Mainland Southeast Asia: Turmoil and Peace - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 436

AFTERMATH OF W AR
Since the 1950s, the northerners had lived under an aus-
tere form of socialism that reemphasized the traditional
regard for social hierarchy and community obligation.
The southerners had been introduced to a quasi-capitalistic
consumer economy and the trappings of American pop-
ular culture. In 1975, the north moved swiftly to subor-
dinate the south to direct rule from Hanoi. In 1976, the
country was renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam;
Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City . Socialization of the
southern economy proceeded quickly over the next two
years.
However, things did not go as well as planned. There
was an acute economic crisis, worsened by floods and
other natural disasters in 1977 and 1978. Ambitious in-
dustrial targets were not achieved, rice production di-
minished, and food had to be rationed. In 1978, Vietnam
attacked Cambodia to oust the genocidal, anti-Vietnamese
regime of Pol Pot. In the 1980s, thousands of Chinese
and Sino-Vietnamese fled as boat people. These refugees
went to Australia, Canada, the United States, France, and
many other countries.

While President Diem spent his aid money on mili-
tary acquisitions, the north pressed ahead with socialism
and agricultural collectivization. Even though the “rich”
suffered, popular support for Ho Chi Minh' s government
remained high. By 1959, the National Liberation Front
(NLF) or the Viet Cong had organized to oppose Diem' s
oppressive and ineffective rule. By the early 1960s, the
Viet Cong were in control of vast areas of the southern
countryside, which compelled the Americans to increase
their aid to Diem. By 1963, there were 17,500 American
military advisors in Vietnam.
By now Diem and his followers had antagonized all
groups in South Vietnam. Buddhist monks were burning
themselves alive to protest his regime. Ultimately Diem
was assassinated. Several years of unstable government
followed, but meanwhile the Americans decided to con-
front the NLF . The United States then began to bomb tar-
gets in both the north and the south and, in 1965, landed
troops in the south. Thus began the Vietnam or Ameri-
can War (Chapter 14), which did not end until 1975,
with a combined DRV/NLF victory .
The environmental damage of the war on Vietnam
was appalling. From 1965 to 1971, Indochina, an area
slightly larger than T Texas, received twice as many
bombs as were dropped in all the combat theaters of
World War II combined. In a typical B-52 mission,
seven planes delivered 756,500 pounds of bombs in a
pattern that saturated nearly 1,000 acres. The B-52s
alone created about 100,000 new craters a month. The
area had as many as 26 million bomb craters. These
craters filled with weedy grasses and became breeding
grounds for mosquitoes. About 10 percent of the agri-
cultural land of southern Vietnam had to be aban-
doned. In addition, thousands of tons of chemical
defoliants were dropped. V ast tracts of forests, rubber
plantations, and mangroves were obliterated or seri-
ously damaged. In these areas, there was a significantly
higher rate of pregnancies that resulted in stillbirths
and congenitally abnormal babies. The effects of the
wartime bombing are still felt today .
Thousands fled the country to refugee camps in
adjacent countries, especially Thailand. The first mi-
grants used a map torn out of a school atlas to navigate
the Gulf of Thailand. More than a million refugees
have been resettled since 1975. Of those who remained
in refugee camps in Southeast Asia, most were
“screened out” as economic rather than political
refugees. For them, there was no hope of resettlement.
These people were repatriated to Vietnam voluntarily
or involuntarily .

Doi Moi

A hard-line communist approach was held in Viet-
nam until 1985 when reforms in the Soviet Union
gave impetus to reforms in Vietnam. In 1986, the
Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) instituted the
policy of doi moi , meaning “renovation.” Measures
were introduced to encourage private-sector
production, make prices more flexible, and give
more discretion to managers on the use of their
profits. This was followed by the introduction of a
peasant agricultural contract system in 1981. The
system allowed farmers to keep anything over their
set quotas. State enterprises were permitted to sell
production exceeding their quotas on the open
market.
Reforms were given further impetus with the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the European East-
ern Bloc' s abandonment of socialism. (This resulted
in a 30 percent cut in Vietnam' s budget.) Support
for reform was also bolstered by China' s new policy
of market socialism. T Today, , Vietnam is a hybrid of a
one-party government, faltering state enterprises,
and burgeoning free enterprise. Vietnam joined the