Vietnam at the Crossroads: Labor in Transition

A view of the Saigon River from Commercial District #1, Ho Chi Minh City, May 2005.

There is a bumper sticker on the bathroom wall at Ming's, Hanoi's legendary jazz club, that reads "Vietnam: a country, not a war." For a certain generation of Americans, Vietnam will always be linked to a painful period in U.S. history. Today, however, interest in Vietnam generally centers on its role in the global economy. It is the economic tiger that emerged from the brink of economic collapse to realize industrial growth unrivaled in the world. Perhaps even more remarkable is that—like neighboring China, but in sharp contrast to Russia and Eastern Europe—Vietnam transitioned to a market economy, under the leadership of its Communist Party, while maintaining its socialist ideology. Some socialist concepts—central planning, collectivized production, class struggle—either disappeared or have been watered down in official rhetoric; yet the introduction of the market economy has been couched not in terms of dismantling socialism but in terms of protecting and reinforcing it. This has led some authors to suggest that there may well be an Asian socialist reform model.¹

China Lite?

While my observations of Vietnam are based on three trips over the course of the past twelve years, my observations of China are based on four official visits and one independent trip over the span of thirty-five years. If I learned anything from those trips it is that these nations are much more dynamic, complicated, and ideologically diverse than old Cold War formulations would allow. That said, I am going to risk a simplistic comparison between Vietnam and China. Both countries transitioned to market economy, attracted unparalleled levels of foreign investment in a relatively short period of time, experienced spectacular growth, improved the standard of living, saw an explosion of consumer products, made impressive gains on human development indices, and integrated themselves into the global economy with astonishing speed. Vietnam and China also share many of the same problems: persistent poverty, growing inequality, gender disparities, abandonment of their social safety nets, a record of human rights violations, and corruption.²

Some observers view Vietnam as "China Lite," pointing out that Vietnam is less harsh with dissidents, its censorship less pervasive, and its capitalism softer. For example, unlike China, Vietnam doesn't impose restrictions on Internet use, and surfers not only have free access to foreign news websites but have used the Internet to circulate anti-government petitions. When I asked a Vietnamese General Confederation of Labor (VGCL) official to identify Vietnam's most significant labor dissident, he didn't hesitate and I had no trouble accessing the dissident's website while in Hanoi. Government corruption has led to scathing exposés in the press and protests in front of the National Assembly. Anti-government dissidents, a critical press, and political protests are not only more tolerated in Vietnam than they are in China, but also in comparison to many of Vietnam's democratic neighbors, including Singapore (where orderly protesters are jailed) or the Philippines (where anti-government activists and clerics are murdered).³

There are, however, significant differences between the two countries. Vietnam had no cultural revolution, no persecutions, no dragged-out class warfare, no violent land reform—in short, it had a much less antagonistic transition. While China began its embrace of the free market to reinvigorate its stagnating economy, Vietnam transitioned under harsher conditions—a looming economic disaster—and yet much more reluctantly.⁴ In part, the reluctant and more cautious approach to the market economy was in deference to Vietnam's surviving revolutionary war heroes who are protective of nationalist and socialist ideals.

While Vietnam may have learned some important lessons from the Chinese experience, the argument can be made that Vietnam not only set its own course, but serves as a model for what some of China's more progressive activists aspire to. Upon returning from Vietnam, one high-ranking Chinese union official wrote about Vietnam and its national labor federation (the VGCL): "Their law guarantees the right...