Trade and Industry Reforms

The Shortcomings

 BY van Nguyen




Do Muoi's task not only focused on destroying "the capitalist bourgeoisie strongholds" but also establishing a centralized economic system, "stopping peculation and capitalist c, thus competition, propelling socialist production with goods and commodities surplus to satisfy the needs of the people. As regards agricultural products, State buying and selling stations would eventually operative and regulate trading to secure economic self-sufficiency. This collective economy proved to be fruitless from the start, nevertheless. No sooner had the campaigns for private trade and industry reforms completed, all sectors of the economy, including means of production, storage, exchange and distribution, loosened and became paralyzed due to voluntarism and strict observance of Marxist-Leninist dogmas on the part of the leaders and lack of experience and expertise in the management of public affairs on the part of the bureaucracy at all levels. Almost all private factories and business enterprises incorporated in State joint-ventures gradually went bankrupt. Industry machinery and equipment ruined in storehouses as a result of mismanagement. They were even divided as "booties" among the cadres in charge. Store departments were partitioned and allocated to State employees. Due to mismanagement the MSG VISO, for instance, was paralyzed then ceased to operate. Executive cadres from the North were completely ignorant of a chain line of production.  Technicians and engineers from the North working at the textile manufacturing factory Tat Thanh had not the least know-how to operate high-tech machines. Quite a few experts of the old regime, among them were the directors of the COGIDO Paper Factory, Ha Tien Cement Mill, Thu Duc Electric Plant, were unwillingly released from reeducation camps to help alleviate the '"Revolution" from difficulty.     

     The Economic Life of the Population

Several months after the “liberation of the South,” economic penury loomrd then and escalated., Scarcitiy of necessities shortage of foods became increasingly acute. Prices soared even the “revolutionary administration was in complete control of the national economy. It  declared that the confusion resulted from the crimes of comprador barons. Prior to June 1975, the price for 1 kg. of MSG was 5,000 dong; it was 30.000 dong only two months late that persisted in  causing troubles..  Salt was sold at 700 dong/kg in June; it was 3000 dong in August. A motorbike spark plug rose from 7000 d0ng to 17,000 a piece. Speculators  carried on business maliciouslly. Nguyen Van Linh Party –secretary of Ho Chi Minh City concurrently Chairman of the Council of Trade and Industry Reforms, after the meeting with the private trade and industry c circles in Saigon, declared that they all welcomed the policy of the State. They even condemned the crimes by the remnants of the comprador bourgeoisie for vile business practices to sabotage the achievements of the “Revolution.” During the X2 campaign, the administration arrested 92 comprador speculators, confiscated 918, 4 million piasters, 1,200 Frans, 134,578 U.S. dollars, 7691 taels of jewelry, 60,000 tons of manure, 80,000 tons of chemicals. 457 houses, 4 theaters, one runner plantation, and so on.   The then Party vice-secretary of Ho Chi Minh City had remarks that after the reforms State the trades systems had practically replaced private stores. Those private shops in the business center opposite of Cau Ong Lanh Market and Cau Muoi Market were to stop business giving place to State business enterprise. Frequent raids were launched to sweep of private business households.

Confusion in the market spread following the operations for private and industry reforms. The common population became penniless. They began to sell their remaining properties in exchange for foods. Open markets where all kinds of used merchandise could be found mushroomed almost everywhere in the onetime luxurious shopping centers, on Catinat Street, at Le Loi Boulevard, and along Dong Khanh Avenue. All kinds of used clothing’s, utensils, and furniture were displayed for sale in the streets of Saigon and almost all alleys in the suburban areas in  Khanh Hoi, Binh Dong, Tan Son Nhat, Tan Dinh, Ba Chieu, and so on. Peddlers sold at lowest prices used fountain pens, eye-glasses, watches, ventilators, books, packages of cigarettes, bikes, motorbikes, and other household articles, they roamed the side-walks, selling and buying in hiding for fear of police raids. Saigon was hurry in chaos.

Penury of necessities and shortages of goods aggravated the situation. Speculations of commodities and hoarding of merchandise resurged.  The official press shifted the blame on the remnants of comprador bourgeoisie. Open markets were the rendezvous of hooligans, thieves and gangsters met exchanged contrabands. Police raids were again activated to disband all gatherings of the same sort. The economy was really at the deadlock. Months of reforms passed by, shortcomings deepened, and efforts for rectification of errors accelerated, but negative results prevailed. Food shortages became increasingly serious. The peasantry in the Mekong Delta resisted to arbitrary measures of agrarian reforms. Silent opposition to the authorities speeded up in the rural areas. Dissent was pervasive in the cities, the intellectuals who had ever had sympathy with the “Revolution” since the Vietnam showed reluctance. In a meeting with the intellectuals of Saigon, Vo Van Kiet calmed down for a solution, asking them to stay in the country. He said emphatically promised that “if the situation still lags sluggishly within three years to come, if they still want to leave the country, he will willingly accompany them to the airport.”

Nguyen Van Tran, a veteran Communist from the South, expressed bitter remarks as regards the economic situation of the South at the time.  By the takeover of power in the South by force and in violation of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1973, Hanoi applied the so-called “socialist economic transformation,” coercing the people of the South into accepting an economic system that upset their ways of living. The Vietnamese in the South, deep in ‘their hearts, had been for a long time impregnated with patriotism and compassion for freedom and democracy couldn’t help from reacting negatively against “socialist transformation” was something bizarre to them. A communist might think the Communist seizure of power in the South was a means to an end to the unification of the country. That was only the flip side to the coin. The population in the South, in reality, largely felt indignant of the political discrimination incorporated in the policies the new regime coercively imposed on them. 

The Vietnamese Workers’ Party Secretary-general Truong Chinh, who earnestly insulted the French colonialists for having divided Vietnam and disabled her economy, quickly affected a political unification regardless of the absence of a popular mandate, and thus, breaching the ultimate goal of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1973 by which the Communist government pledged to abide. It was, in practice, a premature plan of unification that would only result in chaos. Updated law-orders and arêtes promulgated in 1955 in the North were re-applied in haste in the South. Besides, the transformation of the economy the South following the model previously applied in the North was intensively corrupted by inconsistent policies and poor methods of management by hard-headed executioners.  It was real damage to the economy of the South, creating mess in national economy. To the detriment of the Party leadership’s prestige, the agrarian policy and measures of control of the economy in the South by Hanoi, in particular, only made the development of agriculture in the South more difficult. The most serious mistake was that the concept of parity of economic development conceived by Hanoi was both unrealistic and voluntarism. In the building of national economy, in the narrow-minded leadership of the Communist Party, the economy in the South should not outgrow and surpass the economy of the North. Accordingly, ’all medical equipment’s at Cho Ray Hospital of Saigon, for example, should be disassembled and brought to Hanoi (Nguyen Van Tran, Viet cho Me va Quoc Hoi,1995) .   

    Corrupt Practices

Reports to the Central Party Committee said that the local authorities had confiscated 400 kgs of metal or of gold color. Metal of gold color, as the words imply, may be real gold or metal plated with gold, which file and rank cadres substituted for real gold. The people of the South knew the wealth of the South.as easily as counting it from their pockets inside out. The Chinese merchants who accumulated their wealth during the war were a case in point. The Vietnamese were mostly concerned about politics. The Chinese, in contrast, were only concerned about conducting business, making profits, speculating stocks, and hoarding merchandise to bring in lucrative interests. Many of them became powerful tycoons, amassed wealth cunningly and without risk. To everyone’s surprise, only two or three unlucky wealthiest Chinese merchants got entrapped during goods-in store inspection.  The State could confiscate only some hundred kilograms of gold. The immensely hidden wealth of Chinese capitalist compradors was right there, in their ware houses and homes, within the walls and underneath in the basement.  It was well beyond reality when throughout the South, from the Binh Dinh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien provinces in the North to the My Tho, Long Xuyen and An Xuyen provinces in the South, the cadres could only find some four hundred kilograms of gold.  It was a real fable!  Scenes of cupid Chinese merchants committed in various forms of suicide due to State private property expropriation during this time occurred daily and everywhere. Evidences of thefts of public wealth were numerous and varied according to situations, between and among the cadres and authorities in charge.

 

The division of the “booties of war” continued to take place to a large extent. It unfolded in broad daylight at the golf course near the Tan Son Nhat Airport which was originally under the administration of the People’s Army Headquarters where the Commando Command was first stationed, and, later, was transferred to the construction company of the Tan Binh District People's Council. The theft was phenomenal.  The Command, out of demand, called for capital to build a shopping mall there. The department stores in the mall had to be sold to the public in exchange for gold for the new construction of buildings,  For the sake of convenience, these  “people's properties” were then sold back to “the people,” and the gold collected from the people was punctually divided among “the servants of the people!” Such illegal division and transfer of national properties took place in different forms, within the walls of the barracks in the Go Vap District Office and the Ministry of Public Works office buildings on Le Loi Street, First District, and Saigon. Distant or near relatives of rank and file cadres also had their shares. Well, in a way, it is simply fair play! If you just wait, you will never have a share! It is wiser to divide, now and right here. I divide, you divide, and he divides. We all share, and everyone is happy! (Van Duc, VHRW, 17 (1993)).