
Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption - primroot
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/22/vietnam-40-years-on-how-communist-victory-gave-way-to-capitalist-corruption
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ghayes
This article seems to have a strong objective and anti-Western bias. For
instance, why does an article about "Vietnam 40 years on" spend the first
third discussing American tragedies during the U.S. invasion? It then
discusses each problem in Vietnam in terms of Western actions and dedicates
little if any space to the full spectrum of the issues the article is
discussing.

That said, the facts and stories presented in the article are themselves
interesting and enlightening.

~~~
mercurial
I agree. It is well-written and engaging, but its focus on American atrocities
somewhat detracts from the main point (and conveniently forgets to mention
that Vietcong forces were no stranger to mass executions and torture
themselves). It does bring home the extent of the destruction the war
inflicted, though.

Unfortunate to see Vietnam turning into a new China.

~~~
reallyoldguy
Agreed, the piece has a very distinct bias, and it's sad to see what Vietnam
has become, especially considering what it could have been had history gone a
little differently (South Korea is a reasonably analogous case).

~~~
mercurial
It is? When was South Korea under commercial embargo? I agree that the piece
is extremely biased, but it's pretty clear that the US were about as keen on
helping post-war Vietnam developing its economy as they have been with Cuba.

~~~
chinhodado
I think what he meant was, had South Vietnam won, it would have become a
second South Korea.

~~~
jbjohns
What are you talking about? There was no "South Vietnam"... There was Vietnam
and there were places the invading forces were occupying.

~~~
DanBC
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam)

First google hit.

~~~
VLM
It existed in the sense that the Confederate States of America existed. A
bunch of politicians unhappy about the countries government went into
rebellion, coincidentally in the south, and then the fireworks began. But as a
cultural concept, neither the CSA nor South Vietnam existed before their
respective political rebellions aka they weren't "real countries". And after
the rebellion was crushed they don't exist anymore in any real
cultural/political fashion. If they won, they would have developed into real
distinct countries eventually, but they never got the chance.

As far as invaders go, both sides invited so many vistors and advisors its
hard to say who that is.

~~~
reallyoldguy
It's hard to say what a "real" country is in this case. The modern borders of
Vietnam were _only_ drawn in 1802 when Gia Long unified the country. Within 60
years, the French colonized Vietnam and split it into Cochinchine, Tonkin, and
Annam. Then, in 1954, it was split again by the Geneva Accords into North and
South.

As you can see, most of these divisions were short-lived and that idea that
Vietnam was one unified country for a long period of time before being
arbitrarily split by warring politicians is not correct.

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dataker
Articles like these are well-intentioned, but it's part of a quite ignorant
and manipulative trend.

It makes one believe Capitalism means Coca-Cola, Microsoft and other
corporations taking over the world, corrupting local governments and
destroying local businesses.

At its best, this is a form of 'Crony Capitalism', but far from what
Capitalism genuinely is.

~~~
mercurial
Crony capitalism? How many "genuinely capitalistic" corporations show moral
qualms when it comes to exploiting (or even engineering) weak regulatory
frameworks in under-developed areas and engaging in the time-honored tradition
of buying local officials?

~~~
dataker
I'm not sure there'd have many corporations and, if so, buying local officials
would be useless, as they'd have limited power in the first place.

~~~
mercurial
I'm talking in general. "Really capitalistic" companies don't have issues with
corruption, as long as it is not paired with protectionism.

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reallyoldguy
This is an un-nuanced analysis of Vietnam's history that basically blames the
United States for Vietnam's rampant corruption and the failure of the
communist model (can you name a country where this has worked?).

The author uses stories of war crimes and American military destruction to
paint the Vietnam War as USA (with the help of a puppet government) vs. the
people of Vietnam. This narrative is naive and ignores the historical and
political complexities of the time:

1\. Modern Vietnam was only unified in 1802, and then quickly colonized (and
separated into three zones) by the French less than 50 years later. It is
incorrect to think that Vietnam was always one country and the 1954 Geneva
Accords arbitrarily split the country for the good of the West.

2\. The Viet Minh, who fought and expelled the French were a multi-ideological
group that included non-communist nationalists. Ho Chi Minh systematically
eradicated the non-communist factions and consolidated power. Some of the
fanatical anti-communists that arose later in South Vietnam were those that
had had family members murdered by the communist faction.

3\. This narrative ignores the Republic of Vietnam as a true sovereign state.
It is incorrect to describe RVN as simply a puppet of the US. True, the
Vietnam war was a proxy war, but its involved nations had agendas of its own
and ignoring these is patronizing and false. People vote with their feet. In
the 300-day grace period after the 1954 division that allowed open migration
between the two Vietnams, 600,000 people migrated south compared with around
150,000 to the north. Around 1975, those who could scrambled to escape the
country. Over the next 20 years, over two million less fortunate people would
risk their lives on rickety boats to flee the communist regime. It's a very
naive picture to paint that the US was bombing all the of the poor Vietnamese
who just wanted independence into submission.

Aside from the lack of historical nuance, the author goes on excuse the
communist regime from blame, with incredibly disingenuous passages like this:

"The US left Vietnam in a state of physical ruin. Roads, rail lines, bridges
and canals were devastated by bombing. Unexploded shells and landmines
littered the countryside, often underwater in the paddy fields where peasants
waded. Five million hectares of forest had been stripped of life by high
explosives and Agent Orange. The new government reckoned that two-thirds of
the villages in the south had been destroyed. In Saigon, the American legacy
included packs of orphans roaming the streets and a heroin epidemic.
Nationally, the new government estimated it was dealing with 10 million
refugees; 1 million war widows; 880,000 orphans; 362,000 war invalids; and 3
million unemployed people."

The US did not leave Vietnam in ruins. War, _two-sided_ war did. In Saigon,
where did war widows and orphans come from? From the North killing the fathers
and husbands in war. Who created the refugees and destroyed two thirds of the
villages? The North, when it invaded the South. War is complicated, and
obviously both sides are complicit in this tragedy, but not in the author's
eyes. (Unsurprisingly, he doesn't mention the scores of summary executions and
systematic torture of ARVN veterans in "re-education camps" post 1975).

The US made plenty of blunders and ill-conceived and unwarranted political
plays during the course of the Vietnam War, but North Vietnam does not get
away blame free here. And while our standard history narrative in the US
mostly half-apologetically describes Vietnam as a mistake and tries to forget
about it, few people stop to consider if perhaps the US was on the side of
"good" (or at least, the better of the two) in this case.

How might Vietnam be different today if it had gone the way of South Korea
(which, at the time, was _even poorer_ than Vietnam)? When looking at its Cold
War era allies (USSR, PRC), it's no surprise that Vietnam ranks so poorly on
corruption. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

~~~
yc1010
Replace "Vietnam" with "India" and "USA" with "British Empire" and you be
reading from the same template few decades earlier.

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VLM
"gave way to capitalist corruption"

Those anecdotes read like someone who never read "Fire in the Lake". The
article anecdotes sound less corrupt than BAU in in the urban areas during the
war.

