Earth Times.org
Posted : Wed, 25 Mar 2009
Author : DPA
Bangkok/Hanoi - The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had deep repercussions, both positive and negative, in Indochina - Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam - the former Asian satellites of the Soviet bloc. The Indochina subregion opted for communism in 1975, following the defeat of the US military, but economic cracks in the system were already apparent in the early 1980s.
Pol Pot's disastrous ultra-Maoist communism was halted with Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1979.
Little Laos, which had few industries to nationalize, never stopped receiving Western aid, had already dropped efforts at price controls in 1981 and began talking about "new thinking" in the mid- 1980s.
Vietnam's shift to a market economy began in 1986 when the Sixth Party Congress introduced the reformist policies known as doi moi, or "new way." The shift was a response to the economic crisis hitting the country, but was also influenced by economic reforms in China and by Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika policies in the USSR.
While the collapse of the Berlin Wall hastened the region's economic reforms, it also sent alarm signals to its communist leaders on the political front.
"The strongest effect on Vietnam at the time was that it made people understand Socialism was not a permanently existing society," said Vietnamese historian and National Assembly member Dung Truong Quoc, who was in France the day the Wall fell. "It was a very big break for Vietnamese.
"In the economic realm, the collapse of Soviet-bloc Eastern Europe in 1989 helped cement doi moi.
"The most powerful effect was that it strengthened the progress of Vietnam's reforms," said Le Dang Doanh, 66, former head of Vietnam's Institute for Economic Management.
But on a political level, the fall of the Soviet bloc sparked fears that the economic and social reforms the country had launched might lead to the overthrow of the regime.
"Initially, in Vietnam, the fall of the Wall created an unhappy state of mind," said Nguyen Tran Bat, 62, an early advocate of economic reform who is now the CEO of the business consulting firm InvestConsult.
"It pushed the Communists into a corner, forcing them into a state of high alert towards all political actors, both inside Vietnam and abroad," he recalled.
In 1989, Vietnam had also retreated from its decade-long war in Cambodia, and began to pursue closer relations with the outside world in the hopes of lifting the US economic embargo that had cut it off from funding outside the Soviet bloc.
For neighbouring Cambodia, the end of Vietnam's occupation presented an opportunity for a traumatized and deeply divided nation to finally reconcile its horrific past and bring an end to years of civil war.
The Paris Peace Accords of 1991 set out a road map for Cambodia's democratization, secured international donor funding and dispatched a massive UN peacekeeping force designed to administer the country until free elections were held.
Two decades later, Cambodia's nascent democracy is still dominated by one party - albeit not a communist one - the Cambodian People's Party led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre.
"It is true that, without the UN presence, Cambodia would be ruled by a monolithic power, as in Laos and Vietnam. But the UN could not control the army, nor those who wanted more power," said Chea Vanath, a Cambodian social activist and political commentator.
Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both Vietnam and Laos remain under the rule of their respective communist parties.
Meanwhile, the economies of all three countries, spurred on by aid and foreign direct investments, have blossomed over the past 20 years, although they are all getting slammed by the global financial crisis in 2009.
In 2008, gross domestic product grew 7 per cent in Cambodia, 7 per cent in Laos and 6.2 in Vietnam, much of it led by exports to the West.
Back in 1988, the Soviet Union still accounted for half of Vietnam's total trade and sent the country 2 billion rubles a year in aid.
Although now forgotten, there were benefits from the Soviet bloc days.
For instance, a unified German government inherited the friendship Hanoi had enjoyed with the former German Democratic Republic, a country Vietnam had trusted enough to let it print its currency.
Laos, a country notoriously lacking in human resources, is still suffering from the cut-off in communist bloc scholarships that trained thousands of Lao in the Soviet Union, East Germany and Cuba.
"When the Soviet Union collapsed that scholarship system disappeared," said Peter Fodge, director of the Burapha Group in Vientiane, a successful exporter of plantation wood products. "It left a huge education gap that still hasn't been filled."
Posted : Wed, 25 Mar 2009
Author : DPA
Bangkok/Hanoi - The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had deep repercussions, both positive and negative, in Indochina - Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam - the former Asian satellites of the Soviet bloc. The Indochina subregion opted for communism in 1975, following the defeat of the US military, but economic cracks in the system were already apparent in the early 1980s.
Pol Pot's disastrous ultra-Maoist communism was halted with Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1979.
Little Laos, which had few industries to nationalize, never stopped receiving Western aid, had already dropped efforts at price controls in 1981 and began talking about "new thinking" in the mid- 1980s.
Vietnam's shift to a market economy began in 1986 when the Sixth Party Congress introduced the reformist policies known as doi moi, or "new way." The shift was a response to the economic crisis hitting the country, but was also influenced by economic reforms in China and by Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika policies in the USSR.
While the collapse of the Berlin Wall hastened the region's economic reforms, it also sent alarm signals to its communist leaders on the political front.
"The strongest effect on Vietnam at the time was that it made people understand Socialism was not a permanently existing society," said Vietnamese historian and National Assembly member Dung Truong Quoc, who was in France the day the Wall fell. "It was a very big break for Vietnamese.
"In the economic realm, the collapse of Soviet-bloc Eastern Europe in 1989 helped cement doi moi.
"The most powerful effect was that it strengthened the progress of Vietnam's reforms," said Le Dang Doanh, 66, former head of Vietnam's Institute for Economic Management.
But on a political level, the fall of the Soviet bloc sparked fears that the economic and social reforms the country had launched might lead to the overthrow of the regime.
"Initially, in Vietnam, the fall of the Wall created an unhappy state of mind," said Nguyen Tran Bat, 62, an early advocate of economic reform who is now the CEO of the business consulting firm InvestConsult.
"It pushed the Communists into a corner, forcing them into a state of high alert towards all political actors, both inside Vietnam and abroad," he recalled.
In 1989, Vietnam had also retreated from its decade-long war in Cambodia, and began to pursue closer relations with the outside world in the hopes of lifting the US economic embargo that had cut it off from funding outside the Soviet bloc.
For neighbouring Cambodia, the end of Vietnam's occupation presented an opportunity for a traumatized and deeply divided nation to finally reconcile its horrific past and bring an end to years of civil war.
The Paris Peace Accords of 1991 set out a road map for Cambodia's democratization, secured international donor funding and dispatched a massive UN peacekeeping force designed to administer the country until free elections were held.
Two decades later, Cambodia's nascent democracy is still dominated by one party - albeit not a communist one - the Cambodian People's Party led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre.
"It is true that, without the UN presence, Cambodia would be ruled by a monolithic power, as in Laos and Vietnam. But the UN could not control the army, nor those who wanted more power," said Chea Vanath, a Cambodian social activist and political commentator.
Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both Vietnam and Laos remain under the rule of their respective communist parties.
Meanwhile, the economies of all three countries, spurred on by aid and foreign direct investments, have blossomed over the past 20 years, although they are all getting slammed by the global financial crisis in 2009.
In 2008, gross domestic product grew 7 per cent in Cambodia, 7 per cent in Laos and 6.2 in Vietnam, much of it led by exports to the West.
Back in 1988, the Soviet Union still accounted for half of Vietnam's total trade and sent the country 2 billion rubles a year in aid.
Although now forgotten, there were benefits from the Soviet bloc days.
For instance, a unified German government inherited the friendship Hanoi had enjoyed with the former German Democratic Republic, a country Vietnam had trusted enough to let it print its currency.
Laos, a country notoriously lacking in human resources, is still suffering from the cut-off in communist bloc scholarships that trained thousands of Lao in the Soviet Union, East Germany and Cuba.
"When the Soviet Union collapsed that scholarship system disappeared," said Peter Fodge, director of the Burapha Group in Vientiane, a successful exporter of plantation wood products. "It left a huge education gap that still hasn't been filled."
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