Nea-liberalism is Party policy
Jean-Michel Krivine speaks to emigré activist Juan
• Do you still have family in Vietnam? Two brothers, who symbolise the evolution of the Communist Party cadres, north and south. My brother in Hanoi has important position in the civil service. He is part of the Nomenklatura, and enjoys a number of their privileges. He's pure Stalinist, and refuses any questioning of the role of the Communist Party. My brother in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is retired now. A Communist Party militant for many years, he made his way north to Hanoi after the Geneva Accords of 1954. In 1968 he was due to move back down south, to participate in the Têt offensive. But new orders came, when his bag was already packed. The security services had realised that he had a relative abroad, employed by a large capitalist firm. So he was no longer "sure" enough. He only returned to the south in 1975, with the northern troops. He is an idealist. Unlike most of his former companions, he still doesn't own his own house. He is starting to realise a lot of things now. When I started visiting him again a few years ago, he still had Ho Chi Minh's portrait, and his own medals displayed on the altar to the family ancestors. This year, they were gone. • What is the economic situation? Michel Chossudovsky was right to argue (in the February 1995 issue of International Viewpoint) that neo-liberalism is now official Communist Party doctrine.". And it is certainly true that the state economy is being destroyed, and the industrial base of Vietnam sold off to foreign capital. Gross Domestic Product (GDP, the total value of goods and services produced) is only increasing due to increased export sales. The education and health system are collapsing. But however seriously you study the secondary (English language) texts, you can't fully grasp a country like Vietnam, where everything changes so quickly. I disagree with Chossudovsky's comments on the impoverishment of the Vietnamese people. For sure, people have started living a little better since 1990. And this certainly has an effect on their behaviour. For example, until recently, all everyone thought about was how to earn money, how to get by. Everyone dreamt of getting a job in a foreign company, where the salary was not just higher, but was at least paid regularly. Now, some people are more hesitant. A new feeling of dignity, of national pride is emerging.
People don't want the country to be auctioned off to foreign (mainly Japanese) capitalists. Obviously, this is only the case of a small minority, but it is significant nevertheless. • What about free speech and the free press? In Ho Chi Minh-City you can speak freely. It's different in Hanoi. There is a constant debate in the "pavement restaurants" - what people now call "pavement radio". No subject is spared when people gather round a cup of coffee or a bowl of pho soup "Minister Dô Muoi is an honest man, but you can't say the same about those close to him" "I can't tell you anything about [Deputy Prime Minister] Phan Van Khai, but his son in Hanoi is responsible for a hotel project financed by foreign capital..." The newspapers are read avidly, above all Saigon Giai Phong, Tuôi Tre (Young Age), and Thanh Nien (Youth). A "supervised free press". You still can't create a new newspaper, but the existing publications can be more critical. In Ho Chi Minh-City, Thanh Nien and Tuôi Tre compete for. They investigate financial scandals, pollution, the degradation of the hospitals and education, and so on. But they present this information, more than denounce anybody. All under the vigilant regard of Special Section A25 of the Security Service, which is responsible for all literary activity. You can now criticise Stalinism, if you are careful. But Stalin himself is untouchable. To say nothing of Ho Chi Minh.
• Is the security service still as important? Yes, but technical progress means they can no longer control everything. Until 1991, all international telephone lines were supervised by operators, through a manual telephone exchange. There were no fax machines. Now there are hundreds of fax machines, and automatic telephone exchanges, installed by Alcatel and some Australian companies. The network of personal computers
Tuan left Vietnam for France in the late 1950s. He was active in the anti-war movement, later joining the editorial board of Chroniques vientnamiennes (the magazine of Vietnamese supporters of the Fourth International). He first returned to Vietnam in 1990. He has since visited the country at least once every year. He was interviewed on 15 October 1995 by Jean-Michel Krivine
International Viewpoint n° 273 27
Man E2.co co THE CHALT 4ILT10 The Central Bank of Vietnam has developed considerably over the last year. Some people are already connected to the internet. A savage private education industry is expanding in three areas: computers, business management, and foreign languages (mainly English). Most of the young people in Ho Chi Minh-City want to earn more money, and enjoy life. The "heroic struggle for independence of the Vietnamese people" is already ancient history.
• Emigre writer Nhung Aguston-Phan recently wrote that the principle concern of the old guard of the party is maintaining its absolute power True, the Nomenklatura wants to keep power at any price, while it assures the capitalist transformation of the economy, like in China. The leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party took a sharp turn towards neo-liberalism in 1987, under the influence of "perestroika" in the Soviet Union. But trying to respect a "Vietnamese style". Everything was controlled by the Communist Party. But the leaders were divided. Half became "conservatives" ", which led the "liberals" to send their children off to Harvard and Oxford to learn "management". And since 1992-1993, it is "Harvard arrivals" who run the economy. At the top, close attention is being paid to developments in China and the former "real socialist" bloc. The Institute of Social Sciences in Hanoi has translated a number of Chinese works on the "socialist market economy", for the strictly internal use of the Party. I was able to consult them, but not take them away with me. They would have been confiscated by the customs authorities. There is no industrial "hard core". The domestically-owned private sector is producing new riches, but only in what the economists call "value added". The only real industries of transformation are geared towards export, particularly in the textile fields (clothing, footwear) GDP might be growing, but, since this includes export earnings (oil, raw materials, tea, coffee, rice, rubber) and service earnings (tourism, hotels and catering), growth in GDP does not at all prove that there is an economic "take-off" which is benefiting the population. A law on foreign investment was passed in 1987, to allow the easy repatriation of profits and capital. Texts regulating Vietnamese investors have only recently appeared
• What about political repression? Have people
Feard about the arrest of Hoang Minh Chinh? Only some intellectuals have heard about Hoang Minh Chinh [see International Viewpoint number 270). The press has practically ignored his case. The man in the street knows nothing about it. But the minority who follow the affair are convinced that it is a set-up job: The Communist Party 82 S66L Menuer leadership is gunning for the opposition, in preparation for the June 1996 eighth Party Congress. As we can see, the introduction of the market does not at all imply the introduction of democracy. • Could there be an explosion of social discontent? The social situation has been deteriorating for several years. Over the last two years, Ho Chi Minh-City has seen a number of spontaneous strikes. These are provoked by working conditions which hark back to the colonial period Foreign (especially South Korean) firms squeeze their workers as much as they can, paying $20-25 a month, for a working day in excess of eight hours. (The official minimum monthly wage is $35 in joint venture companies, and $15-20 in state enterprises. Women workers in the new private companies are often beaten by their "superiors". And the official trade unions do nothing... The government recently decided to "make our towns more attractive" by "freeing" the alleys and pavements of itinerant and unregistered traders. Of course, something had to be done to improve security in some districts, but this was done in a brutal way, insensitively. And it provoked many of those who make their living from a pavement "shop," or any enterprise which spills out onto the pavement. The banning of rikshaws (bicycle-taxis) from a number of main roads had a similar effect.. Nhung Agustoni-Phan is right to be concerned about the possibility of a social explosion. But when? The Communist Party knows there is a risk. They are trying to diffuse the situation by ensuring a modest rise in the standard of living
• Does anyone still identify with anti-imperialism, with socialism? There are semi-socialist groups among Vietnamese emmigrants, particularly in Germany and the former Czecho-Slovakia. But in Vietnam itself, there are only isolated individuals. The anti-imperialism of the national liberation struggle is dead and buried. And the government constantly presents the USA as an economic partner which we cannot do without. Having said this, some young people are again interested in a more spiritual, non-violent and moral alternative, inspired by a mixture of Confucianism and Buddhism.
• But there is more interest in our recent Vietnamese editions of Trotsky s works- than our Russian or Polish editions True. There is a real Trotskyist tradition in Vietnam, particularly in the south. Nationalists there worked with the Trotskyists (so did the Communists, for a while). There is a certain respect. No-one in the south believed the lies that were heaped on our current. Our documents circulate quite well, especially among the intellectuals. * Notes 1.Nhung Agustoni-Phan, Viet-Nam, nouveau dragon ou vieux tigre de papier? (Olizane. Geneva, 1995 2. Including Cuoc cach mang bi phan boi (The Revolution Betrayed), published by Tu sach nghien cuu, 1993, distributed by La Breche, 9 rue de Tunis, 75011 Paris, France. Price 120 FF/US$20 per copy plus 20FF/$3.20 for orders of five copies or less. Larger orders and deliveries to Vietnam or Eastern Europe: write for details. 3. Write for our price list for publications in Czech, Polish and Russian
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