ABSTRACT
Since the late 1980s, the Indochinese states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have transformed their bureaucratically managed traditional economies into marketcoordinated industrializing systems. Market reform in these countries has required fundamental changes in the internal institutions, organizations and structures embedded in their socio-economic systems. As Vietnamese analysts have remarked, shifting from central planning to the market 'was a radical renewal process, penetrating every aspect and relation of economic life in which general and partial reforms were closely connected and combined with each other and affected each other' (Nguyen Cong Nghiep eta!. 1993: 74--5). To support the broad systemic and institutional changes required in their shift to the market, the three countries have rapidly opened their economies to international capitalist markets. Concretely, the Indochinese countries are liberalizing and restructuring their foreign trade and capital regimes, expanding regional cooperation, and opening themselves to the outside world, all of which are profoundly affecting their path of transformation.
