Vietnamese Peasants Try ‘Miniprivatization’ : Limited Economic Reforms Emphasize Efficiency Over Communist Ideology

The 60-year-old peasant proudly showed off his Spartan dwelling and told visiting journalists that he now tills his own small plot of land because of government economic and agricultural reforms.

Vu Van Vang can sleep later, rather than trudging in military-style formation to regimented work in the fields of the northern Vietnamese heartland, and said he has been able to buy three wooden beds.

“The more we work, the more we get,” he said. “To have a house like this was my lifelong dream.”

The house has no electricity and no window panes to blunt the winter wind, but it is his.

The reforms are modest when compared to those of such other communist countries as China and Hungary, but they are regarded as revolutionary in this rigid, austere Marxist-Leninist state.

More Stress on Efficiency

Capitalist-style incentives in agriculture, begun in 1981, have been followed by a similar loosening in industry, where management efficiency is being placed ahead of communist credentials. Much of the cumbersome subsidized food rationing system was eliminated last year.

This new “Vietnamese way to socialism” also is replacing the drab sameness of dress with more color and style, and there are more cosmetics for women. Fashion shows have been held in Hanoi, and an official said it was time the Vietnamese learned some Western-style dancing.

There is wide expectation that the sixth Communist Party congress will consolidate the reforms and possibly extend them. Some officials say they hope at least a few of the government’s aging revolutionaries will be replaced by younger technocrats.

The conference is to be held this year, but no date has been set.

“We must reform to exist in contemporary times,” said Hong Ha, editor-in-chief of the Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan.

An Eye on China

Vietnam’s economic performance was dismal in the first years after the communist North defeated South Vietnam in April, 1975, ending the Indochina war. It fell far behind its non-communist neighbors in Southeast Asia and recently has watched its enemy China surge forward into new economic ground under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping.

Hanoi officials describe the changes here as an amalgam of the Vietnamese way, economic experiments in Soviet Bloc nations and basic tenets of Leninism.

“We haven’t studied or researched the new reforms in China. We have our own experiences over many years. We use our own experience,” said La Xuan Dinh, a director in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Westerners who follow Indochina developments, however, say Vietnam has been strongly influenced by the changes in its huge northern neighbor. As in China, the reforms began in agriculture and have been most successful in that backbone of both economies.

Lai Cach, 35 miles east of Hanoi, and other farm cooperatives in northern Vietnam now operate under a “contract system.”

Growing Free Market

The cooperative signs contracts with government agencies to produce specified quantities of various crops. Any excess is distributed among members of the cooperative for their own consumption, or for sale to the government or in a growing free market.

About 5% of collective land is set aside for private use by individuals such as Vu Van Vang.

Work on common land is done on a point system, with industrious families getting higher rewards. Set work schedules have been abolished.

Dinh, the Agriculture Ministry official, said Vietnam produced 18.2 million tons of food last year, up from 11.59 million in 1976. The statistics cannot be verified, but there is general agreement that agriculture has made major progress, largely because of the “miniprivatization.”

Great economic problems persist, however, and with annual per capita income estimated at less than $200, Vietnam remains among the poorest of nations.

The government still seeks to control trade in rice, manioc, maize and sweet potatoes, and officials generally appear uncomfortable when operating on the edge of Marxist ideology.

“We have to protect against the tendency of peasants to do what they want entirely,” said a provincial official in Hai Hung province, where Lai Cach is located.

Lack of pesticides, fertilizer and storage facilities also hamper agriculture, and Dinh said production increases have been offset by a population increase from 50 million at the end of the war to about 60 million now.