ABSTRACT
There can be no comprehensive and consistently radical transformation in other spheres while the key feature of the old classical structure, the Communist Party’s power, remains.
In comparison to other post-socialist transitional states, Vietnam has liberalized relatively quickly and, in many respects, has embarked upon a reform program that has moved faster and further than other comparable state socialist economies with a large agrarian base (for example China, Cuba or Laos). Vietnam remains, of course, rural and overwhelmingly impoverished-according to the latest World Bank report (1995:7) 51 percent of the Vietnamese population is classified as poorlagging behind other Asian economies, and in a distant league from the Asian newly industrializing states. But in some quarters Vietnam is held as a case of strikingly successful socialist reform, and very possibly an Asian ‘tiger’ in the making (Riedel 1993; Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) 1994). Indeed the Vietnamese leadership has openly acknowledged that some aspects of the South Korean and Taiwanese economies provide models for its curious blend of free markets and Leninism, a political economy described locally by the Communist Party as ‘socialist-oriented multi-sectoral economy driven by the state-regulated market mechanism,’ dubbed ‘Vietnamonomics’ by the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER October 26, 1995, p. 7). Whether one interprets this hybrid economy, as ranking Politburo member Dao Duy Tung does, as a confirmation that Vietnam has ‘skipped capitalism’ (FEER October 26, 1995, p. 52) or more cynically that ‘the party plus capitalism equals socialism’ (Kolko 1995), is perhaps of less relevance than the fact that the model has produced tiger-like growth rates (Figure 7.1). Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet told the national assembly at the end of November 1995 that the economy had been growing at 9.5 percent (up from 8.8 percent) in 1994. This growth rate has been maintained in 1996 and 1997. Exports are expected to rise by 30 percent (up from 24 percent in 1994 and 15 percent in 1993).
