Vietnam

Ever since communist North Vietnamese forces defeated U.S.-backed South Vietnam in 1975, reunified Vietnam has been struggling with how to maintain a balance between two often contradictory goals: maintaining ideological purity and promoting economic development. For the first decade after reunification, the emphasis was on the former. By the mid-1980s, disastrous economic conditions led the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) to adopt at its sixth National Party Congress in 1986 a more pragmatic line, one that evolved into a three-pronged national strategy followed by Vietnam ever since:

Prioritize economic development through market-oriented economic reforms dubbed doi moi ("renovation") that can support improved living standards and military modernization.

Pursue good relations with Southeast Asian neighbors that provide Vietnam with economic partners and diplomatic friends.

Repair and deepen the relationship with China, while simultaneously buttressing this with a great power counterweight to Chinese ambition. ¹