Vietnam recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of its triumph against the United States and its success in re-unifying the country in April 1975. This victory marked the apogee of a long phase of revolutionary wars and struggles led by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and its different avatars against colonialism, French re-occupation, and later the U.S. intervention from 1925.
It was precisely in 1925 that the tallest leader of the CPV, Ho Chi Minh — then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc — established the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League or the Thanh Nien in Guangzhou, China, that aimed for national independence and a socialist government; these were the first organisational steps taken to form the Communist Party.
A 100 years later, today, the CPV governs Vietnam as a single party political system that is characterised by a strong market-based economy where, as its general secretary To Lam said in his speech at a massive parade commemorating the 50th anniversary of the reunification last week, the private sector remained the “most important driver of the national economy”.
The Vietnamese experience of blending market reforms and communist leadership — it still terms this model “socialist-oriented developmentalism” — was a consequence of its experience during the decade that followed the end of the Vietnam War.
Till 1986, the CPV practised orthodox socialist policies, which included a centrally planned economy, nationalisation of industries (including those in the conquered South), collectivisation of agriculture into cooperatives, implementation of five-year plans focused on production targets and resource allocation, and an emphasis on heavy industry.
The devastation of its economy due to the war, the continued U.S.-led embargo, the Vietnamese invasion of neighbouring Cambodia — a consequence of the depredations of the Khmer Rouge regime — and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in the late 1970s all resulted in the economy remaining in doldrums. This situation was exacerbated by the inefficiencies of the planned model — the low productivity after collectivisation, the shortages of food and goods, and high inflation, leading to severe economic hardship as well.
Economic transformation
This ultimately forced the hand of the CPV to undertake economic reforms, what it termed ‘Doi Moi’ or Renovation, featuring de-collectivisation of agriculture, price liberalisation, and allowing small-scale private enterprise in the first phase, followed by macroeconomic stabilisation, allowing foreign investment, international integration (including joining ASEAN), and state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in Phase 2. By the late-1990s, the CPV promoted trade agreements, entry into the WTO, developed institutions to facilitate a functioning market economy, allowed the private sector to lead economic growth, and deepened SOE reforms which included “equitisation” or “partial privatisation”.
These steps were consequential. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Vietnam’s poverty rate was close to 60%, its per capita GDP roughly $430, and its Human Development Index (HDI) value 0.492, all of which corresponded to a poor country with low human development. In 2023, Vietnam’s GDP per capita was $4,347; the multidimensional poverty rate fell to just 1.9% by late 2024, and the HDI in 2022 was recorded to be 0.726, placing it in the “high human development” category and as a middle-income country.
Speaking to this writer in Ho Chi Minh City recently, Tuoc Huynh, a digital commerce expert who helped the entry of Google, and led Facebook in Vietnam, said how the reforms led to an “Ice hockey stick” nature of the growth curve in the country. Mr. Tuoc was himself born into a family of Vietnamese immigrants to the U.S. and returned to the country to be part of the economic growth process.
But the rapid economic growth has not meant that it has been entirely inequitable — Vietnam’s Gini coefficient (which measures inequality on a scale of 0 to 100) is 36, one of the lowest in the Southeast Asian region. “Socialist” policies continue in terms of benefits to workers — who are entitled to 12 days of leave per year and more with experience, plus significant pension contributions, for example.
The transition of the country’s communist party leadership since 1986 also provides an indication of the economic and political trends. The relatively doctrinaire Le Duan led the party during the war after the demise of Ho Chi Minh in 1969 and till 1986, before Truong Chinh took over and supported the reformist wing in the party that laid the stepping stones for Doi Moi. Nguyen Van Linh, a leader from the South associated with reform and pragmatism, took over in December 1986, decisively leading the shift towards a market economy.
The era of reformism ushered in by Nguyen Van Linh has generally been the norm in the CPV since, but Nguyen Phu Trong’s regime between 2011 and 2024 also featured a sweeping anti-corruption programme (called the “blazing furnace”) against senior party leaders and government officials. This was, of course, a reaction to the other consequence of pursuing market reforms — the creation of a nouveau-riche elite and the one-party system also facilitating high-end corruption.
To Lam, who succeeded him in 2024, was closely associated with the anti-corruption drive in the Ministry of Public Security but as his speech emphasised, he is also firmly committed to the Doi Moi path and towards Vietnam’s quest of becoming an upper-middle income country by 2030.
Being a single party-state, Vietnam has also tightly restricted political freedoms related to association and civil liberties. This makes it imperative for the CPV to link its legitimacy as the ruling party to the outcomes of its economic policies and to the perception of its leadership. The CPV’s leadership, especially on security and party matters, is also still dominated by northern leaders, suggesting its continuing and higher popularity in the North, while Southern leaders take up more provincial and economic roles.
Collective leadership
The CPV is distinguished from other peers — the Communist Party of China is today dominated by Xi Jinping — by its adherence to collective leadership and decision making driven by consensus and the distinct lack of any personality cult. The parade on April 30 showcased the different wings of the armed forces, party, and government of Vietnam; only the visage of Ho Chi Minh was ever-present among images of leaders.
It is not surprising why — Ho Chi Minh was inextricably linked to the vicissitudes of the communist movement in the country. He was a nationalist who sought independence from colonialism while being a socialist. He believed Marxism-Leninism offered the surest steps for the anti-colonial struggle and to build an egalitarian nation. He also played a key role in setting up the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
The communists of the ICP dominated the Viet Minh that led and won the anti-colonial struggle against the French, and after the ICP’s dissolution into constituent parties across the three countries, they formed the Workers Party of Vietnam (WPV), which ruled North Vietnam [before the reunification]. The WPV’s southern wing was the Peoples’ Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam, which led the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, more popularly known as the Viet Cong, which orchestrated the struggle against the South Vietnam regime and the U.S. forces in the war. Even after nearly 40 years of reform in a world where the socialist bloc no longer exists, Vietnam continues to pay tribute to Ho Chi Minh as its ideological fountainhead, mainly due to his foundational role in combining Marxism-Leninism and Vietnamese nationalism.
Published – May 04, 2025 01:00 am IST
