ABSTRACT
Vietnam's economic liberalization since the early 1980s provokes praise and alarm. This chapter reviews broad features of agrarian arrangements in Vietnam and neighboring countries, then examines the gains in rural productivity and the incomes that they have experienced. Equity and environmental considerations, which bear directly on the sustainability of the gains in productivity and incomes generally found across Southeast Asia, are examined. Recent economic changes in Vietnam began for a number of reasons, some of which have parallels in other countries previously governed by Communist parties. Vietnam's recent experience of "rural transformation" is broadly common to its neighboring countries. Relative to China and Vietnam, land distribution, production relations, and other agrarian institutions have been fairly constant in Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Internationally, there are conflicting views on how changes in agriculture and the liberalization of a developing economy affect the poor or the degree to which economic liberalization has environmentally friendly or detrimental outcomes.
