Vietnam Rising: Culture and Change in Asia's Tiger Cub - Softcover

Ratliff, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1598130269 ISBN 13: 9781598130263

Verlag: Independent Institute, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

From Vietnam’s acceptance into the World Trade Organization to its post-Vietnam War reform and socialist ideals, this overview concisely examines the cultural, political, and economic changes currently at work in Vietnam within a historical context and then discusses the effects such changes have had on businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Vietnam is credited with having one of the “most successful antipoverty campaigns ever undertaken anywhere, raising up about two-thirds of those who lived in poverty two decades ago, by combating both the anti-productive aspects of tradition and the needless poverty still imposed to some degree by the dead economic hand of Ho Chi Minh and his followers.” A country that experienced chronic, centrally imposed food shortages for decades has radically changed course, greatly reduced the percentage of the population living in poverty, from over 70 percent in the mid-1980s to 14.7 percent in 2007. Except for China, Vietnam has had the fastest growing economy in all of Southeast Asia.

In Vietnam Rising, William Ratliff, one of the leading experts on the economics of Southeast Asian countries, examines the remarkable, pro-market, pro-entrepreneurial changes underway in Vietnam. Ratliff then reviews the cultural and historical experiences that provide the foundation for current pro-enterprise reforms, discusses the changes that followed “reunification” at the end of the Vietnam War, and the reforms that began twenty years ago. In the process, Vietnam Rising illuminates the hows and whys of entrepreneurial opportunities and the changes necessary to address the remaining traditional and institutional challenges for creating a truly open, market-based, entrepreneurial climate

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William Ratliff (1937–2014) was a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and a Research Fellow and Curator of the Americas Collection at the Hoover Institution. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American/Chinese history from the University of Washington.

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Vietnam Rising

Culture and Change in Asia's Tiger Cub

By William Ratliff

The Independent Institute

Copyright © 2008 The Independent Institute
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59813-026-3

Contents

Preface, 
Introduction, 
Survey of Conditions in Vietnam to Mid-2008, 
PART I Background, 
1 The Confucian Soul of Vietnam, 
2 Modern History: France, War, and Communism, 
3 Doi Moi Renovation and Reform, 
4 Socialism: Nirvana or Not?, 
PART II Overview of Reforms Today, 
5 The Legal Jungle, 
6 The Educational Tangle, 
7 Monetary Policy and Banking Reform, 
8 Resurrecting the SOE Dinosaurs, 
PART III Entrepreneurship in Its Several Forms, 
9 Introducing Entrepreneurship, 
10 Enterprises in Vietnam: Legislation and Statistics, 
11 Private Enterprise in the Broader Business Picture, 
12 Businesses in Vietnam, 
PART IV Special Challenges for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, 
13 Access to the "People's Land", 
14 Funding and Credit, If You Can Get It, 
15 Walking Through a Business Registration, 
16 Vietnamese Surprises, 
PART V Confronting the World, 
17 Vietnam–U.S. Relations, 
18 Joining the World Trade Organization, 
PART VI Conclusions and Observations, 
Appendix: A Note on International Involvement in Vietnam's Reforms, 
Notes, 
References, 
Index, 
About the Author, 
About The Independent Institute, 
Independent Studies in Political Economy, 

CHAPTER 1

The Confucian Soul of Vietnam

OVER THE PAST CENTURY, a few researchers have probed the role of Confucian tradition in the formation of Vietnamese culture and life. On the one hand, the ancestors of the majority Vietnamese people (the Kinh, who make up about 86 percent of the population) may have migrated to the country from Southern China millennia ago, though only 3 to 5 percent of the 85 million Vietnamese today are identified as ethnic Chinese. Beyond this ancestry, influences on Vietnam came from China's direct political and cultural control of Vietnam beginning in the second century BC, only a century after China's own unification, and continuing until Vietnam's formal independence in 939 AD. The main philosophical and religious influences involved were Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, all of which were important in the formation of various aspects of the Vietnamese character. My focus here will be on the Confucian element because it generally had the greatest impact on the economic and social milieu and on general living conditions.

One of the very insightful writers in English to bring the critical encounter of the past, present, and future into the heart of his analyses of current Vietnamese developments is Pham Duy Nghia, the head of the Business Law Department of Vietnam National University in Hanoi. In a recent book chapter, he noted correctly that "[t]he enemy keeping Vietnam impoverished lies deep in the Vietnamese soul." Even after Vietnam's independence a millennium ago, critical Chinese influence, adapted to Vietnam's own characteristics, continued and in many respects even increased, such that, as Nghia writes, "The traditional state of Vietnam, the recruitment of mandarins, and the organization of society as a whole, were based on Confucian values and examinations" right up to the expulsion of the French in 1954. The Vietnamese legal expert continues, "To appreciate the current situation in Vietnam, one needs to look back to the past to understand the way in which the Vietnamese govern their society based on their beliefs and culture." This culture and the institutions that represent it in the day-to-day world both impede and promote the growth of and prospects for entrepreneurship that I focus on here.

It should be noted that even the dominant form of Buddhism in Vietnam came in large part by way of China. It was the Mahayana version rather than the more ascetic Theravada that reached Laos and Cambodia and made them more withdrawn in social and business practice than the Vietnamese. The Confucianism that was planted in Vietnam during Chinese control included some despotic statecraft of Qin Dynasty legalism, which became central to Vietnamese as it was to Chinese history and governance. American Sinologist John K. Fairbank calls this mixture "imperial Confucianism," because it combines the Confucian philosophical system with an enforcement arm perfected by China's great unifier, Qin Shi Huang. Or, as Nghia puts it, "Confucian values were newly underpinned by penal sanctions" and thereby "transformed into enforceable norms." Thus, Vietnamese Confucianism was used to govern and control, only recently adapting in such a way as to help bring Vietnam, like China, into the modern, increasingly globalized world.

Historically, Confucianism developed interrelated traditions and institutions that had and still have an impact on life, reform, and entrepreneurship. These include:

Elite rule. Government is from the top down, a practice justified by philosophies developed through history that set hierarchies, relationships, and values with respect to individuals, families, society, and the country's leadership. Nationally, power was exercised by the emperor or dynastic head through a bureaucracy trained in Confucian moral values. The emperor's absolute power, exercised through his bureaucracy, was theoretically based on his having the Mandate of Heaven, which in practice he gained by inheriting or effectively seizing political power. Hierarchical relationships also prevailed within families, with the father filling the role of the emperor of his family, both in leadership and in maintaining links to the ancestors through proper rituals.

Morality. In Confucianism, moral values overwhelmingly trumped economic interests and goals, at least philosophically. Government leaders, from the emperor through the bureaucracy, were supposed to promote the people's interests and preserve harmony in society by providing leadership informed by moral training in the Confucian mold. The moral relationship was central also in the family. The bureaucracy, with its moral foundation, was selected through an examination system (and sometimes by other means) to bring moral leadership and harmony to society. Of course, some emperors and bureaucrats were guided to a certain degree by the perspectives of others, especially as dynasties began to wear down over the decades or centuries, and were motivated more by power, wealth, and profound moral and other forms of corruption.

Education. Education was highly regarded because it enabled one to perfect one's character for the betterment of one's self and society and, in practical terms, because it was the main route to the power, influence, and wealth that came from membership in the bureaucratic ruling elite. Confucian education focused on studies of ancient texts relating real and mythical historical experiences that were memorized and then interpreted and adapted to current governance. The educational process was long and difficult, involving many years of study and the passing of one or more examinations, depending upon the bureaucratic rank one sought. Although people at all levels of society realized the importance and consequences of education, most historically could not afford the money or time to attend schools or study privately and thus had little chance of becoming part of the elite. Such a path was, however, usually open to them and in some cases was used to rise from obscurity and poverty to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Independent Institute
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1598130269
• ISBN 13: 9781598130263
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 144
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar