Following the end of the Vietnam War, the nation's economy
basically collapsed. Food and even bicycles were rationed. A
government program to collectivize farms and factories limped along
for the next 10 years but suffered from a variety of problems that
ranged from corruption to economic restrictions and embargoes.
Onetime Vietnam-based journalist David Lamb has called the period
of 1975 to 1985 the dark years, a time of widespread famine, when
Vietnam was basically shut off from the rest of the world.
Things began to brighten economically in the mid-1980s as the
Communist blocs throughout
Europe began to crumble.
"There is no doubt that Vietnam's current economic growth is
attributed to changes made at the 1986 Sixth Party
Congress of the
Communist Party," says Brigham. "At that meeting, party officials
agreed to liberalize Vietnam's economy through a series of reforms
known as doi moi, or renovation. They established liberal rules for
trade and investment, [which opened] Vietnam up to the outside
world."
In a reversal of policy, Vietnam's Communist government encouraged
private ownership within industries, agriculture, and commerce.
President Clinton lifted the
United States embargo in 1994, and the
following year, two decades after the fall of
Saigon, a new era of
normalized relations began between the two nations.
In 1995, Vietnam took another step forward by joining the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a group that
promotes economic growth, cultural progress, and peace and
stability in the region.
"The fact that Vietnam is part of the ASEAN network is very
important," says W.J. Morgan, a University of Nottingham professor
and the UNESCO chair of the Political Economy of Education. Morgan
also attributes the economic boom to the changing demographic of
the Vietnamese people.