109 mass, bible reading, and religious affairs.

allowed to retain enough land to support the church. Catholic

mem-

bers of cooperatives were even allowed to set aside income from

some fields to be used for worship. 110 But the regime insisted on tight controls over the church's activities. Catholic schools were taken over by the government and secularized, and cadres ensured that the priests' sermons were not in The state also inopposition to the laws and policies of the state. sisted on playing a role in the selection of priests because officials 111

believed that

many

"reactionaries" were using their role as priests to

carry out antistate activities. 112

The

ordination of priests did not halt

but slowed dramatically (about one hundred ordinations from 1954 to 1972), because there was no agreement on reopening the seminaries until 1980.

113

After the war against the United States local party officials in the cooperatives tried to reach accommodations with the Catholic faith-

In one overwhelmingly Catholic village in the north, an agreement was negotiated in 1978 on a new set of principles and ground rules under which churches could operate. The agreement specified ful.

that

church

activities

were not

to obstruct

production work, the

109. Nguyen Van Dat, "May Kinh Nghiem Van Dong Dong Bao Theo Dao Thien Chua trong Phong Trao Hop Tac Hoa o Nam Dinh [Some experiences mobilizing Catholic Compatriots in the movement to cooperativize in Nam Dinh], Hoc Tap,

March 1961, pp. 51-53. 110. Elliott, "Revolutionary Reintegration," p. 213. 111. Nguyen Nhat, "Nhan Thuc va Giai Quyet Dung

Dan Van De Ton Giao" [Corunderstand and resolve the religious problem], Hoc Tap, March 1965, p. 63. 112. See Jeremiah Trung, "The Question of Relations between the Church and State," Chinh Nghia, February 17, 1962, FBIS, Far East Daily Report, April 16, 1963, pp. JJJ 12-13; Nguyen Tarn Tinh, "Let Us Discuss One Concrete Aspect of the Problem of Church-State Relations," Chinh Nghia, November 4, 1962, FBIS, Far East Daily rectly

Report,

December

6,

1962, pp. JJJ6-7.

December 1972; Houtart and Commune (London: Zed Books, 1983), pp.

113. Informations Catholiques Internationales (Paris),

Lemercinier, Hai Van: Life in a Vietnamese 163, 192.

Vietnam

178

progress of the cooperative, or national security, that the time spent

on mass had to be limited to fixed hours each week, and that chism had to be on school holidays to avoid interference with dren's secular education.

1

catechil-

"

In the south, the party leadership was determined, in the words of into a an internal party document, to "transform the Church [and] to reform its doctrines, religion at the service of the State its organization, its legislation and its ceremonies along progressive 115 lines." The regime stripped the Catholic church of its system of .

.

.

.

.

.

and educational institutions, and established firm and training of priests. Decree no. 29, published in 1977 and applied to all religious organizations, provided that schools for "specialists in religious activities" must have teachers who are approved by the People's Committee of the province where they are located and must choose students who have demonstrated "patriotism and a love of socialism" as certified by the People's Committee in the province or city in which they reside. The ordination of any priest, according to the decree, must have the social, cultural,

control over the selection

prior approval of the authorities in the village, district, province, or town. These tight political controls over the primary process by

which the Catholic church reproduces itself and the refusal by most provincial committees to permit students to enter the seminaries has of almost

led, in effect, to the closing

all

the church's seminaries in

the South. 116

The SRV all

also

clergy that

imposed a

of formal controls on the activities of making the church an arm of the govdocuments must be submitted to prior censor-

come

set

close to

ernment: all religious ship; sermons must encourage the faithful to support the current party lines and policies; any change of post by a priest requires government approval. Even travel by clergy outside their localities requires the approval of provincial or municipal authorities rather than simply village authorities as for ordinary citizens." The arrest and detention of actively anti-Communist priests has 7

114.

Houtart and Lemercinier, Hai Van, pp. 171-72. "Our Task with Regard to the Catholic Church,"

a VCP document published Echanges France-Asie no. 72, February 1982, quoted in Jean Mais Mep, "Church-State Relations in Vietnam," Pro Mundi Vita: Dossiers (Brussels), no. 4, 1985, 1

15.

in

,

Asia-Australia dossier no. 35, p. 14. 116.

Ibid., p. 16.

18-20. Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh told the author in 1978 that had been limited after the March 1976 "Vinh Son affair," in which three priests were found guilty of involvement in an armed plot against the government by former Saigon military officers (interview, Ho Chi Minh City, November 10, 117.

Ibid., pp.

travel for priests

1978).

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

179

been part of the regime's approach to transforming the church. According to an SRV source, in the period immediately after the victory, fifty-two Catholic chaplains in the former Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) were sent to reeducation camps along with 8 fifty-five other anti-Communist priests." Over the next few years, another one to two hundred priests were arrested and put in detention centers either because of their past anti-Communist views and or because they refused to abide by state laws or policies regarding the church." 9 The new regime also asserted its right to intervene forcibly in the church hierarchy itself to nullify an appointment and to detain and 120 When the Vatican in April 1975 named former isolate bishops. President Ngo Dinh Diem's nephew, Bishop Nguyen Van Thuan, assistant bishop of Saigon with the right of succession to Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh, leftist Catholics protested strongly, and when the decision was not rescinded, the government arrested Thuan and sent him to Nha Trang to a parish church where he was forbidden to contact other priests in the diocese. Later, Thuan was sent to activities

Hanoi and placed under house arrest. 121 The SRV has waged an ideological war against what

it

regards as

the Catholic church's "subtle penetration of the economic, social

and

it has watched with "vigilance" any evidence of success on the part of the church in drawing young people and even some previous nonbelievers among teachers in the South into church activities. 122 Nine Jesuit fathers from the Alexandre de Rhodes Center, who were arrested in 1980 and 1981, had been well known for having attracted large numbers of youth to worship, bible study, and catechism. Because the only charge against them was "antigovernment behavior," and the trial (for an alleged

political spheres." In particular,

118. Nguyen Quoc Pham, "Lesson: Scientific Communism vs. Religions," Tap Chi Giao Due Ly Luan, February-March 1987, JPRS-SEA-87-1 14, p. 59. 1 19. One foreign critic of SRV religious policy gives the figure of 250-300 priests and religious persons incarcerated. See Mep, "Church-State Relations in Vietnam," pp. 23-24. A Vietnamese source close to the SRV suggests that the figure should be two hundred, including both former chaplains and priests caught attempting to flee the country. See Tran Minh, "A Propos de Catholiques au Vietnam: Persecutions ou Orchestration?" Doan Ket (Paris), no. 365, December 1984, pp. 20-21. 120. Ngo Dinh Diem had also attempted to intervene to force the Vatican to rescind the nomination of Msgr. Nguyen Van Hien as bishop of Saigon in 1955 on the ground that he did not support the regime's anti-Communist campaign, but he did not go so far as to arrest Msgr. Hien. See Piero Gheddo, The Cross and the Bo-Tree: Catholics and Buddhists in Vietnam (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1970), pp. 139-40. 121. Being Christian Today in Vietnam, pp. 31-32; Richard Dudman, "Hanoi Holds Anti-Red Priest," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 8, 1977. 122. Nguyen Quoc Pham, "Lesson," p. 64.

ARVN

Vietnam

180

was not held until 1983, it was widely believed among Chi Minh City that their arrest was aimed at remov123 ing a strong source of Catholic influence in the city. Another instrument of the state's effort to remold the church is the Committee for the Unity of Catholic Patriotic Vietnamese, formed in 1983 under the sponsorship of the Vietnam Fatherland Front. Like the Liaison Committee of Patriotic and Peace-loving Catholics in North Vietnam from 1955 onward, this association was aimed at influencing Catholic circles to support the VCP's lines and policies. It has not become a "patriotic church" autonomous from Rome as feared by some in the church hierarchy, but it has become a new test of the fidelity of Vietnamese bishops and clergy to the socialist state. Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh had to state that any opposition to the committee was tantamount to opposing the state itself. Archbishop Nguyen Kim Dien of Hue was summoned to the public security office in Hue and interrogated over a period of weeks in 1984 after he forbade priests in his diocese from attending the founding congress. Since then he has been confined to Hue and military plot)

Catholics in

Ho

kept under constant surveillance. 124 The Unified Buddhist Church (UBC) in the South was subject to the same restrictions and controls as the Catholic church after 1975.

The

UBC

was pressured to "donate" its network of Bo De elementary and secondary schools and to close its Buddhist publishing houses. Some members of the Executive Council opposed those steps. 125 The same leaders were also angry at the SRV's refusal to give Buddhist monks their traditional exemption from military duty an exemption that had helped swell the ranks of the Buddhist clergy for centuries. When security personnel came in March 1977 to take over a Buddhist orphanage located on the grounds of a pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City and tore down the church's sign in front, the UBC Executive Council immediately issued a memorandum appealing to monks to be ready to immolate themselves "if the problems are not resolved satisfactorily ... in order to defend the Faith and the dignity of the Church." 126 The following month, An Quang Buddhists carried out a mass demonstration with banners calling for freedom of religion, Executive Council of the

social welfare institutions

and

its

—

123. Sagan and Denney, Violation of Human Rights, p. 11; Mep, "Church-State Relations in Vietnam," p. 25; interview by Murray Hiebert with a progressive Catholic figure, Ho Chi Minh City, May 7, 1981.

124. 125.

Mep, "Church-State Relations in Vietnam," pp. 33-35. Thich Thien Chau, "Buddhism in Vietnam: The Crux of the Problem," Impact

(Manila),

December

1978.

Photocopy of a letter from the general secretary of the Vien Hoa Dao, Thich Quang Do, to the United Buddhist Church delegations at all levels, March 3, 1977. 126.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

181

and permission for monks and employment. 127

the return of church properties,

nuns

to avoid secular

Security forces immediately arrested six

UBC. 128 They were

members of the Executive

on charges of having distorted government policies and having received letters and documents from abroad that were distributed to their followers. 129 Two of Council of the

tried

the six detained Buddhist leaders were released "without punish-

ment," and the others were given suspended prison sentences and restored to their positions in the

UBC.

But the tensions between these Buddhist leaders and the regime flared again when the SRV pushed ahead with its plan for unification of all Buddhist organizations, North and South. Progovernment monks had formed a committee in early 1980 to plan for such a unification, but two of the newly released monks, Thich Quang Do and Thich Huyen Quang openly opposed the proposal. After the UBC assembly rejected it in September 1981, they were denounced for trying to "sabotage" the unity effort and to "openly defy the government and the Fatherland Front." 130 The Buddhist Congress convened in Hanoi to form the Vietnam Buddhist church in November 1981 was set up unilaterally by progovernment Buddhist monks with government logistical support. Thich Quang Do and Thich Huyen Quang were excluded from the congress along with other UBC leaders who had opposed the unification plan. The unified Buddhist church became an officially designated mass organization affiliated with the Vietnam Fatherland Front, meaning that its directives had the force of the state behind them. 131 The Buddhist Church thus effectively became an arm of the government. Thich Huyen Quang and Thich Quang Do were rearrested in February 1982, forbidden from participating further in Buddhist affairs. They were sent to their native villages, where they remained under house arrest as of the end of 1989. 132 In 1984 twelve more Buddhist monks and nuns, including two well-known scholars, Thich Tue Sy and Thich Tri Sieu, were arrested and held under 127.

Hoover

Nguyen Van Canh, Vietnam under Communism, 1975-1982

(Stanford, Calif.:

Institution Press, 1983), pp. 180-81. spokesman claimed that those arrested

128. A VCP were "CIA agents." See Nayan Chanda, "Le Communisme Vietnamien En Marche," Le Monde Diplomatique, April

1978, p. 19.

SRV embassy in London, September 1977, quoted in Internaof Reconciliation (Alkmaar, Netherlands), Press Release, October

129. Statement by tional Fellowship

23, 1978. 130.

Sagan and Denney,

131.

Ibid.

132.

Ibid.; interview with

Violations of

Thich

Human

Rights, pp.

Tu Hanh; Amnesty

14-15.

International, Vietnam, p. 18.

182

Vietnam

administrative detention for

more than four

years.

Along with nine-

teen other defendants, the Buddhist scholars were tried and convicted in 1988 on charges of forming two "counterrevolutionary or-

and having created secret military bases in south Vietnam. Sy and Sieu received death sentences, which were later commuted to twenty years of imprisonment. 133 The elimination of the UBC as an independent sociopolitical organization has apparently left Buddhist congregations in the villages less able to protect themselves from abuses by local authorities. The conversion of pagodas to secular purposes is supposed to occur only after a vote of the population at a public meeting and only after Buddhist believers agree. Nevertheless, the secretary general of the Executive Council of the new Buddhist organization cited the closure of a number of pagodas and their conversion to other uses as 134 violations of religious freedom. SRV policy toward the small Protestant Evangelical Church of Vietnam (Hoi Thanh Tin Lanh Viet Nam), with its three hundred thousand members and five hundred clergy, is shaped by four factors. First, church officials and clergy in the North, with about one hundred thousand members, have long since accommodated to the regime, whereas the church in the South, with twice as many members, remains more conservative than either the Catholic or Buddhist churches in its refusal to support government policies and programs. Second, the church in the South has a particularly large following among young urban professional people, making it a potential source of antiregime organizing. Third, among the Evangelical Protestants are ethnic minority leaders in the central highlands of south Vietnam who have been active in the resistance activities of FULRO (the French acronym for the United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed Races). Fourth, there has been long and extensive contact between the Vietnamese Evangelical Church and conservative Protestants based in the United States. 135 As it has with the Buddhist church, the state has pushed for unification of the northern and southern church organizations, supganizations"

Amnesty

International, Vietnam, pp. 18, 28-30. Interview with Thich Minh Chau, AFP dispatch, November 16, 1981, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, November 20, 1981, p. K8. The problem was confirmed by Thich Tu Hanh in an interview with the author, August 1982. 135. The discussion that follows is based on Reg Reimer, "Evangelicals in Vietnam: 'We Are Living by Faith,'" Indochina Issues, no. 74, April 1987, pp. 8-9; Associated Press dispatch, St. Louis Post Dispatch, January 31, 1982, p. 7F; and an interview with a member of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam who has emigrated to the United States, Washington, D.C., January 18, 1988. 133. 134.

Political Participation

and

Human

Rights

183

ported progovernment clergy against antigovernment clergy, and arrested some of the most popular clergy in the south. The proposal for unification of the two church organizations, as in the case of the Buddhist church, is aimed at putting more docile northern Protestants in charge of the more independent-minded Southerners. Thus far, the southern church leaders have been united in opposing the proposal, so the state has failed to bring it about. Where pastors support the government, as in the city of Can Tho in the Mekong delta, the state has encouraged them to request that the government close churches led by opposition pastors and send the dissenting clergy to small villages.

arrested the most successful pastor in Ho Chi Minh City, Hieu Ha, who had brought thousands of new members into his church after 1975, and closed his church permanently in 1983. As many as eighteen Protestant clergy have been under long-term detention since 1975. The state's efforts to bring Protestant church activity under control have pushed much of it underground in the south as Protestants carry on worship services at home and ordain

The SRV

Rev.

Ho

pastors without official approval.

The two indigenous religions of Vietnam, Hoa Hao and Cao Dai, both pose different political problems for the Communist regime. Instead of uniting the sects under a single national leadership, the SRV decided after the war to allow them to exist only at the local level and to make them, for the first time, purely religious organizations. The main policy decision on the Hoa Hao was to dismantle the entire national leadership, as well those

on provincial and

district

The SRV arrested the head of the national Hoa Hao "Managing Board," Luong Trong Tuong, and other top Hoa Hao leaders and sent them to reeducation camp. Village-level Management levels.

Boards were allowed to remain in existence, however, after being purged of anti-Communists. According to party officials in Dong Thap Province, the VCP had maintained revolutionary bases among Hoa Hao believers for many years, and many of them were already on these boards. But many of the heads of these village boards were considered "reactionaries" and were denounced at Hoa Hao rallies organized by progovernment local leaders. 156 Although the Hoa Hao Interview with members of the People's Committee, Dong Thap Province, 1978. The destruction of the Hoa Hao organization above the village level was justified by the party with the help of members of So's family, by citing certain excerpts from the Hoa Hao "bible" that taught that people should train themselves at home and had no need for church structure (ibid.). See also Nguyen Khac Vien, "'Pelerinage' au Pays Hoa Hao," Courrier du Vietnam, no. 10, 1983, pp. 25-26. 136.

November

Vietnam

184

were still allowed to visit founder Huynh Phu pagoda, and mausoleum, the religion was strictly limited faithful

activities.

The

So's

home,

to spiritual

137

various branches of the

Cao Dai

sect,

some of whom had been

neutral or even sympathetic to the revolution during the war, were allowed to continue to exist as purely religious institutions. But the leaders of the main sect in Tay Ninh, who had collaborated with successive anti-Communist regimes, were arrested and tried in a 138 The Cao Dai Holy See was taken over by large outdoor trial there. the government and became the office of the Tay Ninh Provincial

VCP

Committee. 139 Altogether, Tay Ninh authorities arrested 1,291 Caodaists, sent more than 1,000 to reeducation camps, and executed 39 from 1975 to 1983. 140 Like the other religious organizations, the Cao Dai sect was eliminated as an independent sociopolitical force.

137.

Nguyen Khac Vien,

"Telerinage,"' p. 26;

Nguyen Quoc Pham,

63.

138. 139.

140.

Nguyen Quoc Pham, "Lessons," p. 63. Nguyen Van Canh, Vietnam under Communism, Nguyen Quoc Pham, "Lessons," p. 63.

p. 186.

"Lesson," p.

Vietnamese Foreign

7

Policy:

Ideology and Constraints

Foreign policy has been extraordinarily important to the Vietnamese Communist regime's ability to survive and to maximize its security and political autonomy, especially vis-a-vis outside powers. Although DRV/SRV leaders have also tried to use foreign policy to increase domestic welfare, they have been less successful in doing so, mostly because that objective has been so often in conflict with the others. In this chapter I examine the ways in which objective constraints and the VCP's own subjective view of the world have shaped Vietnamese foreign policy and outline the evolution of Vietnamese foreign policy outputs from the establishment of the DRV in 1945 to 1

1990.

Constraints on Vietnamese Policy

Vietnam's foreign policy options have been defined to its geographical position. Because Vietnam's two agricultural-population centers in the north and south are linked by a long, slender central Vietnamese region (only twenty-five miles wide at its narrowest point) that can be cut easily by external enemies, Vietnamese leaders have viewed the mountainous interiors bordering Laos and Cambodia as secure rear areas vis-a-vis more powerful intruders. 2 Weaker states in neighboring Laos and CamHistorically,

a great extent by

1. For an analysis that uses these four clusters of problems (security, autonomy, welfare and regime maintenance) as key concepts for comparing foreign policy goals, see K. J. Holsti, "The Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy: Some Notes on the Pitfalls and Paths to Theory," in David Wurfel and Bruce Burton, eds., The Political Economy of Foreign Policy in Southeast Asia (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 9-20. 2. See William Turley, "Vietnam/Indochina: Hanoi's Challenge to Southeast Asian Regional Order," in Young Whan Kihl and Lawrence Grinter, eds., Asian Pacific Security: Emerging Challenges and Responses (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986),

186

Vietnam

bodia that have been vulnerable to external penetration have invited repeated Vietnamese intervention in the nineteenth century and in the first and second Indochina wars. In both wars of resistance Vietnam needed to use communications routes and sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, so it viewed the three countries of Indochina as a "single strategic unit" during wartime. Since the end of the conflict with the United States, moreover, the SRV has regarded 5

Laos and Cambodia as parts of

its

security zone. Its use of the term

"special relationship" with regard to both countries has both ideolog-

and security connotations. 4 It is no accident that Sino- Vietnamese relations have been more contentious than those between China and the rest of Southeast Asia. Vietnam is the only country in the region with no natural barrier to China's military access. Three passes through the mountains in the Sino-Vietnamese border area as well as the Vietnamese coastline nearby have made Vietnam the logical target of Chinese southward expansion over the past two millennia. Concern about autonomy from a strong Chinese state has thus been an inherent element in Vietnamese national security since the birth of Vietnam as an independent state. Geography and history have created boundary demarcation issues with both China and Cambodia. Large areas of the Mekong delta region had been part of the Khmer empire until the Vietnamese absorbed them in the eighteenth century, and more Cambodian land was lost to Vietnam during the French colonial period. So the Vietnamese faced particularly truculent responses to boundary issues both from non-Communist regimes during the second Indochina War and from the Khmer Rouge Democratic Kampuchea regime after 1975. The option of negotiating a mutually satisfactory compromise on border issues with Cambodia become increasingly diffiical

5

cult and, finally, impossible.

Lim Joo-Jock, Geo-Strategy in the South China Sea Basin (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1979), p. 13. 3. The term was first used in 1950 by Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap in Immediate Military Tasks for Switching over to the General Counteroffensive. The document is translated in Gareth Porter, Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation of Human Decisions (Stanfordville, N.Y.: Coleman, 1979), 1:231-37. p. 180;

4. The term "special relationship" was first used with regard to Laos in the February 1976 joint communique with Laos. See Nhan Dan, February 12, 1976. It was first publicly applied to Kampuchea at the Fourth Party Congress. See "Political Report of the Central Committee," Communist Party of Vietnam, 4th National Congress, Documents

(Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1977), p. 151. 5. See Stephen P. Heder, "The Kampuchean- Vietnamese Conflict," in David W. P. Elliott, ed., The Third Indochina Conflict (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980), pp.

21-67.

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

187

In the case of the Sino-Vietnamese land border, the French colo-

regime had ceded territory to Qing Court that had traditionally belonged to Vietnam, and, by the time the DRV was established, border markers had been shifted further to Vietnam's disadvantage. The maritime boundary remained to be delineated when Vietnam became independent. Historically conflicting Vietnamese and Chinese claims to the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea were also unresolved when the second Indochina War ended in nial

1975. 6

Forces in world politics and the global economic system have repeatedly narrowed Vietnamese options.

The United States refusal to DRV, its financial sup-

recognize or support the newly independent port of the French military effort, and

its

diplomatic and economic

DRV from advanced capitalist states from its inde1945 until 1969 would have been enough to reinforce the existing tendencies in Hanoi toward firm alignment with the socialist camp. But the direct intervention of the United States in the conflict after 1954 left Hanoi with little choice in its foreign policy. On the other hand, the unfavorable balance of power in world politics the superiority of U.S. military might over that of Hanoi's allies and Soviet acceptance of a de facto division of Vietnam into U.S. and Soviet spheres of influence put strong pressure on Hanoi to accommodate the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in the mid- and late 8 1950s. The Chinese breakaway from the socialist bloc and the emergence of Sino-U.S. rapprochement in the early to mid-1970s made it difficult for Hanoi to continue the delicate balancing act between Moscow and Beijing that it had managed during the war. The U.S. policy of aligning with China to help contain Soviet influence tended to push Vietnam toward greater dependence on the Soviets. The cutoff of capital and technology to Vietnam by major capitalist states and financial institutions during the 1980s was a major source of pressure for withdrawal of its forces from Cambodia. isolation of the

pendence

in

7

—

—

6. See Chang Pao-min, "The Sino-Vietnamese Territorial Dispute," Asia-Pacific Community, Spring 1980, pp. 130-65; Gareth Porter, "Vietnamese Policy and the Indochina Crisis," in Elliott, Third Indochina Conflict, pp. 80-84. 7. Vietnam did not have full diplomatic relations with a single advanced capitalist state between 1945 and 1969, and it was not until after the Paris peace agreement of 1973 that most Western states extended diplomatic recognition. For the dates on which foreign countries recognized the DRV/SRV, see Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Statistics General Department, So Lieu Thong Ke 1930-1984 [Statistical data 19301884], JPRS-SEA-86- 108, June 25, 1986, pp. 209-15. 8. On the Soviet explicit acceptance of the spheres of influence understanding over Vietnam (North Vietnam in the Soviet sphere, South Vietnam in the U.S. sphere), see Mieczylaw Maneli, War of the Vanquished (New York: Harper and Row,

1971), p. 177.

188

Vietnam

Sometimes Vietnamese foreign policy has been strongly influenced by domestic socioeconomic and political needs. Economic exhaustion from nine years of resistance war against the French and the need to consolidate the economy and begin socialist transformation of the North contributed to the DRV's decision to adhere closely Union's peaceful coexistence strategy in the latter half of the 1950s. After the war with the United States, the desperate to the Soviet

need for external assistance to try to revive a command economy that the leadership was unwilling to subject to far-reaching economic liberalization was a key factor in Hanoi's spurning of the 1977 U.S. 9 offer of unconditional normalization of relations.

the orthodox Marxist-Leninist development

socioeconomic

crisis

And

the failure of

model and

its attendant forced Vietnam to begin to seek greater partici-

pation in the global capitalist system in the 1980s.

Vietnam's Worldview in Transition

The Vietnamese Communist regime has relied heavily on its own making many crucial foreign policy deci-

subjective belief system in

sions. Until after the Sixth Party Congress of 1986, the VCP's worldview was derived from orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideology, as seen

through the Vietnamese prism of revolutionary experience since the Vietnamese party leaders' vision of a struggle between imperialism and world revolution was supplemented but not yet entirely replaced by a recognition of the interdependence of states and economic constraints on conflict. 10 The Vietnamese Communist worldview centered on a formal system of beliefs about the global political and economic order. The Vietnamese party believed that class struggle was the motor of historical change and that the current historical era was defined by the struggle between the proletariat, representing the rising forces of socialism, and the bourgeoisie, representing the decaying system of capitalism. The outcome of this struggle was seen as inevitable, early 1930s. In the late 1980s, the

primarily because of capitalism's inherent weaknesses. 11

9. Gareth Porter, "Linkages between Domestic and Eoreign Policy Debates in Vietnam: 1975-1983," paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting, Washington, D.C., March 23, 1984. 10. For a more detailed discussion, see Gareth Porter, "The Transformation of Vietnam's Worldview: From Two Camps to Interdependence," Contemporary Southeast Asia 12 (June 1990), 1-19. 1 1 For a summary of the party's view of the nature of this historical epoch, see Mot So Hieu Biet ve Chu Nghia Cong Sn [Some knowledge about communism] (Hanoi:

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

From

the beginning of the Cold

the world as divided into two

War

189

the Vietnamese had viewed

camps with the

imperialist

camp, led

by the United States, and the socialist camp, led by the Soviet Union, locked in a struggle in which "one will disappear and one will survive" (mot mat, mot con). They had seen the Soviet Union as an important and positive factor in the world revolution and the material bases of socialism as constituting "objective conditions linking socialist

12 countries with one another."

For Hanoi the primary indicator of the direction of global change was not Soviet bloc military power but the demonstrated superiority of socialism over capitalism as an economic system. In the late 1950s Hanoi was confident that the Soviet Union would outstrip the United States in industrial production by the early 1970s. 13 When that did not happen, the Vietnamese continued to argue that capitalism was entering a period of "prolonged crisis" and that the socialist 14 states would "overtake the capitalist world in a few years." When comparing the strength of imperialist and revolutionary forces, the Vietnamese party tended to be more optimistic than the Soviet or Chinese parties. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviets were arguing that the world situation was unfavorable to an offensive posture by the socialist camp because of U.S. superiority in nuclear forces as well as in industrial production and technology. In 1961, however, the VWP affirmed that the world revolution was in an "offensive posture" and had "general superiority" over imperialism and counterrevolutionary forces, despite the latter's "partial and temporary" advantages. The Vietnamese believed that the national liberation movements were causing the "rear areas" of the imperialist

countries to "disintegrate quickly," ultimately creating favorable

conditions for

more

socialist states

and revolutions

in

imperialist

Training and Study Department, Committee on Propaganda and Training, Vietnam Workers Party, 1973), pp. 54-67. 12. Hoang Tung, The Tien Cong cua Ba Dong Thac Cach Mang [The offensive position of the three revolutionary currents] (Hanoi: Su That, 1978), pp. 39-40. This thesis explains why Hanoi believed there were limits on how far the Soviet state could go in betraying the Vietnamese revolution without an internal political reaction within the Soviet Union. 13. Le Duan, "Historic Tasks of the International Communist Movement," Vietnam News Agency, January 17, 1958, FBIS, January 29, 1958, p. 34. 14. Tax Lieu Huong Dan Hoc Tap Nghi Quyet Dai Hoi Lan Thu IV cua Dang [Guidance document for studying the resolution of the Fourth Party Congress] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Sach Giao Khoa Mac-Le-Nin, 1977), pp. 92-93: Tai Lieu Huong Dan Hoc Toe Nghi Quyet Dai Hoi Lan Thu V cua Dang [Guidance document for studying the resolution of the Fifth Party Congress] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Sach Giao Khoa Mac-Le-Nin, 1982), 1:95.

190

Vietnam

countries.

15

Even China's defection from the

socialist

camp and

alignment with the United States in the 1970s failed to dampen Vietnam's revolutionary optimism. Hanoi continued to hope that once the Maoists were finally defeated by the genuine Marxist-Leninists, China would return to the socialist world system and unity would be restored.

16

The Vietnamese revolution's own struggle against external foes was a central element in this Vietnamese worldview. In the early 1970s, Hanoi reiterated the idea, first put forward during the antiFrench resistance struggle, that Vietnam was the "focal point" of the worldwide struggle against imperialism. 17 Vietnam saw itself as "the important offensive spearhead of the three revolutionary tides in the world." 18 Even in the 1980s, Hanoi still believed that the Vietnamese victory over the U.S. had been the catalyst in the accelerated decline of U.S. interventionary power. 19 Only in the latter half of the 1980s did this "triumphalist" revolutionary view of the world begin to undergo revision. For the first time the VCP leadership came to grips with the phenomenon of economic interdependence and its political ramifications. Party leaders did not abandon everything in their view of the world as a struggle for survival between two social systems, and both ambivalence and debate about the new emphasis on the overriding importance of the global economy persisted after the new worldview was officially adopted in 1988. The opening wedge for the new worldview was the Vietnamese rejection of the 1952 Stalinist thesis that the "all-embracing world market" had been replaced by two entirely separate socialist and cap20 italist markets. In 1984 Le Duan declared that there was now a single world market in which the socialist and capitalist economies were "interdependent and have an increasingly direct effect on one 15. The contrasting Soviet and Vietnamese positions of the late 1950s and early 1960s are described in a later internal VCP study document. See Guidance document Fourth Party Congress, pp. 78—86. 16. See Guidance document for Fifth Party Congress, p. 122. 17. Gareth Porter, "Vietnam and the Socialist Camp: Center or Periphery?" in William S. Turley, ed., Vietnamese Communism in Comparative Perspective (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980), pp. 231, 255. 18. Luu Quy Ky, "Nhung Thay Doi Sau Sac tren The Gioi trong Mot Phan Tu The Ky Qua" [Deep changes in the world in the past quarter century], Hoc Tap, No. 9,

1974, p. 81. 19.

Thanh

Tin, "Vietnam, a Catalyst in the Decline of the United States," Tap Chi Pacific Daily Report, October 15, 1981, pp.

Cong San, August 1981, FBIS, Asia and K7-11. 20.

On

Union and

the Stalinist "two world markets" thesis, see Elizabeth Valkenier, The Soviet the Third World: An Economic Bind (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 39-40.

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

191

This conclusion led to debate on its political implications. At the Sixth Party Congress, the official position of the Political Bureau acknowledged that there were major changes in the world economy, including the internationalization of production, the creation of a single world market, and a scientific-technological revolution. It asserted, however, that these changes only made contradictions between capitalism and socialism "more acute" and that the two 22 systems were still engaged in a "fierce struggle." Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier Nguyen Co Thach, however, presented a rather different view of the world. He omitted any reference to the conflict between socialism and imperialism, arguing that economic imperatives were "forcing all countries to restructure their economies" in order to "find for themselves the optimal posianother."

21

tion in the international division of labor."

Thach redefined

the

Vietnamese concept of "the strength of our time," which had previously referred only to the forces arrayed against imperialism, to

mean

the

new

potential for rapid industrialization through partici-

23 pation in the global division of labor.

suggesting that

new economic

By

implication,

Thach was

imperatives were superceding ideo-

logical conflict.

During 1987 and early 1988 VCP leaders began to perceive a fundamental shift in major power relations from a struggle for power to cooperation in solving problems and concentration on economic development. As a result, the Vietnamese believed, a stable detente among the major powers could last for ten to fifteen years; economic relations would dominate the relationships among the powers, and competition would shift increasingly from political-military influence to economic and technological development. None of the three powers were seen as able to afford being bogged down in military conflict, so there was a strong tendency toward cooperation in resolving regional political-military conflicts. 24

In

May

1988, the Political

new view of

the world in

its

Bureau

officially

endorsed a radically

secret Resolution 13.

25

The new

world-

See speech by Le Duan to the Sixth Plenum of the VCP Central Committee, 1984, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, August 20, 1984, pp. K67. 22. Political Report of the Central Committee at the Sixth National Congress of Delegates, December 15, 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-066, May 7, 1987, pp. 44-45. 23. Ibid., pp. 232-33. 24. Notes of an interview by Trinh Thi Ngoc Diep, University of Hawaii, with 21.

July

3,

Ambassador Le Mai, Bangkok, January 12, 1988; author's interview with a Vietnamese official who asked not to be identified, Hanoi, February 1989. 25. Resolution 13, although still secret, was referred to by Thach in an interview in the

first issue

of Quart

He Quoc Te

[International relations],

November

1989, p.

3.

The

192

Vietnam

view asserted that the world was in a new stage of development that was unlike earlier periods of the twentieth century. Changes in the global economy were bringing about "infrastructural changes" in in-

and the new economic interdependence between socialist and capitalist systems was gradually breaking down 26 the Cold War-era blocs. The collapse of Polish and Hungarian Communist regimes in 1989 brought a partial retreat from the new worldview as the Political Bureau put renewed emphasis on the global conflict between socialism and imperialism. At its Sixth Plenum in the second half of August, the party Central Committee expressed alarm at the fact that "imperialism and international reaction" were carrying out a ternational relations,

"peaceful evolution strategy" to eliminate socialism from the world.

The VCP

called for

Communists

to increase their vigilance against

such "schemes." 27 As the breadth and depth of the crisis in Eastern European communism became evident in late 1989, however, the VCP leadership reconsidered the problem and put those developments in the context of the new global economic interdependence. A November 1989 Central Committee plenum concluded that the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe was the result primarily of a failure to restructure their economies in the 1970s and 1980s, which made "nonantagonistic contradictions" within those societies into "antagonistic contradictions." Although it affirmed that imperialism had taken advantage of the internal contradictions within socialist systems, it saw the failure of socialist regimes to understand the requirements of the new historical era as the primary reason for the

content of the resolution, according to a knowledgeable Vietnamese source, parallels but goes beyond the public presentation of the revised worldview articulated by

Thach

in 1989. Interview with

Thach by Vietnam Courier (Hanoi), Vietnam News Agency, December 31, 1988, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, January 3, 1989, pp. 70-72; interview with Thach, Nhan Dan, January 1, 1989, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, January 19, 1989, pp. 53-56; Nguyen Co Thach, "All for Peace, National Independence and Development," Tap Chi Cong San, August 1989, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, Septem26.

ber 12, 1989, pp. 63-68. 27. Excerpt from speech by SRV Defense Minister Le Due Anh, September 6, 1989, Hanoi Domestic Service, September 7, 1989, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, September 8, 1989, p. 59. Shortly thereafter, the military newspaper presented a more elaborate version of this new line and asserted that not all regional conflicts were susceptible to a negotiated political solution. See "World Detente and the Stamping Out of Regional Hotbeds," Quan Doi Nhan Dan, September 14, 1989, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, pp. 70-72.

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

debacle.

28

Another

clearly

analysis

Thach's views attributed the

crisis

of

reflecting

communism

Deputy

193

Premier

in Eastern

Europe

to prolonged "voluntarism, subjectivism, not respecting objective

and skipping over stages." 29 But while Thach hammered away at the need

laws, impatience

for

Vietnam

to

"adapt" to the changes in the world by shedding outmoded views, other figures in the party leadership returned to the fundamentalist

—

main issues in world politics the antagonism between and capitalism and the exploitation of the developing still remained unchanged. Despite the collapse of the countries former community of socialist states, these hardliners insisted that Vietnam remain "loyal to international socialism." The Soviet Union's experiments with pluralism in 1989-1990 was a major strike belief that

socialism

—

against the

new worldview. The Vietnamese response was

to assert

much

cooperation with capitalist countries would increase 30 the pressure on Vietnam's one-party system. The imperative of regime maintenance temporarily strengthened some key elements of that too

31 the old Vietnamese worldview.

From Nonalignment During the

first

to Socialist

Outpost:

four years of

its

1945—1960

existence, the

DRV

government

sought to woo the United States away from support for the French reoccupation,

publicly

muted

its

identification

with the socialist

camp, coooperated with the anti-French civilian government in Thailand, and trained and fought alongside non-Communist nationalists in Cambodia and Laos. This nationalist, "nonaligned" foreign policy line was dictated by the indifference of the Soviet Union to 28. See speech by Tran Xuan Bach, December 13, 1989, Hanoi Domestic Service, January 5, 1990, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, January 8, 1990, p. 68; speech by Vo Chi Cong, December 15, 1989, VNA, December 19, 1989, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, December 20, 1989, pp. 67-68. 29. H. V., "Vay Sui Nghi ve Tinh Hinh Ca Nuoc Xa Hoi Chu Nghia Nam 1989" [Some thoughts on the situation of socialist countries in 1989], Quart He Quoc Te [In-

ternational relations], no. 2, December 1989, p. 10. The new view of the socialist world as clearly inferior to the capitalist world in productivity, quality, and economic efficiency reflected previous sober reassessments in the VCP's Marx-Lenin Institute and the Institute of Economics of the Social Sciences Commission. See Xuan Ninh,

"Su Chuyen

Huong Chien Luoc Kinh Te cua Cac Nuoc Xa Hoi Chu Nghia

trong 80" [The strategic change of course of the socialist states in the 1980s], Nghien Cuu Kinh Te, no. 3, June 1988, pp. 42-46. 30. See Maj. Gen. Tran Xuan Truong, "Renovation or Adaptation," Quan Doi Nhan Dan, October 15, 1990, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, November 30, 1990, pp. 68-70. 31. As a result, Nguyen Co Thach would be removed from the Political Bureau and from the cabinet at the time of the VCP's Seventh Congress in June 1991.

Nhung Nam

194

Vietnam

Vietnam's cause, the DRV's physical isolation from the Chinese Communists, the weakness of Communist movements in Laos and Cambodia, and the availability of non-Communist allies in Cambodia

and Thailand. 32 But by 1950 that strategy had been abandoned because of local, regional, and global changes: the United States openly supported the French with massive military and economic assistance, making a major expansion of the French war effort possible. Thailand and former Khmer non-Communist allies were co-opted by the United States and France, respectively, whereas the Chinese Communist victory meant that the socialist camp would soon be able to lend material support to the Vietnamese resistance. The Vietnamese responded to these new constraints and opportunities by openly affiliating with the socialist camp, accepting military advisers from the PRC, and establishing separate Marxist-Leninist parties in Laos and Cambodia to mobilize a higher level of effort against the French 33 But the DRV also maintained its independence in those countries. within the bloc, defying Soviet and Chinese suggestions in 1953 that a Korea-type truce was in order for Indochina by making it clear 34 that Vietnam itself would choose the time to negotiate peace. In response to the U.S. threat of direct military intervention in Indochina in 1954 and the refusal of the Chinese and Soviets to support continuation of the war, the DRV accepted an agreement at Geneva that temporarily divided Vietnam. That decision marked a shift to closer integraion of its own foreign policy with that of the Soviet bloc. For the next six years, Hanoi supported the Soviet global strategy of negotiation of East- West conflict, peaceful coexistence with pro-Western regimes, and gradual strengthening of the Soviet32. See Robert Blum, "Ho Chi Minh and the United States, 1944-1946," in U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The United States and Vietnam: 1944-1947 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 13; Charles B. McLane, Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 266-75; Harold Isaacs, No Peace for Asia (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967), pp. 173-74; Gareth Porter, "Vietnamese Communist Policy toward Kampuchea: 1930-1970," in David P. Chandler and Ben Kiernan, Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies Monograph Series, no. 25, 1983, pp. 64-66. 33. Vietnam's open affiliation with the socialist camp was declared by Truong Chinh in Su That, February 18, 1950, translated in Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation of Human Decisions, 1:241-42. The Vietnamese request for the Chinese military advisory group in 1950 is revealed by former Political Bureau member Hoang Van Hoan in Beijing in Xinhua, November 26, 1979, FBIS, PRC, November 26, 1979, p. E5. Vietnamese policy toward Laos and Cambodia from 1949 through 1954 is described in Porter, "Vietnamese Communist Policy," pp. 66-70. 34.

Porter,

"Vietnam and the

Socialist

Camp,"

p.

232.

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

195

camp. 35 In its reunification policy, the DRV followed the Soviet lead by proposing normalization of relations in the economic and cultural fields between North and South Vietnam as an intermediary phase pending a conference on unification through free led socialist

elections.

36

In Laos and Cambodia the DRV supported conservative, antiCommunist Princes Souvanna Phouma and Norodom Sihanouk when they seemed to incline toward neutralism rather than alignment with the United States. Hanoi downgraded its relations with the Cambodian Communist movement and urged its Laotian allies,

1958 elections. respond when the Lao government announced dismember the Pathet Lao and accepted the establish-

the Pathet Lao, to enter electoral politics in the

Hanoi its

also did not

intention to

ment of

When

37 a U.S. military training mission in Laos.

the right-wing government in Laos, with U.S. encourage-

ment, tried to encircle and capture two Pathet Lao battalions in 1959, however, the Vietnamese defied Chinese wishes and supported a Pathet Lao counteroffensive aimed at protecting lines of communication between North and South Vietnam extending through Eastern Laos. 38 And in response to an attack on the neutralist Laotian government by right-wing Laotian forces in 1960, the Vietnamese began shuttling supplies overland to the neutralist forces and the Pathet Lao in the Plain of Jars and may have participated in some of the fighting. 39 Revolutionary Optimism and Resistance War:

As the war

1961—1975

South Vietnam escalated and the danger of U.S. Vietnamese defied United States and Soviet pressures to end the war in the South, in part because of an assessment reached in mid- 1961 that the "correlation of forces" in the world now favored revolutionary forces and that the in

military intervention increased,

35.

Ibid., pp.

235-36.

George McT. Kahin and John W. Lewis, The United States in Vietnam, rev. ed., (New York: Dell, 1969), pp. 87-88; Gareth Porter, A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and the Paris Agreement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 12. 37. Porter, "Vietnamese Communist Policy," pp. 70-75; A. M. Halpern and H. B. 36.

Friedman, Communist Strategy in Laos (Santa Barbara, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1960), pp. 38-48. 38. Paul F. Langer and Joseph J. Zasloff, North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 70-71; Bernard B. Fall, Anatomy of a Crisis (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 122-43. 39. Fall, Anatomy of a Crisis, pp. 204—5; Langer and Zasloff, North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao, pp. 72-73.

196

Vietnam

40 United States was on the "strategic defensive." This optimistic view reflected the party Political Bureau's interpretation of the U.S. failure to defeat the Cuban government at the Bay of Pigs and the U.S. decision to respond to the upsurge of revolutionary activity in South Vietnam by sending advisers and more aid rather than

troops.

41

Despite this optimistic interpretation of global trends, the DRV compromises involving power shar-

cautiously prepared for possible

ing in both Laos and South Vietnam to reduce the risk of military confrontation with Washington. Hanoi supported the negotiations

on a tripartite neutralist coalition that resulted in the 1962 Geneva Agreement on Laos and was prepared to negotiate with Diem or a successor South Vietnamese government as an alternative to trying 42 Hanoi rejected, to achieve a military victory in South Vietnam. however, a Soviet-American "understanding" on a provision of the Laotian accord that would have forbidden the DRV from using the Ho Chi Minh trail through eastern Laos to reinforce and resupply revolutionary forces in the South, because that would have forfeited the option of future military response to U.S. intervention in the

South. 43 In the spring and

summer of

1964, the United States rejected any

compromise on South Vietnam and tried to use the threat of direct bombing attacks on the North to persuade Hanoi to withdraw from the war. The Vietnamese leaders interpreted the first U.S. bombing raids against the DRV on August 5, 1964, after the political

Guidance Document for Fourth Party Congress, p. 79. Interview with Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, Hanoi, August 1982; interview with Hoang Tung, Central Committee spokesman, Hanoi, August 1982. 42. On Laos, see the DRV memorandum issued January 5, 1961, Vietnam News Agency, January 5, 1961, FBIS, Asia and Pacific, January 6, 1961, pp. EEE 1-5; T. S., "Bai Hoc Thang Loi cua Nhan Dan Lao" [The Lesson of the Lao people's victory], Hoc Tap, no. 11, 1962, pp. 66-70; Maneli, War of the Vanquished, p. 187. On South Vietnam, see "Resolution of the Politburo on Revolutionary Work in the South," February 26-27, 1962, in Mot So Van Kien cua Dang Chong My Cuu Nuoc [Some party documents on resisting the United States for national salvation] (Hanoi: Su That, 40.

41.

1985), p. 157. 43. On the understanding, see Charles A. Stevenson, The Policy toward Laos since

1954 (Boston: Beacon

End

of Nowhere: American The "Declara-

Press, 1972), pp. 165-66.

on the Neutrality of Laos" (July 23, 1962), signed by the DRV, included a pledge not to "use the territory of the Kingdom of Laos for interference in the internal affairs of other countries." The United States and the Soviet Union interpreted this as a reference to South Vietnam. But as one of the DRV delegates to the Geneva Conference explained years later, "We considered North and South Vietnam one state. The United States and the Soviets may have reached such an agreement in their private talks, but Vietnam had no such commitment" (interview with Ha Van Lau, a member of the DRV delegation at the Geneva talks, Hanoi, June 26, 1984). tion

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

197

supposed second attack on a U.S. warship in the Tonkin Gulf as a signal that the United States was prepared to send hundreds of thousands of combat troops to Vietnam as well as to attack the North. The DRV decided at an extraordinary secret Central Committee meeting held just days after the Tonkin Gulf bombing raids to prepare regular combat units to move South to position them44 selves for a major war with the United States. The Soviet refusal to support DRV involvement in the war in the South altered Hanoi's relations with its socialist allies as Hanoi continued to move closer to the Chinese criticism of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's foreign policy for its compromising attitude toward U.S. imperialism. 45 By late 1963 the Vietnamese party Central Committee had concluded that Khrushchev was a "revisionist" whose policies represented a serious threat to the world revolution. 46 Meanwhile, Hanoi was assuming a more hostile stance toward proWestern regimes in the region. The Vietnamese attacked Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines as "neocolonial" regimes under U.S. or British control and supported everything from boycotts of U.S. cul47 ture to armed insurgencies by Communist parties. In response to Hanoi began to give Thailand's initial involvement in Laos in 1960, high-ranking cadres of the Communist Party of Thailand military 48 training. After Thailand sent pilots and ground troops into Laos and permitted the United States to build major air bases in Thailand in 1964, Hanoi and Beijing retaliated by providing material and poInterviews with Vietnamese officials, including Foreign Minister Nguyen Co in 1984, cited in Gareth Porter, "Tonkin Gulf Reconsidered: Coercive Diplomacy and Unwitting Provocation," revised version of a paper for the Vietnamese-American Scholars' Conference on the Vietnam War, Hanoi, November 1921, 1988. 45. See W. R. Smyser, The Independent Vietnamese: Vietnamese Communism between Russia and China, 1956-1969, Ohio University Center for International Studies, Papers in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, no. 55, 1980, pp. 51-86; Porter, "Vietnam and the Socialist Camp," pp. 244-51. 46. "World Situation and Our Party's International Duties," Resolution of the Ninth Central Committee Plenum, December 1963, translated by the U.S. Department of State, p. 15. Hanoi never broke their military and economic cooperation with the Soviets, anticipating correctly that Khrushchev would be replaced by a leadership that would be more sympathetic to the DRV's cause. 47. On the Vietnamese view of Thailand, see Duong Ngoc Ky, "Cuoc Dau Tranh Yeu Nuoc Chong My cua Nhan Dan Thai-Ian Nhat Dinh Thang Loi" [The patriotic anti-U.S. Struggle of the Thai people will definitely win], Hoc Tap, no. 8, 1965, pp. 69-75, 79; on Malaysia, see the editorial in Nhan Dan, June 22, 1965, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 22, 1965, pp. JJJ24. 48. Nopporn Suwanpanich and Kraisak Choonhavan, "The Communist Party of Thailand and Conflict in Indochina," paper presented to the seminar "Vietnam, Indochina, and Southeast Asia: Into the Eighties," at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, November 1980, p. 29. 44.

Thach,

198

litical

Vietnam

support to a new Communist armed insurgency

northeast.

in

Thailand's

49

Cambodia remained

a notable exception to this militant, revolu-

tionary activist posture, because of Sihanouk's anti-U.S. neutralist posture.

Hanoi viewed support for Sihanouk as the best means of its security interests in Cambodia. Vietnamese leaders

protecting

of the Pol Pot faction of the Cam1960s as well as the armed struggle Pol Pot led in 1967. Only in 1970, after Sihanouk was overthrown in a right-wing coup that the Vietnamese believed was instigated by the United States, did Hanoi support the Communist 50 insurgents, now augmented by Sihanouk and his followers. During the decade following the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, DRV foreign policy was focused on ensuring an adequate flow of material support for the war in the South and crafting a negotiating posture appropriate to each stage of the war. During the first year of the war with the United States, the Vietnamese rejected Chinese advice to retreat from mobile warfare and to fight a protracted guerrilla war. Instead, they reaffirmed publicly in mid- 1966 that the DRV would maintain an offensive strategy against the United States and that foreign experience in a people's war was not adaptable to Vietnamese circumstances. 31 They rejected the Chinese position of opposing any peace negotiations until the United States was already defeated on the battlefield and the Soviet Union position of immediate, unconditional peace negotiations with the United States. Instead, they adopted a strategy of negotiating with the United States but only on condition that the latter would agree first to halt the bombing of the DRV. 52 The refusal of the Soviets and Chinese to break off negotiations with President Richard Nixon in the spring of 1972 despite the resumption of massive bombing in the North and the mining of Haiphong harbor was a serious setback to Hanoi's diplomatic strategy in

opposed the anti-Sihanouk bodian Communist Party

line

in the early

—

49. Melvin Gurtov, China and Southeast Asia The Politics of Survival (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 12-27. 50. Porter, "Vietnamese Communist Policy," pp. 75-83. 51. See D. P. Mozingo and T. W. Robinson, Lin Piao on "People's War: China Takes a

RAND

RM

Second Look at Vietnam (Santa Monica: Corporation, November 1965, 4814-PR); Eugene Lawson, The Sino-Soviet Conflict (New York: Praeger, 1984), pp.

79-116. 52. Talk by Nguyen Van Vinh to the Fourth Congress of the Central Office for South Vietnam, April 1966, in U.S. Department of State, Working Papers on the North no. 303, p. 21; Phan Hien, "Vua [Fighting while negotiating in the anti-U.S. National Salvation Resistance], Tap Chi Lich Su Quan Su, no. 1, 1988, p. 74.

May 1968, doc. Chong My, Cuu Nuoc"

Vietnamese Role in South Vietnam,

Danh, Vua

Dam

trong

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

199

Communique with who viewed it as Chinese col-

the war. China's signing of the 1972 Shanghai

Nixon

especially galled

DRV

leaders,

laboration with the United States to force the

DRV

to accept the

Thieu regime in South Vietnam for an indefinite period in exchange for a U.S. military withdrawal from the Taiwan Straits. 53 By October 1974 Hanoi was secretly bracketing China with the United States as an "aggressor and expansionist power" that was fighting for 54 Thus, the seeds of serious postwar "control of Southeast Asia." Sino-Vietnamese friction were sown during the war.

Postwar Diplomacy and

New

Conflicts:

1975—1978

Immediately after the war Vietnamese foreign policy objectives

from security and reunification to increasing autonomy vismajor powers, the mobilization of greater resources for economic development, the enhancement of Vietnam's own status as a regional power, and the further weakening of U.S. imperialism in shifted

a-vis the

Southeast Asia. Security soon reemerged, however, as the central concern in Vietnamese policy in response to developments in Cambodia and in relations with China. The 1975-1979 period saw the swift unraveling of Hanoi's postwar foreign policy strategy on both

and regional planes. Maneuvers among the three major powers remained a central preoccupation of Vietnamese diplomacy. Under pressure to align from both China and the Soviet Union, Hanoi increased its cooperation global

with the Soviets while seeking to avoid being identified too openly with the Soviet bloc. Even before the war, Vietnam had been

critical

of the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON or CMEA), the Soviet-sponsored organization for establishing a socialist economic division of labor, on the grounds that it would compromise Vietnam's ability to industrialize. 55 In 1973 the DRV was still

53. Hoang Nguyen, "Looking Back on the Diplomatic Front over the Past 40 Years," Tap Chi Cong San, November 1985, JPRS-SEA-86-034, February 24, 1986, p. 79; Su That ve Quan He Viet Nam-Trung Quoc trong 30 Nam Qua [The truth about Vietnamese-Chinese relations during the last 30 Years] (Hanoi: Su That, 1979), pp.

56-58. 54. See "Ket Luan cua Dong Chi Le Duan tai Hoi Nghi Bo Chinh Tri Ban ve Tinh Hinh va Nhiem Vu cua Cuoc Chong My Cuu Nuoc" [Conclusion of Comrade Le Duan in the Political Bureau conference discussion on situation and tasks of the National Salvation Anti-U.S. Resistance], October 8, 1974, Tap Chi Cong San, March 1985, pp. 6-13. 55. See, for example, Resolution of the Ninth Central Committee Plenum, December 1963, quoted in Pham Hung, "Tu Luc Canh Sinh, Can Kiem Xay Dung Chu Nghi

Vietnam

200

determined

to stay

out of the

COMECON.

56

Four years

later Viet-

nam

joined both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank while rejecting Soviet invitations to join COMECON. Hanoi also failed to support the Soviet call for collective security arrangements in Asia while it turned down Soviet proposals for a treaty of friendship and cooperation and the use of Vietnamese military bases.

57

Hanoi was compelled by its desperate need for execonomic assistance to take some steps toward integration into the Soviet-bloc economic system. It agreed to coordinate state plans with the Soviet Union in 1976 and to join the COMECON-affiliated International Investment Bank and the International Bank for Economic Cooperation in 1977 in return for new five-year Soviet aid commitments. The Vietnamese had hoped to balance off aid from the Soviet bloc with grants and loans as well as investment from the West in 1977. But their efforts to obtain loans and grants from Western European states produced disappointingly few results, and 58 their hopes for U.S. postwar aid were frustrated. With the United States no longer an immediate threat to its security after the U.S. withdrawal from bases in Thailand in mid- 1976, Hanoi hoped to establish full diplomatic and trade relations with the United States on the condition that the United States carry out the pledge of billions of dollars in postwar reconstruction aid made by Richard Nixon when he negotiated the Paris peace agreement. Vietnamese leaders wrongly believed that the United States would eventually give in on the issue, despite American warnings to the contrary, because they viewed the United States as in a weak and defensive posture in Southeast Asia. They thought the United States needed friendly relations with Vietnam to "stabilize the region" and 59 to permit U.S. oil companies to recover their former concessions. Thus, Hanoi rejected the Carter administration's offer of uncondiNevertheless,

ternal

Xa Hoi

va Dau Tranh De Thuc Hien Hoa Binh Thong Nhat Nuoc Nha" [Self-reand industriously build socialism and struggle to achieve peace and national unification], Hoc Tap, no. 5, 1964, p. 8. 56. Finance Minister Dang Viet Chau told his American counterpart in negotiations on U.S. postwar reconstruction aid that the DRV "would not consider joining [a] multilateral association among Socialist countries" (telegram from the U.S. Embassy, Paris, to the secretary of state, April 6, 1973, declassified August 29, 1978). 57. Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), liantly

pp. 179-91. 58. Carlyle A. Thayer, "Vietnam's External Relations:

An Overview," Asm-Pacific Community (January 1978), 225-27. 59. Interview with a Vietnamese official who asked to remain anonymous, June 1981; interviews with Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach and Le Mai, chief of Press and Information Bureau, Hanoi, January 1981.

Vietnamese Foreign Policy tional establishment of diplomatic relations in

just

its

201

1977 and failed to ad-

diplomatic strategy until the following year.

Vietnamese policy toward China was shaped

in large part

by the

conclusion reached in the final phase of the war that Maoist China was following a traditional "Han chauvinist" policy that viewed Viet-

nam

sphere of influence. Hanoi's response was to Chinese pressures to conform to Chinese interests and to hope that "genuine Marxist-Leninists" would ultimately triumph over the Maoists, who Hanoi presumed to be the source of this ideological deviance. Between 1975 and the end of 1977 Hanoi refused to consult the PRC on the disposition of the Hoa in South Vietnam after as part of China's

resist

the war or

on

its

intention to assert territorial claims

on the con-

South China Sea islands, reversing an earlier recognition of Chinese sovereignty over the islands. 60 Most Vietnamese leaders apparently failed to appreciate that even the anti-Maoist Deng Xiaoping would perceive these abrupt policy reversals as arrogant and tested

anti-Chinese.

Vietnam responded to Chinese Cambodia by further developing

efforts to isolate its

it

in

Thailand and

"special relationship" with Laos.

In 1976 the Vietnamese began construction of an all-weather road linking Laos to the port of

Haiphong

(thus ending traditional Lao-

dependence on transit through Thailand for imports and exand reached agreement with Laos on the continued stationing of some forty thousand Vietnamese troops to provide security against three thousand to five thousand anti-Communist insurgents and to build roads and irrigation systems. In mid- 1977, Hanoi tian

ports)

signed a twenty-five-year Treaty of Friendship that provided a legal framework for a long-term Vietnamese military presence. 61

Hanoi pursued a cautious

policy toward

Kampuchea (DK) regime, which not only

Pol Pot's Democratic

form of coopVietnam but openly aligned with China. The Vietnamese leaders regarded the Pol Pot group as both extremist ideologically and hostile to Vietnam but wanted to avoid any unnecessary frictions. SRV officials told the Soviet Union at the end of the Cambodian civil war that they hoped Pol Pot would be constrained by more moderate elements in the party. 62 Thus, Hanoi tried to defuse the conflict over the location of the border with Cambodia by prorejected any

eration with

"Vietnamese Policy and the Indochina Crisis," in Elliott, Third Indochina 75-86; Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 87-88. 61. Porter, "Vietnamese Policy and the Indochina Crisis," pp. 79-80. The seriousness of the anti-Communist insurgency was confirmed in a cable from the U.S. Embassy Bangkok to the secretary of state, March 9, 1977. 62. Interview with a Soviet diplomat, Washington, D.C., February 1979. 60. Porter,

Conflict, pp.

202

Vietnam

posing border province committees to resolve local problems and by 63 trying to renegotiate the border issue.

Large-scale attacks by DK forces against border villages in two Vietnamese provinces in September 1977 prompted Vietnam to counterattack deep into eastern Cambodia and to consider supporting an armed Khmer movement to overthrow the Pol Pot regime. M After China responded to its proposal for an international presence to separate the military forces of the two sides by stepping up shipment of long-range artillery to the DK, Hanoi went ahead with plans for a Khmer guerrilla movement against Pol Pot to be supported by Vietnamese military forces. Although the Vietnamese leadership had not intended to drive ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, as the PRC charged, the decision to launch the campaign against bourgeois traders in the South (most of whom were ethnic Chinese) coinciding with new Sino- Vietnamese tensions over Cambodia contributed to a crisis situation. Nearly two hundred thousand ethnic Chinese fled across the border to China within a few weeks amid rumors of impending Sino- Vietnamese war. In May and early June 1978 the PRC launched a mass media cam-

paign against Vietnam for ethnic Chinese, cut

its

its

alleged persecution

aid to Vietnam, increased

and expulsion of its

military forces

on the Vietnamese border, and dispatched Chinese ships to pick up "persecuted Hoa" in Vietnam. Hanoi concluded that China was preparing its own public for even stronger measures against Vietnam in the future. 65 The Vietnamese Central Committee determined at its Fourth Plenum in July 1978 that the PRC had become the "main and immediate enemy" of the Vietnamese revolution and approved a massive military buildup to cope with the Chinese threat. 66

At the same time

began preparations for a major military operPot. Those decisions required a closer alignment with Moscow to help deter Beijing and to support the Cambodian operation militarily and economically. The Vietnamese requested to join COMECON and negotiated a Soviet- Vietation in

Cambodia

it

against Pol

63. Interview with Phan Hien, Vietnamese delegation chief, Hanoi, November 2, 1978; Heder, "Kampuchean-Vietnamese Conflict," pp. 24-31. 64. The following paragraphs are based on Chanda, Brother Enemy, chaps. 3, 6, and 7,

and Porter, "Vietnamese 65.

Policy and the Indochina Crisis," pp. 102-5. Porter, "Vietnam's Ethnic Chinese and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict," Bulletin

of Concerned Asian Scholars 12 (October-December 1980), 55-60. 66. Article by Hoang Van Hoan, former Political Bureau member, Xinhua,

August

1979; interview with Xuan Thuy, Central Committee member, Hanoi, November 2, 1978; interview with Central Committee member who asked not to be identified, Hanoi, November 4, 1978. 31, 1979,

PRC, September

4,

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

203

namese Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, which was signed in November 1978. The SRV invaded Cambodia in December 1978. 67 The DRV's policy toward non-Communist Southeast Asia after the war reflected its renewed optimism about the prospects for the elimination of U.S. military bases and political-military influence in the region. Hanoi believed that the retreat of the United States was going to have a profound impact on the internal politics of the entire region. The Vietnamese counted on "democratic forces" urban-based movements of students, youth and workers such as those who had overthrown the military dictatorship in Thailand in 1973 to tilt the political balance between those in ASEAN ruling circles presumed to be associated with American influence and those desiring independence from the United States 68 And ASEAN was still viewed as an American creation that was aligned with and dependent on U.S. imperialism. 69 Based on this analysis of regional politics, the SRV made a serious blunder in its relations with the ASEAN. Although Hanoi normalized relations with Thailand and the Philippines in 1976, it re-

—

fused to deal with

ASEAN

as

an organization. Vietnamese leaders

hoped that ASEAN's member states would ultimately agree to disband it to make way for a new regional organization that would reflect the new, more favorable distribution of power in Southeast Asian politics. 70 Hanoi pursued an inconsistent regional diplomacy, publicly

acknowledging

ASEAN

assurances that the organization was

neither a military pact nor under U.S. influence but then attacking

ASEAN's proposal

for a "Zone of Peace,

Freedom and

Neutrality." 71

After concluding in mid- 1978 that China was Vietnam's main en-

67. Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 345-47, suggests that the Vietnamese had not expected to occupy the entire country but were preparing to take control of Eastern Kampuchea up to the Mekong and changed their plans when resistance melted away. 68. Hoang Tung, "Tinh Hinh The Gioi Sau Thang Loi cua Viet Nam va That Bai cua My" [The world situation after the Vietnamese victory and the U.S. defeat], Tap Chi Cong San, February 1977, p. 46; Cao Thanh, Dong Nam A trong Bao Tap Cach Mang [Southeast Asia in the revolutionary storm] (Hanoi: Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1978), p. 123.

69. See east Asia], 70.

Nguyen Giao Hien, "Dong Hoc Tap, no.

Thach

later said,

2,

Nam A

'Sau Vietnam'" ["Post- Vietnam" South-

1976, pp. 61-69.

"We would

like [a]

zone of peace

in

Southeast Asia, but we

don't want ASEAN. We can't accept it. Why do they stick with this organization?" (interview with the author, New York, October 18, 1977). 71. Porter, "Vietnamese Policy and the Indochina Crisis," p. 133 n. 217. For evidence of internal debate on ASEAN, see Philippe Devillers, "An Analysis of the Vietnamese Objectives in Indochina," in Khien Theeravit and MacAlister Brown, eds., Indochina and Problems of Security and Stability in Southeast Asia (Bangkok: Ghulalongkorn University Press, 1981), p. 102.

Vietnam

204

emy, Hanoi dropped its objection to dealing with ASEAN as an organization and proposed negotiations on making Southeast Asia a "zone of peace, stability and prosperity." 72 In September-October 1978 Premier Pham Van Dong signed pledges not to carry out "di73 rect or indirect" subversion in four ASEAN countries. But ASEAN of Vietnamese intentions and rebuffed proremained distrustful posals for actual treaties of friendship and nonaggression. Vietnam's policies toward the Communist parties in the region were also in transition between 1975 and 1978. By the war's end, the VWP leadership had become skeptical about the future prospects of the Communist parties in Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines because of their Maoist strategies of peasant-based armed struggle and felt that there was greater possibility for the development of democratic forces than for guerrilla warfare. 74 In 1976 Vietnam apparenty cut its ties with the Malayan Communist Party for good. 75 Hanoi continued its military cooperation with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), however, including the provision of Soviet arms. 76 After the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Thailand in mid- 1976 and the negotiation of normal relations, Hanoi began to distance 77 itself from the CPT. But the October 1976 military coup against the civilian Thai government, which polarized Thai politics and sent

thousands of students and workers into the jungles, was seen by 72. Bangkok Post, July 7, 1978; Nation Review, July 26, 1978; Vietnam News Agency interview with Phan Hien, August 3, 1978, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, August 4, 1978, p. K6. 73. The "direct or indirect" language had been proposed by the Thai foreign minister in Hanoi in 1976 but rejected by the Vietnamese. It was inserted in the joint communique between Prime Minister Kriengsak and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong at the insistence of the Thais. Interview with Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Hien,

November

2, 1978; interview with Attapoi Charuphat, Political Department, Thai Foreign Ministry, Bangkok, November 29, 1978. 74. Transcript of a meeting between Central Committee spokesman Hoang Tung and a delegation of Americans in Hanoi, May 6, 1975. For an explicit criticism of the Communist Party of Thailand for having continued the line of "using the countryside to surround the cities" after the overthrow of the Thanom-Praphat regime, see Thao Hien, "Some Traits of Fraternal Laos," Tap Chi Cong San, July 1981, JPRS, no. 97565,

December 75.

1,

1981, p. 56.

Far Eastern Economic Review, July 30, 1976,

p. 11.

Suwanpanich and Choonhavan r "Conflict in Indochina," pp. 34-35. 77. The Vietnamese had symbolized their downgrading of relations with the CPT in the annual article in Nhan Dan on the August 7 anniversary of the beginning of the CPT's armed struggle in 1974 and 1975, which made only the most formal bow to the Thai party and its armed struggle strategy while it lauded the political struggle of nonparty urban political forces. On August 7, 1976, just one day after the agreement on diplomatic relations with Thailand, Hanoi failed to mention the anniversary for 76.

the

first

time in eight years.

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

205

some Hanoi leaders as part of an American "counterattack." 78 Vietnam resumed open political support for the CPT and continued to ship arms to the Thai party, apparently hoping to alter its pro-Chinese orientation. 79 After the ouster of the right-wing Thai regime in October 1977 and the hardening of the CPT's pro-Chinese line, however, the Lao government, acting in concert with Hanoi, cut off of supplies to CPT bases in Laos and expelled the CPT cadres in 1978. 80

Hanoi was then free to abjure future support movements in the ASEAN countries.

Toward New Diplomatic

Patterns:

for

Communist

1979—1990

Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 was the beginning of an eleven-year occupation of the country during which the Vietnamese carried out an ambitious program of "state building," including the establishment of a new political structure, civil administration, and military-security apparatus. In the early years of the Vietnamese-sponsored People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) Vietnamese party officials directed PRK policy-making in foreign, economic, party, and military-security affairs. 81 Hanoi was determined that Cambodia would never again be aligned with enemies from outside the region.

On

the other hand, the

SRV

tary occupation that could

was eager

become

to avoid

an indefinite

a liability for both

mili-

Vietnam and

Cambodia. Discussions with the PRK on a timetable for withdrawal began as early as 1983, and tentative agreement was reached in 1984 on withdrawal of most or all Vietnamese troops within five to ten years. That agreement was not to be announced publicly. 82 But then

78.

Cac Nuoc Dong

Nam A [The

Southeast Asian countries], 2d ed. (Hanoi: Su That,

1976), p. 211. 79. The Vietnamese

media reported the CPT's anniversary statement calling for the military overthrow of the Thai government while the Lao party organ reviewed the statement's discussion of "people's war" against the government in greater detail. See FBIS Trends, December 15, 1976, pp. 19-20. On Vietnamese military assistance to the Thai insurgents after this juncture, see Sean Randolph and W. Scott Thompson, Thai Insurgency: Contemporary Developments, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington Papers, vol. 9 (1981), p. 54. 80. Interview with Pham Binh, former director of the Political Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hanoi, June 23, 1984; Suwanpanich and Choonhaven, "Conflict in Indochina," p. 37. 81. For details of Vietnam's control, see Christian Science Monitor, October 22, 1985. 82. Interview with PRK Premier Hun Sen, Tap Chi Quoc Phong Toan Dan, Hanoi Domestic Service, June 18, 1988, FBIS-East Asia Daily Report, June 21, 1988, p. 28.

Vietnam

206

SRV began

an earlier, public withdrawal deadline. 1984-1985 dry-season offensive against the Khmer Rouge border bases, the SRV and PRK announced an agreement on a 1990 deadline for complete withdrawal. 81 At the same time, Hanoi began on transition in Cambodia by withdrawing their the

Soon

to press for

after a successful

84 advisers at the district level.

As the Vietnamese pushed their Cambodian allies for a withdrawal deadline, they displayed an interest in promoting a diplomatic settlement on Cambodia for the first time after stonewalling negotiations for five years. In 1984 Foreign Minister Thach discussed privately with Indonesian, Australian, and Thai officials the outlines of a peace settlement that included a timetable for Vietnamese troop withdrawal, a new International Control Commission to monitor the withdrawal and to supervise a "process of self-determination by free elections," and the elimination of Khmer Rouge 85 Meanwhile, Hanoi began pushing the PRK, military forces. which had previously called Sihanouk a traitor, to begin talks with the former chief of state and arranged for such a meeting in late 1984. 86

These

more

initiatives

were aimed

military responsibility.

87

in part at

pushing the

The primary

PRK

to take

on

factor in the decision to

however, was the realization by the VCP its economy as long as its Cambodia. As it accelerated its withdrawal be-

set a unilateral deadline,

leadership that Vietnam could not develop

troops remained in

tween

late

1987 and early 1989, Hanoi tried to negotiate with China

Thach referred to the Vietnamese plan to withdraw "almost all" of from Cambodia within ten years (author's notes from press conference,

In October 1984, their troops

New

York, October 11, 1984). Bangkok Post, March 11, 1985; "Communique of the Eleventh Conference of the Foreign Ministers of Kampuchea, Laos, and Vietnam," Phnom Penh, August 16, 1985, Documents on the Kampuchean Problem, 1979—1985 (Bangkok: Ministry of Foreign 83.

Affairs, 1985), p. 188.

84. Personal communication from Oleg Samordni, interpreter for the Soviet bassy in Phnom Penh from 1986 to 1988, April 29, 1992.

Em-

85. AFP dispatch, March 16, 1984, FBIS, Asia Pacific Daily Report, March 16, 1984, p. Nl; Peter Howarth, "Vietnam" and Australia: The Cambodian Situation and Bilateral Relations," Australian Foreign Affairs Record 55 (March 1984 Supplement), 7; Nation Review, October 1, 1984, pp. 1, 2, and October 3, 1984, p. 5. 86. Interview with SRV Deputy Foreign Minister Vo Dong Giang, Le Figaro, May 24-25, 1986, p. 2; Interview with a U.S. Embassy official, Bangkok, January 7, 1983; Bangkok Post, January 9, 1983. 87. Thach confirmed that this was the primary purpose in an interview with Carlyle A. Thayer, Hanoi, November 12, 1985. Transcript provided by Carlyle A.

Thayer.

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

207

and Thailand for concessions regarding the Khmer Rouge threat. 88 But when it failed to get either state to negotiate on that issue, Hanoi announced in April 1989 that it would unilaterally withdraw all its remaining troops by September 30, 1989. The last Vietnamese combat units publicly did withdraw by that date. During the decade-long Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia Vietnam's policy toward each of the three major powers China, the United States, and the Soviet Union went through far-reaching changes. The 1984-1985 period marked a turning point in relations with both China and the United States as Hanoi initiated new efforts

—

—

understandings with both powers. The relationand military cooperation with the Soviet Union soon began to fray as well and was curtailed by diplomatic,

to seek diplomatic

ship of close economic political,

and economic

factors.

After China's February 1979 invasion of Vietnam's northern provinces in retaliation for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, SRV leaders believed Beijing was carrying out a long-term, multifaceted

and weaken Vietnam. 89 Even when Sino-Soviet relations began to improve and Beijing distanced itself from the United States in 1982-1983, the Vietnamese at first rejected Soviet arguments that China was no longer anti-Soviet and had even resumed an anti-imperialist stance. Vietnamese leaders viewed China's moves toward improving relations with the Soviets as no more than a tactic aimed at strengthening the Chinese bargaining position visstrategy to sabotage

a-vis the

United

States.

90

Hanoi's perception of Chinese foreign policy had begun to change by mid- 1984, however, and a minority faction in the leadership leaned toward concessions to the PRC aimed at achieving eventual normalization of relations. 91 Although that position was rejected at first, by mid- 1985 VCP leaders began to lay the groundwork for an eventual settlement with China when they announced the 1990 Cambodian withdrawal date and peace proposal. In a gesture to

China indicating a new desire for

reconciliation, the

SRV

eliminated

On

the substance of the SRV draft agreement on the external aspects of the settlement, see Bangkok Post, October 22, 1986, p. 2. 89. See, for example, "Political Report Sixth National Party Congress," p. 46. 88.

Cambodian 90.

Dao Duy Tung, "Some Problems of the Fourth Central Committee

Nam Vung Quart

Resolution,"

Diem Chi Dao cua Hoi Nghi Trung Uong Lan Thu 4 [Grasp firmly the guiding viewpoint of the Fourth Central Committee resolution] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Thong Tin Ly Luan, 1983), marked for internal distribution, pp. 83-91. 91. Le Due Tho, talk at Nguyen Ai Quoc Higher Party School, June 26, 1984, Xay Dung Dang trong Cach Mang Xa Hoi Chu Nghia o Viet Nam [Party building in the socialist revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Su That, 1985), pp. 510-1 1. in

Vietnam

208

all

anti-Chinese rhetoric from the statement of the three Indo-

chinese foreign ministers and, instead, emphasized its desire to restore normal relations with the PRC as an "extremely important factor to ensure peace

and

stability

in

Southeast Asia and Asia as

whole." 92 Political Bureau Resolution 13, adopted in 1988, viewed Vietnamese relations with the major powers in the context of great power detente, the dominance of global economic competition, and the need to participate more actively in global economic division of labor. SRV leaders now believed that Chinese ambitions would be subordinated to China's interests in peace and economic development and that Beijing no longer stood on the side of the United States. The document also held that the SRV should establish a new balance in relations with major powers. 93 In parallel with the acceleration of its military withdrawal from Cambodia, Hanoi brought home half of its troops in Laos in 1988,

partly as a gesture to Beijing.

mid- 1988 to

amend

94

The Vietnamese

the preamble of the

SRV

nate anti-Chinese language and to replace desire to normalize relations. 95

it

also

proposed

in

constitution to elimi-

with an expression of

The SRV prepared

for what one Vietnamese official called "a bit of a kowtow" to China to ensure that Sino-Vietnamese talks would reach agreement. 96 In the new atmosphere of reduced Sino-Vietnamese tensions reflected in a de facto ceasefire on the border and renewed negotiations on restoring normal relations the SRV completed its withdrawal from Laos in early 1989, explicitly linking it with the border 97 ceasefire. Its announcement in April 1989 that it would withdraw all its remaining troops from Cambodia unconditionally by the end of September was also aimed at building momentum for an early agreement with China. Although no progress was made in the first Sino-Vietnamese diplomatic meeting in May 1989, in 1990 the Chi-

92.

"Communique of

the Eleventh Conference of the Foreign Ministers ... 16 the Kampuchea Problem, p. 189; "Political Report Sixth

August 1985," Documents on

National Party Congress," p. 83. 93. Notes of interview by Trinh Thi Ngoc Diep, University of Hawaii, with Ambassador Le Mai, Bangkok, January 12, 1988, provided to the author; author's interview with a Vietnamese diplomat, February 1989. 94. AFP dispatch, Bangkok, May 26, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, May 27, 1988, p. 25. 95. Nhan Dan, June 29, 1988. 96. William J. Duiker, "Looking beyond Cambodia: China and Vietnam," Indochina Issues, no. 88,

97.

Kyodo

1989, p. 80.

June 1989, p. 5. dispatch, Hanoi, April 12, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, April 12,

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

209

nese began responding positively to the Vietnamese approach, perhaps in recognition of their common interest in maintaining oneparty rule in the face of political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The warming of Sino- Vietnamese relations was

marked officially by a visit to Beijing by Deputy Prime Minister Vo Nguyen Giap in September 1990 the highest- ranking Vietnamese

—

visitor to the

PRC

since the rupture of relations in 1978.

In the early 1980s the SRV blamed the United States for encouraging China to invade Vietnam in 1979 and regarded Washington as 98 colluding with Beijing against Vietnam. In mid- 1984, however, the VCP Political Bureau acknowledged officially for the first time that the SRV had to "actively participate in the division of international labor" and, therefore, should achieve a "breakthrough in the interchange of merchandise with capitalist countries" by removing the Western economic embargo." It recognized that in the future the SRV would have to rely heavily on investments from the capitalist world, which would in turn require loans for infrastructural development from Western governments, private banks, and interna100 tional financial institutions. The need to get support from Western governments especially the United States thus became a key fac-

—

—

Vietnamese foreign policy calculations. In light of its evolving priorities, Hanoi became less concerned about Sino-U.S. collusion and again began to view the United States as a useful diplomatic counterweight to China as it had before the Chinese invasion. The SRV began in mid- 1985 to step up its cooperation with the United States on accounting for American missing in action (MIA), offering for the first time joint excavation of crash tor in

and U.S. participation in investigations in accessible areas. 101 In August 1987 Foreign Minister Thach made a point of telling

sites

special

presidential emissary

John W. Vessey,

Jr.,

that

Vietnam

Le Qui, "China's Invasion: Division of Role between the Beijing Expansionists Tap Chi Cong San, April 1979, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, May 1, 1979, p. K5; "Vientiane Communique" [of Fifth Foreign Ministers Conference of Laos, Kampuchea, and Vietnam], February 17, 1982, and "Vientiane Communique" [of Ninth Foreign Ministers of Laos, Kampuchea, and Vietnam], July 2, 1984, Documents on the Kampuchean Problem, pp. 158, 182. 99. Political Bureau resolution, July 17, 1984, quoted in Luu Van Dat, "Canvassing Foreign Trade Strategy in the First Stage of the Transition Period of Our Country," Ngoai Thuong [Foreign trade], June 1986, JPRS-SEA-87-002, January 6, 1987, pp. 61-63; Le Duan speech at the Sixth Plenum, July 3, 1984, Hanoi Domestic Service, FBIS, Asia and Pacific Daily Report, August 15, 1984, pp. K5-6. 100. Luu Van Dat, "Canvassing Foreign Trade Strategy," p. 63; Le Monde, Decem98.

and

Imperialists,"

ber 8, 1987. 101 Department of Defense and Department of State, Final Interagency Report of the Reagan Administration on the POW/MIA Issue in Southeast Asia, January 19, 1989, pp. 7-8.

Vietnam

210

102 Hanoi turned over U.S. bases in the Philippines.

now accepted

140 remains during the eighteen months after the Vessey trip and promised joint field investigations with the United States to resolve 103 Unprecedented cooperation was also exspecific cases of MI As. tended to the United States on issues of orderly departures of Vietnamese wishing to leave the SRV, Amerasian children, and the release of former reeducation camp internees to go to the United States.

104

In the early 1980s the Vietnamese had a de facto military alliance with the Soviets against the PRC.

and

air bases at

Cam Ranh Bay

The Vietnamese had made

naval

wake of under the

available to the Soviets in the

the Chinese invasion of 1979 while retaining the right agreement with Moscow to deny use of the base if circumstances changed. 105 The basis of the Soviet- Vietnamese alliance quickly began to erode after 1985, however, as the Soviets became more interested in eliminating obstacles to improved relations with both the United States and China. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev hinted in his 1986 Vladivostok speech that the Soviets might give up the Soviet presence at Cam Ranh Bay if the United States would abandon its naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. The Vietnamese countered with their own offer to end Soviet use of Cam Ranh Bay in return for a U.S. pullout from bases in the Philippines and Aus-

—

—

tralia, thus suggesting that the SRV not the Soviet Union should be negotiating the issue. 106 As Vietnamese withdrawals from Cambodia proceeded, and China and the Soviet Union moved toward restoration of normal party relations in 1988, the Soviets began reducing their military deployments at Cam Ranh Bay and signaled their readiness to withdraw unilaterally from Vietnam without waiting for superpower negotia107 tions. By the end of 1989 Moscow had already withdrawn its

Interview with Richard Childress, September 2, 1987. In talks with private visitors Foreign Ministry officials expressed a preference for U.S. military influence in Thailand over Chinese influence and said neutrality in Southeast Asia could only be achieved by a balance between the military presence of the superpowers in Southeast Asia. Notes of an interview with Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien by American academics, Hanoi, January 1986; Helen Chauncey, "Vietnam and the United States," Vietnam Today, Occasional Paper no. 34, Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, August 1988, p. 82. 103. Final Interagency Report, January 19, 1989, pp. 7-10. 104. Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 1988. 105. Gareth Porter, "Vietnam's Soviet Alliance: A Challenge to U.S. Policy," Indochina Issues, no. 6, May 1980, pp. 4-5. 106. Malaya (Manila), April 7, 1987. 107. Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze suggested to Philippine Foreign Minister Raul Manglapus that the Soviet Union might unilaterally withdraw from Cam102.

American

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

and TU-16 bombers from

MIG-23

fighters

planned

to dismantle

its oil

storage

facilities.

21

Cam Ranh Bay and

108

Vietnam's foreign economic relations also changed considerably during the 1980s. Trade with the Soviet Union, which had accounted for only 35 percent of the value of Vietnam's foreign trade as late as 1978, soared to 71 percent of the total foreign trade by 1986. 109 The annual Vietnamese trade deficit with Moscow, measured in rubles, was covered by Soviet commercial credits. 110 Prices on most Soviet goods remained far below world market prices. 111 Vietnam developed economic cooperation with the Soviet Union and other COMECON countries through contracts and joint ventures between sectoral and local production and trade organs of the two states. These agreements initially centered on oil exploration and export crops such as rubber, coffee, tea, coconuts, and fruit trees. 112 Vietnam also reached agreements with socialist states on labor cooperation, under which it exported more than 240,000 workers between 1980 and 1988. To repay debts and obtain further Soviet imports, Vietnam had to step up its exports of handicrafts, minerals, tropical 113 foods, and other foodstuffs at the expense of its domestic food supply. Nevertheless, Vietnamese exports covered only 36 percent of imports during the 1981—1985 period. 114

Ranh and Danang without pines.

waiting for a U.S. decision to withdraw from the Philip17, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, January

Speech by Manglapus, January

17, 1989, p. 52.

108. New York Times, January 19, 1990; Sankei Shimbun (Tokyo), January 3, 1990, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, January 16, 1990, p. 88. 109. Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Vietnam: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), table 11, p. 322. 110.

Anna

1975—1985," in Socialist

Petrasovits, "Results

and Limits

David G. Marr and Christine

in

CMEA-Vietnamese Trade

Relations,

White, eds., Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1988), pp. in

P.

216.

Then-deputy premier To Huu said in 1980 that the Soviet Union had priced exports to Vietnam at 1957 levels. See Nhan Dan, July 12, 1980. In 1981, however, Soviet prices for oil, the single largest Vietnamese import, were tripled to reflect world market prices. W. Evers, R. Baban, F. LeGall, and A. Pera, "Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Recent Economic Developments," International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., May 14, 1982, p. 9. 112. For an in-depth survey of Soviet- Vietnamese economic cooperation in the 1980s, see M. E. Trigubenko, "Cong Hoa Xa Hoi Chu Nghia Viet Nam va Hoi Dong Truong Tro Kinh Te: Nhung Ket Qua cua Muoi Nam Hop Tac va Nhung Van De" [The SRV and the CMEA: Achievements and problems of ten years of cooperation], Nghien Cuu Kinh Te, no. 3, June 1988, pp. 24-32. 113. Petrasovits, "Results and Limits," p. 217. For an example, see Jayne Werner, "Socialist Development: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Vietnam," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars," 16, no. 2 (1984), 51. 114. Vo Nhan Tri, "Socialist Vietnam's Economic Development 1975-85: Policies and Performance," paper for conference "Postwar Vietnam: Ideology and Action," 111.

its

Vietnam

212

In addition to their concern over deepening indebtedness, Vietthat the outmoded and inferior technol-

namese economists feared

SRV was receiving from the Soviet Union would prevent Vietnam from competing effectively in the world marketplace." The SRV also became unhappy with the results of its joint venture projects and contracts between sectors and local economic units. The value of those projects to Vietnam was limited by high transportation costs, slow transfers of payments, and the inability to use prof6 itably the rubles earned in the transactions." Finally, Vietnam was dissatisfied with its labor cooperation agreements with COMECON countries. The Vietnamese discovered that incomes of Vietnamese workers from COMECON countries were only one-seventeenth to one-nineteenth of those obtained by foreign workers in the Middle East or Western Europe, and Vietnamese workers complained about substandard living and working conditions in socialist countries." The 1977 SRV investment code had proven so inflexible that, after nearly eight years, only two foreign companies had invested in Vietnam under its terms." 8 One of the consequences of the new line on foreign economic relations was that a new foreign investment code comparable to the most liberal in East Asia regarding foreign ownership, tax incentives, and repatriation of profits was passed by the National Assembly at the end of 1987 to make Vietnam competi9 tive in the East Asian market." Even so, by mid- 1990, only 105 forogy the

5

7

eign investment projects with a total investment of $852.4 million

had been approved. 120 University of Sussex, October 1985, p. 24; Evers et al., "Socialist Republic of Viet Nam," table 14, p. 25; Nguyen Dinh, "Concerning Inflation in Our Country," Tap Chi Cong San, no. 10, October 1977, JPRS-ATC-88-002, February 9, 1988, p. 36. 115. John Spragens, Jr., "Vietnam and the Soviets: A Tighter Alliance," Indochina

November 1984, p. 5; Erhard Haubold, "Vietnam Attempts Opening Foreign Policy and Hopes for Western Aid," Frankfurter Allgemeine (Frankfurt Main), March 24, 1987, JPRS-SEA-87-061, pp. 40-41. 116. Do Muoi, "Further Expand and Enhance the Efficiency of External Economic Operations," Nhan Dan, November 14, 1989, FBIS-EAS-89-227, November 29, 1989, p. 65; "Doing Business with the Soviet Union Will Be Beneficial," Hanoi Domestic Service, September 17, 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 18, 1989, p.

Issues, no. 51,

Up am

Its

62. 117.

SRV

officials

began

to voice this dissatisfaction

openly in the

late 1980s.

See

Le Nhu Bach, "Promoting Labor Cooperation with Foreign Countries in Terms of Labor and Experts," Tap Chi Cong San, September 1989, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, October 19, 1989, pp. 65-66; Thanh Nien, August 1989, JPRS-SEA-89-039, December 29, 1989, pp. 34-35.

Quan Doi Nhan Dan, November

118.

119.

28, 1988;

AFP dispatch, November 7, 1985, FBIS, November 8, 1985, p. K2. "Law on Foreign Investment in Vietnam," VNA, January 11, 1988, FBIS,

Asia Daily Report, January 12, 1988, pp. 47-52. 120. VNA, June 18, 1990, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, June 20, 1990,

p. 83.

East

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

The

213

regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and Mosfurther hastened the shift in Vietnam's economic relations to the capitalist world. At the October 1989 meeting of COMECON in Moscow, the Soviets rejected the Vietnamese delegate's call for "favorable prices" for the developing countries in the organization and declared that prices and credits, on which Vietnam previously had been granted special terms, would henceforth reflect 121 In late 1990 the Soviets announced international market values. that there would no further long-term trade agreements signed with Vietnam and that all exports to Vietnam would have to be paid for 122 in hard currency on delivery. The SRV, meanwhile, was wooing Japanese investors and traders successfully. Taking their cue from the Japanese government, which resumed economic assistance to Vietnam in 1990, some major Japanese trading companies began to open offices in the SRV with interfall

of

socialist

cow's economic

crisis

ests in investing in natural

resources and labor-intensive industries.

Japanese-Vietnamese trade immediately began to rise rapidly, increasing by more than 75 percent in 1990 over that in 1989. Hanoi, anticipating a sharp decline in Vietnamese labor exports to Eastern Europe, began to look to Western Europe and the Middle East as alternative markets for the laborers. 123 SRV policy toward ASEAN in the early 1980s was aimed at getting ASEAN to drop its diplomatic isolation of Vietnam and ultimately to accept the political status quo in Cambodia. Hanoi's proposal for a dialogue between Indochinese states and ASEAN to "promote mutual understanding and mutual trust" and "eliminate gradually the differences" between the two groups was rejected by ASEAN as were 124 its expressions of interest in joining ASEAN. At its Sixth Central Committee Plenum in March 1989, however, the Vietnamese leadership decided to shift its diplomatic focus to future economic cooper-

As a

result,

COMECON

121. Excerpt from address by Vo Van Kiet at the opening of the meeting, October 1989, Hanoi Domestic Service, October 15, 1989, 13, FBIS-EAS-87-201, October 19, 1987, pp. 51-52. 122. Indochina Digest (Washington, D.C.), December 15-21, 1990, citing Reuters,

December 123.

12, 1990.

AFP

dispatch, February 8, 1990, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, February 9,

1990, p. 59. 124.

Indonesia constituted an exception, as friendly

Benny Murdani

visits

by the Indonesian armed

good working relations. By 1988 the two states had established two official working groups, one on Cambodia and one on the Malaysian proposed for a "Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality" (ZOPFAN). Donald Weatherbee, "The Diplomacy of Stalemate," in Donald Weatherbee, ed., forces chief

established

ASEAN -Indochina Crisis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 15-21; transcript of U.S. Indochina Reconciliation Project delegation meeting with Thach, Ho Chi Minh City, January 17, 1988.

Southeast Asia Divided: The

1985), pp.

Vietnam

214

ation with

its

ASEAN

neighbors. 125

Thach the following month

The

first result

was a proposal by

on economic cooperation with regular ministerial discussions and a 126 "secretariat" to conduct research. Through most of the 1980s Vietnamese policy toward Thailand was primarily concerned with Thai collaboration with China to supply Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia. Hanoi no longer looked to either urban leftist groups or the demoralized and shattered Thai Communist movement as means to bring pressure on Bangkok. 127 Instead, it counted on cleavages within the Thai political elite to bring eventual change in Thai policy. Hanoi analyzed Thai politics as a sharing of power between a dominant class of military bureaucrats and a rising capitalist class, with the capitalists gradually gaining ground. Vietnamese officials believed that the Thai business community and the political parties under its influence wanted a peaceful environment in the region to ensure foreign investment and, thus, would favor accommodation with the three Indochinese states.

for a regional "consultative body"

128

When

Chatchai Choonhavan became Thai prime minister in 1988 Indochina from "battlefield" to "marketplace," Hanoi adopted an unambiguously positive attitude toward a Thai government for the first time since the early antiFrench resistance period. Contrary to previous analyses, which suggested that Thailand faced internal instability because of socioeconomic inequalities, the SRV now viewed Thailand as a rapidly growing, politically stable state, largely because of its success in at-

and

called for the transformation of

The Thai and Vietnamese governments develop roads linking Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, and the Central Bank Directors of Vietnam, Laos, and Thai-

tracting foreign capital. 129

agreed

in

1989

to

125. "Overall Assessment of the Situation," P. 1 of Resolution of the VCP Sixth Plenum, Hanoi Domestic Service, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, April 28, 1989, p. 81. 126. The Nation, April 29, 1989. 127. Some Thai military officers

Mai" (New party)

charged

in the

1979-1984 period

that a

"Phak

— a pro-Vietnamese Thai Communist party — had been established

on Laotian soil with official Lao- Vietnamese sponsorship. According to knowledgeable U.S. and Thai sources, however, the few Thai radicals in Laos who left the insurgency in 1979 never formed anything resembling a party. One of the Thai labor leaders alleged to have been a key organizer of the Phak Mai, Therdphum Chaidee, later surrendered to Thai authorities and denied ever having such plans. See Yuangrat Wedel, The Thai Radicals and the Communist Party: Interaction of Ideology and Nationalism in the Forest, 1975-1980 (Singapore: Maruzen Asia, 1983), app. C, p. 67. 128. See Gareth Porter, "Hanoi's Strategic Perspective and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict," Pacific Affairs (Spring 1984), 22-23. 129. Hanh, "Mot Chinh Quyen

Nam

Nam

Premier Chatchai government], Quan He Quoc

Thu Tuong Te, no.

1,

Chatichai" [One year of 1989, pp. 15-16.

November

Vietnamese Foreign Policy

215

land agreed that the baht would be the main currency for intraregional trade. The era of Thai- Vietnamese political antagonism thus

drew

to a close.

130

Conclusion

Vietnamese foreign policy has gone through a series of stages since the DRV was founded, moving from an isolated revolutionary state seeking allies wherever it could find them (1945-1950) to an independent member of the world socialist camp (1950-1954), to a loyal socialist state following the Soviet line (1954-1960), to a militant revolutionary state (1961 — 1975). Since 1975,

SRV

foreign policy

has been in transition from revolutionary militancy to integration of its

economy with the world In the

first transitional

capitalist system.

phase, from 1975 to 1978, Vietnam began

to downgrade its relations with Communist parties but did not yet abandon them completely as it normalized bilateral relations with its It also maintained its goal of replacing the existing "imorder in Southeast Asia with one that reflected revolutionary gains. In the second phase, from 1978 to 1984, Hanoi abandoned the objective of a new, explicitly anti-imperialist international order in the region and ceased viewing either existing Communist parties or urban leftist movements as instruments of change. But the SRV was preoccupied with its historical enemy China and placed its own influence in Laos and Cambodia and its alliance with the Soviet Union at the center of its foreign policy. From 1984 to 1989, the SRV went through a third transition as it moved toward placing international economic cooperation at the center of its diplomacy. It made renewed overtures to its erstwhile enemies, Beijing and Washington, put new emphasis on attracting foreign investment, and put forward new initiatives on regional eco-

neighbors. perialist"

nomic cooperation. As the SRV entered the 1990s,

it was caught between its new concern with finding a niche within the global capitalist system and its

old fears that the United States

were atives

and other advanced

capitalist states

Communist regime. The impermarketplace now drove most of Vietnam's day-

striving for the collapse of the

of the global

to-day diplomacy. But the

VCP

leadership's final rejection of

ist-Leninist ideology in foreign policy

mise of the Soviet

would come only

Marx-

after the de-

state.

130. The Nation (Bangkok),

December

15,

1989; Nation Business, January 26, 1989.

Glossary

and Peace Forces: Anti-U.S., pro-NLF grouping of non-Communist opposition figures established in 1968. bureaucratic centralism: Soviet and Vietnamese term for the practice of central state organs exercising control over production decisions by means of Alliance of National, Democratic,

administrative orders.

A political system in which the decision-making power of state bureaucrats is not counterbalanced by nonstate actors representing popular interests.

bureaucratic polity:

bureaucratism: give too little

A

Marxist-Leninist term for administrative practices that

much emphasis

to administrative

measures and coercion and too

to persuasion.

Cao Dai: A syncretic Vietnamese religion blending elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Western spiritualism, centered in Tay Ninh province in South Vietnam. chi bo: A chapter of the Vietnamese Communist Party composed of party cells.

collective mastery:

A

masses over their

Marxist-Leninist concept of control by the working

own

lives

through means other than electoral

institu-

tions.

That sector of the Vietnamese economy in which signifidone collectively, even when land and tools are privately

collective sector:

cant labor

is

owned.

COMECON

(Council for Mutual Economic Assistance):

centered in

Moscow

bloc countries until

that its

The

organization

promoted economic cooperation among

socialist

dissolution in 1991.

Comintern (Communist International): The organization used by the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1943 to coordinate the activities of communist parties worldwide in support of Soviet objectives. commandism: A term used by Vietnamese Communist leadership for coercion to obtain public compliance with party policies.

cong an (public security):

A

term usually used for secret police under both

Communist and anti-Communist regimes.

218

Glossary

Constitutionalist Party:

A

French-approved party of large southern Viet-

namese landowners in the 1920s. cooperative: The main economic unit

in the collective sector,

whether

in

industry or in agriculture.

dang doan (party group or fraction): A group of party members who exercise strategic direction of a state or nonstate body as a minority within its leadership.

democratic centralism: The principle in Marxist-Leninist parties that required election of leadership organs at all levels but also faithful implementation of all decisions reached by the next higher level of the party. dong: The unit of currency used both in Communist Vietnam and in nonCommunist South Vietnam. family economy: Production on private family plots by individual families. formalism: A Marxist- Leninist term for formal adherence to democratic practice in party congresses while actually operating in an authoritarian

manner. Geneva agreements: The military and political agreements of 1954 that ended the Franco- Viet Minh conflict and divided Vietnam temporarily pending general elections two years later. harassment and interdiction fire: U.S. and South Vietnamese government artillery fire directed at an area under NLF control in South Vietnam to increase the cost of the war to the NLF social and political structure. Hoa: The Vietnamese term for ethnic Chinese residents of Vietnam. Hoa Hao: An indigenous Vietnamese religion based on Buddhism founded in the 1930s in Chau Doc province that acquired more than one million adherents in the western Mekong delta during the 1940s. Ho Chi Minh Trail: A network of jungle roads through mountains and jungles in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia into South Vietnam in the anti-U.S. war.

Indochinese Communist Party: The original Vietnamese Communist Party organization established in 1930 and held responsible by the Comintern for advancing the revolution in Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam. kinh:

A

Vietnamese term for the ethnic Vietnamese majority

vis-a-vis ethnic

minorities in Vietnam.

The forerunner of

the Vietnam Fatherland Front, the nationalof party-controlled mass organizations and parties. Mass organizations: Non state organizations of particular social or economic

Lien Viet:

level coalition

sectors

under the control of a party

missing in action (MIA):

A

faction.

U.S. military term for service personnel

who

did

not return from the war zone but were not formally declared dead by the Department of Defense.

nam

(march

tien

down

sixteen

The migration of Vietnamese southward now central and south Vietnam during the

to the south):

the coast into what

and seventeenth

is

centuries.

Glossary

A

national bourgeoisie: lectuals

operate

219

Marxist-Leninist term for business people and intel-

who support revolutionary movements with the Communist Party.

against colonialism or co-

National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (National Liberation Front): The Communist-led political front opposing the U.S. and Saigon government at every level from village to national beginning in 1960. New Economic Policy: Lenin's policy of encouraging individual production and markets in order to bring about economic recovery in the early 1920s. new economic zones: Previously unsettled or abandoned areas in southern Vietnam that after 1975 were settled with people from urban areas, usually with poor planning. People's Councils: Popularly elected organs of government at village and

organs at provincial levels. Bureau: The inner core of the leadership (Central Committee) of the Vietnamese Communist Party. production contracts: Agreements between cooperatives and the state on an amount of grain to be sold to the state at Fixed prices for a Five-year district levels; indirectly elected

Political

period.

Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam: Communistsponsored resistance government established near the Cambodian border

Provisional

in 1969.

renovation ical

(doi moi):

The term used

spheres since the

A

self-criticism:

VCP

to

denote reform

in

economic and

polit-

Sixth Party Congress of 1986.

formal process by which an individual member admitting shortcomings to the majority of members of

political-ideological errors or

a party organization.

movement: The Buddhist-led movement government in 1966.

struggle cities

tailism:

A

giao (three religions):

beliefs held tieu to:

Central Vietnamese

Marxist-Leninist term for accepting the views of the masses on a

given political issue, even tarn

in

against the Saigon

Party

Fifteen

cells,

A

they are "reactionary".

of Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucianist

by most Vietnamese peasants. the most basic unit of party organization, with three to

members of

Viet Minh:

if

The blend

similar ranks

and occupation. Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh (Vietnam

contraction for Vietnam

Independence League), the coalition of nationalist groups led by Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communist movement during the resistance to the Japanese and French from 1951 to the end of the anti-French resistance war.

Vietnam Veterans Association: The First nongovernment organization with independent origins to be given ofFicial recognition in 1990. voluntarism:

The

ideological deviation characterized by the belief that revo-

lutionary goals can be achieved despite objective conditions through subjective efforts.

Index

Administrative Committees (Uy Ban

Hanh Chanh),

14, 15, 16,

agricultural collectivization,

118-20, 172; peasant resistance

11, to,

79-80, 86 45-46, 110-

53, 161, 171; resistance within

party

to,

bourgeois individualism, 8 3, 37-38; An Quang pagoda, 180; monks, 180-82 budget, 76, 132-33, 144, 150-51 bureaucracy: party-state, 61, 77, 80, 137,

Buddhism,

147, 157, 171; state,

126

agricultural cooperatives, 45, 50, 58-59, 93, 116-17, 133-34, 161, 172; as

94-96; popular management of, 158-

political institution,

participation in

78-79

"bureaucratic centralism," 121, 128, 133, 137, 141, 144, 149 bureaucratic polity, 101 bureaucratism (quan lieu), 18, 74, 162

59 agriculture: labor force, 36; output, 46, 48, 49, 50-52, 54-55; procurement

133-34, 143, 144, 161; structure, 45; supplies, 51, 52,

prices, 93, 112,

133-34, 136n40 Alliance of National, Democratic, and Peace Forces, 26 An Giang Province, 4 Annam, 1, 6, 9 anti-dynastic revolts, 2

anti-French resistance war, 12-18, 69,

80

armed

struggle, in

South Vietnam, 20,

cadres: abuses of, 159, 174; attitude toward People's Councils, 79; conferences, 126; in cooperatives, 133; errors of, 71-72; evasion of law

and front work, 91; and implementation of policy, 119, 126; privileges of, 59, 61-63; rations for, 123 Cambodia, 185, 193-5, 198; border conflict with Vietnam, 186, 201-2; "special relationship" with Vietnam, 186n4; Vietnamese occupation of, by, 138;

205-7

Cam Ranh

23

Army

of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), 23, 25 artists, repression of, 165-66, 174-75 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 203-4, 213-14 August Revolution, 105

Bay, 210,211

Can Tho, 183 Cao Dai, 11-13,

37,

40-41, 183-84

Carter administration, 200 Catholic church, 37-40, 159, 162, 177-

80 Central Committee (of Vietnamese

Communist balance of payments, 54, 56

Bao Dai, 13 BaThi, 125 Ben Tre Province, 161 Bo De schools, 180 Bourgeois democracy, 8 bourgeoisie,

5, 9,

89. See also

61, 142, 153; national,

merchants

Party), 62, 66-67, 84, 88, departments of, 85-86; Party Organization Department, 67, 1

10, 142;

103n3, 139; plenums of, 28, 66, 71, 99, 100, 102-5, 112-14, 117-18,

121-22, 124, 142, 148, 150, 155, 192, 197; political reports of, 110-12, 14647; Propaganda and Training Department, 126, 139; resolutions of,

Index

222

Central Committee

14,

(cont.)

123

108, 116, 118-19, 121-22, 125-27, 136, 144, 199n55, 202; Secretariat,

council of notables, 5, 96 Council of State (State Council), 73, 77,

108, 113, 122-24, 142, 160 Central Control Commission, 67 central highlands, 41 Central Mechanism Improvement Study Group, 114 Central Mechanism Subcommittee, 114 Central Military Party Committee, 83

78, 81, 82, 110, 113, 122 Council on Mutual Economic Assistance

cultural policy,

central Vietnam, 34

Cuu Long

9, 33-34, 36, 186, 187, 195, 198, 199, 210; border conflict with Vietnam, 186-87; conflict with

(COMECON), "criticism

and

199, 202, 212,

213

self-criticism." See self-

criticism of party leadership

Cuba, 100, 196

164-67

Province, 157, 162

China,

Vietnam, 201-2; defection from socialist camp, 190; invasion of Vietnam, 207, 209; as main enemy of Vietnam, 203-4; military advisers in Vietnam, 194; reduced tensions with Vietnam, 207-9; support for Thai insurgency, 197; wartime aid to

Vietnam

137. See also People's

Republic of China; Sino-Soviet relations; Sino-U.S. relations

Chinese Communist Party, 69, 83, 189, 194 Chinese minority. See Hoa Choonhavan, Chatchai, 214 Chu Huy Man, 108 "circulation and distribution work," 123 class struggle, 116, 188 Club of Former Resistance Fighters, 68, 110 coal, 42, 161

Cochinchina, 1, 5, 6, 9-10, 40 Cochinchina Revolt (1940), 10 collective leadership, 78, 105,

114-15

commandism, 162, 171 commerce, 33, 47, 123 Committee for the Unity of Catholic Vietnamese, 180 International (Comintern),

Communist 6,9

Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), 197, 204-5 Confucianism, 3—5,

7,

Dai Viet Party, 10n37, 12

Danang, 38 dang doan. See Party fraction or group democratic centralism, 15, 67, 101-2 Democratic Kampuchea, 186, 202 Democratic Republic of Vietnam: and anti-French resistance, 12-18; and Catholic church, 39; coalition government of, 11; diplomatic relations of, 187, 193-99; economic development plans of, 47-49; founding of, 11; leadership politics of, 115; local government of, 15-17; reunification policy of, 195; revolutionary transformation of society by,

57-58

demonstrations, as political protests,

162-63

Deng

Xiao-ping, 201

de-Stalinization campaign, 114 dikes, 1-3 district administration, 83,

Collective Peasants' Union, 88, 93, 170

Patriotic

DaiDoanKet, 168

37

86

Do Muoi, 75, 106, 109-10 Dong Si Nguyen, 106 Dong Thap Province, 41, 183 economic development plans

(five-year):

48-54 economic policy: toward agriculture, 45-46, 51-52, 134; toward domestic trade, 47, 123; toward exchange rates, 131, 150-51: toward household economy, 43, 46; toward private enterprise, 43-44, 149; toward state

Cong An Nhan Dan Vietnam (Vietnam

enterprises, 121, 140-41, 144-47,

People's Police), 14 constitution: of the (1946), 17; of the (1960), 82; of the SRV

150; toward wages and prices, 121, 123-27, 130-33, 135-36, 138, 140-

DRV

DRV

(1980), 73, 77, 156-57, 159, 164, 171,

208 Constitutionalist Party, 6, 8

corruption, 71, 129-32, 134, 136, 138 Council of Ministers, 73-75, 110, 113-

48. See also foreign aid; industry;

taxes

education, elections,

35-36 154—56; during anti-French

resistance war, 16; for local party organs, 72; in Marxist-Leninist theory,

Index

Ho

elections (cont.)

153; for national assembly for reunified Vietnam, 29 Elliott, David W. P., 115-16 exchange rates, 131, 150-51

factional

model of leadership

politics,

115 family planning, 3 famine, 9-19, 75

economic development plans (five year)

five-year plans. See

food

individual freedoms Hungary, 98, 192

investment code, 212

Huynh Phu Huynh Tan

85

136-37 debt, 54-55

185-215; toward ASEAN, 203-5; toward Cambodia, 185-87, 193, 195, 201-3, 205-7; toward China, 82, 104, 106, 137, 186, 190, 195, 198-99, 201-2, 207-9; toward Laos, 185, 193, 195-6, 198, 201, 208; toward Malaysia, 197; toward the Philippines, 197, 210; toward the Soviet Union, 199-200, 202, 210-13; toward Thailand, 19394, 197, 204-5, 213-15; toward the United States, 200-201, 209-10 foreign trade, 54-56; balance, 131; with capitalist countries, 209-10; with Japan, 213; with Laos and Thailand,

So, 13, 41

Phat, 29

policy,

214; with the Soviet Union and

COMECON, forests,

Chi Minh, 6, 9-10, 12, 17, 66, 77, 104-5, 108, 140 Ho Chi Minh City, 33, 38, 44, 68, 71, 77, 92, 109, 114, 125, 161, 163-64, 180 Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, 87, 170 Ho Hieu Ha, 183 Hon Gai mines, 161 household economy, 43, 46 Hue, 38, 180 human rights violations, 171-77. See also

aid,

deficit, 47, 56,

foreign foreign foreign foreign

223

211

42-43

also

Marxism

"incremental" model of policy implementation, 118, 120-26 individual freedoms, 164-84; from

and torture, 171-76; of association, 170; creative, 166-67; of press and publishing, 165-70; of arbitrary arrest

Geneva Agreement on Laos, 196 Geneva Agreements on Indochina,

19,

23, 39, 194

Gia Long, 4 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 100, 147, 151, 210

Haiphong, 201

176-84

religion,

Indochinese Communist Party, 7-11, 13, 15 Indonesia, 55, 206, 213nl24 Industrialists and Traders' Union, 89 industry: consumer goods, 131; labor force, 36; handicraft enterprises, 131; heavy, 48, 50; before partition, 48;

private,

"formalism," 64, 74, 1 1 France, 9; and Indochina war 194; reoccupation of Cochinchina, 12, 193 FULRO (Front Unifie pour la Lutte des Races Opprimes), 34, 41, 182

44-45, 149;

state enterprises,

129-31 inflation,

53-54, 123, 131, 132, 148, 151 Economics, 135, 193n29

Institute of

intellectuals,

International

164-65

Bank

for

Economic

Cooperation, 200 International Investment Bank, 200 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 54, 150

Japan: economic relations with Vietnam, 213; occupation of Vietnam, 10-1 1, 41

Hanoi, 10, 31, 35, 38, 71 "harrassment and interdiction"

Ha Tinh Province, 2 Ha Trong Hoa, 168 health, 57

fire,

23

Khmer empire, 186 Khmer minority, 34 Khmer Rouge, 186,

206, 207, 214. See

Democratic Kampuchea Khrushchev, Nikita, 197 Kien Giang Province, 57 kinh, 33 also

Hoa, 33-34, 201, 202 Hoa Hao, 11-13, 37, 183-84

Hoang Tung, 153 Hoang Van Hoan,

ideology, 67, 116, 135-37, 151, 176. See

103, 105

Kuomintang Army

(Chinese), 11. 13

Index

224

nam

labor cooperation agreements, 212 labor exports, 213 labor force, 32, 33, 36

labor unions. See trade unions landlords, 15, 22, 58-59 land ownership, 5-6, 57, 59, 60, 149 land reform, 15, 57-58, 116n48, 171

Lao Dong, 168 Laos, 34, 194-95, 197, 214; in,

205; Geneva

186, 201;

Committee

CPT

bases

Agreement on,

196;

"special relationship" with

tien (march to the south), 2-3 National Assembly, 73-77, 82, 92, 109, 153-57, 173-74; during anti-French resistance, 17, 73; candidates for, 90; Culture and Education Committee of, 29; legislative function of, 73-74; for reunified Vietnam, 29; Standing

Vietnam,

Vietnamese troops

in,

201,

208 171-75; during anti-French resistance war, 14-15 Le Duan, 66, 103, 105-7, 114, 116, 142, 146, 190 Le Due Anh, 107 Le Due Tho, 67, 103, 105, 107, 125, 139 Le Thanh Nghi, 105 Liaison Committee of Patriotic and Peace-loving Catholics, 180 law, attitudes toward, 80, 138,

liberalism, xiv, 8, 9

Lien Viet. See Vietnam National Union literature,

107-8, 111-12, 118, 146, 155, 188, 191

natural resources, 42-43 Nghe An Province, 2 Nghe Tinh Province, 122

Ngo Ba Thanh, 74 Ngo Cong Due, 167 Ngo Dinh Diem, 19,

204

Marxism, 8; -Leninism, 7, 68, 153, 188— 93 Marx-Lenin Institute, 193n29 River, 3; delta, 24, 26, 31,

20;

government

42-

Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen

135

Due Tarn, 106-7 Duy Trinh, 105, 107 dynasty, 4

Huu Tho, 29, 74, 155 Khac Vien, 7, 84 Kim

Dien, 180

Lam, 144

Van Van

Binh, 40, 179, 180 Linh, 66, 68, 74, 88, 90,

141- 42, 154,

160

Nguyen Van Thieu, 27 Nguyen Van Thuan, 179 Nhan Dan, 66 Nhan Van, 164 Nhat Linh, 8

Defense, General Directorate for Economic Development, 84; Foreign

Nha Trang, 38 Nixon, Richard, 198-200 North Korea, 100 Nung, 34

Trade, 78; Interior, 163, 174; Justice,

nutrition,

Ministries: Agriculture, 78, 122;

55—57

172-73 minorities, 33—35

oil

missing in action (MIA), 209-10 mobilization campaign model, 1 18

Paracel Islands, 187

14,

19

109,

209

93, 99, 106, 108, 138,

43, 48, 59, 124, 136, 162, 186

Meo minority, 34 merchants, 61, 90, 131-32, 144, 161, 163 middle class, 27-28 Minh Hai Province, 57 Minh Mang, 4

of,

38, 40, 187

191, 193n31,

Malaysia, 56, 197

Mekong

106-7, 111-

fifth, 86, 102,

12, 147; sixth, 43, 75, 90, 102, 104,

Nguyen Chi Thanh, 105 Nguyen Co Thach, 75, 103, 106-7,

136 Long An Province, 25, 57, 123 Luong Trong Tuong, 183 Luu Huu Phuoc, 29 Ly Dynasty, 1

Party,

77-78

110; third, 70, 102; fourth, 102, 103,

111-12;

Ngo Vinh Long,

165-67

living standards, 55, 61,

Malayan Communist

of,

National Defense Council, 73 National Liberation Front (National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam), 20-29, 41 National Party Congress, 65-66, 104,

production and export, 42

Paris peace agreement,

200

Index Party fraction or group (dang doan), 21,

88 Pathet Lao, 195 peaceful coexistence strategy, 188 peasants: living standards during colonial period, 6; middle and rich,

Quang Ninh Province, 33, Quang Tri Province, 162

225

157

Race, Jeffrey, 22

Red

River,

1;

delta,

31,42

reeducation camps (concentration camps), 29, 172, 174-76, 183-84;

58-60, 116; poor and landless, 18, 21, 23, 57-58; representation in VCP, 70; and state bureaucracy, 133-35; support for Viet Minh, 11; tenant farmers, 22-23, 59 People's Committees, 76, 80, 159, 176, 178 People's Councils, 15-16, 76, 79-80,

internees of, 210 "renovation" campaign, 65, 67, 90, 118, 153, 156, 160, 168 Republic of Vietnam (RVN), 19, 21, 25; security personnel of, 22. See also Army of the Republic of Vietnam

155, 157 People's Courts, 14, 80-81 People's Liberation Armed Forces

Resistance and Administrative Committees, 14, 16

(PLAF), 23, 25 People's Procurate (People's Control Organ), 82, 172, 175 People's Republic of China (PRC), 3334, 194 People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK),

(ARVN)

reunification, 20, 27-30, 137, 195 Revolutionary Youth League, 7 Rhodes, Alexandre de, Center, 179 rice: cultivation of, 32; exports of, 54;

price of, 127; procurement of, 13334; production costs of, 134

205-6 people's revolutionary committees, 26

Pham Hung, 74n29, 75, 105-6, 109, 135 Pham Van Dong, 16, 105-7, 109, 173 Phouma, Souvanna, 195

Saigon, 40 Saigon Giai Phong, 1 60 scholar-gentry, 6 seafood; production of, 42

pluralism, 96-100, 163-64, 193

security services, 82, 125, 152, 171-74,

Philippines, 55, 197, 203,

210

180-81

Poland, 98, 192 Polish

Communist

Political

Bureau

(Politburo), 20,

66-67,

75, 83, 85, 100, 102-10, 113-15, 117,

119-20, 136, 140-45, 209; resolutions of, 125-27, 142, 145, 149, 191, 208 Political Consultative Conference (1976), 28 political protests,

161-63

Pol Pot, 198, 201-2 population, 31-33, 133

167-69 See economic policy

press, 139, 160, prices.

production contracts, 48, 58, 117, 122, 126 production groups, 119, 126 Protestant Evangelical Church of Vietnam (Hoi Thanh Tin Lanh Viet

Nam), 41, 182-83 Protestantism, 37 Provisional Revolutionary

Government of South Vietnam (PRG), 26, 28-29

Qing Court, 187 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 168-69

of party leadership, 110n24, 115, 116n48, 162, 165, 174

self-criticism

Party, 97

Self-Reliant Literary

Van Doan),

Group (Tu Luc

8

"Seven Mountains" area, 41 Shanghai Communique, 199 Sihanouk, Norodom, 195, 198, 206 Sino-Soviet relations, 197, 207, 210 Sino-U.S. relations, 187 socialism:

antagonism with capitalism,

193; collapse of in Eastern Europe,

192; definition of in agriculture,

democracy and, 97; of transition

to,

contradictions 145;

SRV

"initial

1

17;

stage"

147; internal

in,

192; market, 136,

loyalty to, 193; superiority

of over capitalism, 189; of, 97, 99, 146;

VCP

Vietnamese

concept of

loss

belief in, 71

camp, 189, 195 89 Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV); five-year plans of, 49-52; formation of, 29; and religious freedom, 176; socialist

Socialist Party,

Index

226

Republic of Vietnam (cont.) transformation, 119-20, 132, 188

Socialist

and

socialist

social structure,

of,

23

Communist Party, 69, 83, 136, 145, 147 Soviet model, 48, 67-68 Soviet Union: de-Stalinization in, 114; Soviet

economic competition with the United States, 189; global strategy of, 188,

194; Ho Chi Minh in, 6; negotiating policy during Vietnam War, 198;

pluralism in, 96, 98-99, 193; reduction in aid from, 137; succession in, 104; technology transfer from, 212; trade relations with Vietnam, 213; Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Vietnam, 203. See also Sino-Soviet relations Spratly Islands, 187 State Bank, 131 State Council. See Council of State state enterprises, 114, 128-32, 141,

145-50

77

Tonkin, 1-3, 6, 10, 57 Tonkin Gulf crisis, 197 torture, 171, 174

trade balance, 54-55, 131 trade embargo, 209 trade unions, 91, 92, 158

Tran Bach Dang, 97 Tran dynasty, 1 Tran Phuong, 103, 135, 137 Tran Quang Vinh, 13 transportation system, 43

Tran Trong Kim, 10 Tran Van Tra, 68 Tran Xuan Bach, 100 Truong Chinh, 13, 28,

66, 77, 103,

105-8, 110-111, 116, 153 Truong Nhu Tang, 29 Truong Son, 31 Tu Luc Van Doan. See Self-Reliant Literary

Group

Tuoi Tre, 168

State Inspection

Commission, 130

State of Vietnam, 19 State Planning

Tin Sang, 167

To Huu, 108 Ton Due Thang,

57-63

South China Sea, 31 South Vietnam, social structure

Thich TueSy, 181-82 "third force," 27, 167

Commission, 83, 128,

131

Commission, 131, 146 network, 131, 144, 146 students, 6, 35, 63, 65, 163 Subic Bay naval base, 210 Supreme People's Court, 73, 77, 80-82 Supreme People's Procurate (Supreme People's Control Organ), 73, 77, 82 State Price state trade

giao (three religions), 37, 40 Tap Chi Cong San, 97 taxes, 157; during anti-French resistance war, 18; on merchants, 131-32; of NLF, 21-22; on peasants, 60, 133-35, tarn

161

Tay minority, 34 Tay Ninh Province, 40-41, 184 Tet Offensive, 24, 26 Thai Binh Province, 31 Thailand, 56, 193-94, 197, 201, 203-5, 214 Thai minority, 34 Thang Long University, 164 Thich Huyen Quang, 181 Thich Quang Do, 181 Thich Tri Quang, 38n36 Thich Tri Sieu, 181-82

"umbrella" system, 137-38 unemployment, 55 Unified Buddhist Church (UBC), 18082 United States: airbases in Thailand, 197, 200, 204; alignment with China, 187; bombing and other military operations, 23-25, 39, 198; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert operations, 172; defoliation by, 42; intervention in Indochina after 1954, 187; and Laos, 195-96; meetings with SRV on MI As, 209-10; negotiations with Vietnam, 188, 200-201; support for French reoccupation of Indochina,

193-94; threat of military intervention in 1954, 194; and Tonkin Gulf incident, 197

Uy Ban Hanh Chanh.

See

Administrative Committees

Van Tien Dung,

107, 108

Vatican, 179

Vessey, Jr.,John W., 209 Viet Minh. See Viet Nam

Doc Lap Dong

Minh Viet

Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh

(Vietnamese Independence League), 9-10, 12, 20, 22, 39

Index Viet Nam Cach Mang Dong Minh Hoi. See Vietnam Revolutionary League Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), 28, 64—73; basic level organization, 69— 72;

and

capitalist activities, 71;

demands

and

for pluralism, 99-100;

general secretary, 66; ideological pluralism in, 68; leadership of society, 84;

membership

of,

69-71, 126;

political culture of, 171; political

functions of, 65; worldview of, 188— 93. See also Central Committee; Political

Bureau

Vietnam Confederation of Workers (also Vietnam Confederation of Labor), 82, 87-93 Vietnam Democratic Party, 89 Vietnamese Journalists Association, 168 Vietnam Fatherland Front, 87, 88, 89, 91, 154-57, 181

Vietnam Nationalist Party (Viet-Nam Quoc Dan Dang), 7, 11-14 Vietnam National Union (Lien Viet), 89 Vietnam Peasants' Union, 87. See also Collective Peasants' Union Vietnam People's Army (VPA), 27, 8284; demobilization of, 53; divisions in

South Vietnam, 26; General Political Directorate of, 83 Viet-Nam Quoc Dan Dang. See Vietnam Nationalist Party

227

Vietnam Revolutionary League, 11 Vietnam Student Union, 89 Vietnam Veterans Association, 68, 170 Vietnam Workers Party (VWP), 25-27, 189, 204 Vietnam Writers' Association, 164 villages: and cadres, 136; leadership of, 36-37; and police, 172; traditional elites in, 2-4; and wealth, 59 Vinh Phu Province, 122 Vo Chi Cong, 68, 78, 106-8, 1 10, 1 14 voluntarism, 120, 193 Vo Nguyen Giap, 83, 103, 105, 107, 209

Vo Van

Kiet, 75, 103,

106-7, 109-10,

141

wages. See economic policy

war veterans, 37 workers, 61-63, 70, 158, 160-161 World Bank, 200 women, 36-37

Women's writers,

Yao

88,

91-92, 142,

Association, 77, 170

164-67, 174

minority, 34

Yeltsin, Boris, 100

Zone of Peace, Freedom and 203

Neutrality,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Porter, Gareth, 1942-

Vietnam

:

the politics of bureaucratic socialism

—

/

Gareth Porter,

and international relations of Southeast Asia) Includes bibliographical references and index. p.

cm.

(Politics

ISBN 0-8014-2168-3 1.

Vietnam

Vietnam.

3.

—

Politics

and government

Communism — Vietnam.

DS559.912.P67 1993 959.704'4— dc20

— 1975— I.

Title.

2.

Bureaucracy

II.

Series.

92-54976