Michel Chossudovsky on Vietnam (was Re: 5th columnist)

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at oregon.uoregon.edu
Thu Apr 6 02:44:59 PDT 2000


On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Yoshie Furuhashi crossposted:


> Michel Chossudovsky (another of Ken Hanly's favorite Canadians) writes in
> _The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms_
> (London: Zed Books, 1997):
> The Vietnamese CP's embrace of neoliberalism & the world market has been a
> disaster. Countries like Vietnam can never hope to prosper economically
> under capitalism.

Vietnam has been growing at 8-9% a year for almost a decade now, and a sizeable developmental state still controls capital markets and key industries; the surplus-rents from Vietnam's oil company, for example, flow into state coffers, not a Russian-style Mafia (oil revenues make up something like a fifth of the Government budget, I think). Industrial growth seems to be growing 10-12% a year, despite a slowdown caused by the SE Asian mini-crash of 1997-98. Japanese and EU aid seems to have helped some, too (the EU has allowed more agricultural imports, e.g.). Instead of counting neocolonial chickens, the global Left ought to be helping embryonic dragons to hatch.

-- Dennis



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