The Political Economy of Vietnam’s Development: State Policies and Economic Progress

Abstract

This paper asserts that although Vietnam has achieved some economic progresses, all of them are mainly viewed in terms of quantity and are somewhat politically influenced (the case of SOEs and the chronic but deliberative lack of information on management and financial transparency and of state corruption). This leads to incomplete understanding of the actual situation of economic development in Vietnam. Thus, it also leads to the illusion of somewhat of a management miracle - Vietnam government. The paper’s analyses aim to reassess Vietnam’s economic development process through some typical, selected issues to assert that Vietnam has partially failed to achieve economic development in terms of not only poor economic performance and dark economic indexes but more importantly such failures in their turn have outright and direct negative impacts on people’s daily lives physically, materially.

Hot questions keep hanging over Vietnam society, such as whether the growth cake is equally and fairly shared among different economic and social sections? Whether the country’s resources are being utilized effectively through sound macroeconomic policies? Whether the current economic structure is being transformed in the right direction, which in turn guarantees the stable and successful provision of resources to meet the people’s living standards? Whether people’s lives and acceptable living standards are guaranteed when heavy corruption, backed by vested, biased economic policies are everywhere? It is publicly urgent to outright answer whether the current economic growth would lead to certain, if not to say fundamental, human social development in terms of authentic living functioning or people’s life quality improvement. Finally, it seems necessary to reassess not only the government’s economic management but also its development doctrines and policies which in fact fatally influence not only the people’s economic interests but also their overall life quality.