Chad Raymond, Mark Selden, and Kate Zhou (2000) Rural Resistance and Reform in China and Vietnam

This article examines the social bases of agrarian transformation during and
after the communist-led collectivization of agriculture in China and Vietnam.
The social science literature generally portrays rural people as passive, depoliticized
and dependent. Nowhere is this more true than in studies of socialist
societies that have been heavily influenced by totalitarian and authoritarian
theories. The literature focuses on the initiative and power of supreme leaders,
as well as party and state mobilization, to explain social and institutional
change. This perspective, while not uncontested, holds generally for the subject
reviewed here.’

Our central thesis, in contrast, is that the cumulative weight of rural resistance
eventually made it too costly, both economically and politically, for the
respective states of China and Vietnam to continue collectivized agriculture.
While recognizing significant differences in the structure and performance of
collectivized agriculture in Vietnam and China, this study underlines strikingly
similar tactics used by farmers to circumvent, resist and eventually, under politically
fortuitous conditions, contribute to the elimination of the core institutions
of collective agriculture and expand the scope of the market and household economies.
We consider, in short, the interplay of resistance from below and the
roles of party and state in generating fundamental social change.

If everyday resistance succeeds in dividing ruling groups, it has the
capacity to contribute to and shape far-reaching social change. Yet if Vietnamese
and Chinese villagers have manifested surprising strength in generating
system change, this should not blind us to the fact that they have yet to institutionalize
their power in a manner that will guarantee their future participation in
decisive political processes.

Chad Raymond, Mark Selden, and Kate Zhou (2000) The Power of the Strong: Rural Resistance and Reform in China and Vietnam. China Information 14 (2): 1-30

Xiang Zhou and Yu Xie (2015) Intergenerational social mobility in China

In China as well as other post-socialist countries, the emergence of markets provided abundant opportunities for the old elites to convert their political power into physical capital, thus making socioeconomic status far more inheritable than before. Meanwhile, a more market-driven reward system spurred a sharp increase in income inequality, thereby equipping upper-class families with more resources and incentives to pass their economic advantages on to their offspring. The abolition of egalitarian educational policies, moreover, severely limited the channel of upward mobility for children of socioeconomically disadvantaged families. A combination of these processes may well explain the consolidation of status hierarchy and its influence on social fluidity.

Absolute rates of mobility, especially of upward mobility, have grown substantially from the cohort born in the 1950s to that born in the 1970s. This growth, however, has been entirely driven by the force of industrialization—that is, the placement of an increasingly larger share of children of farming origin into nonfarming occupations. When the farm sector is excluded, both the rise in upward mobility and the decline in class immobility disappear... Given that industrialization and rural-urban migration have sped up in China during the same period, this finding accords with our hypothesis that... the boundary between agriculture and other sectors tends to be more permeable in rapidly industrializing countries than in advanced industrial societies.

Xiang Zhou and Yu Xie (2015) Market Transition, Industrialization, andSocial Mobility Trends in Post-Revolution China

James G. McGann (2012) Think tanks in China

[T]he changing landscape of China’s economy redefined the context in which think tanks function in China. This shift manifested itself in the National Co-operative Law. Implemented in 2007, the National Co-operative Law represented a mild liberalization for rural civil society. New co-operatives developed in evolutionary and peaceful ways, had great respect for private property, and were self-motivated and voluntary in nature (bottom-up process). This process contributed to the expansion of democratic concepts by giving citizens effective means to shape their future lives and their world. In this sense, the new co-operative movement helped to build and change civil society in China, making civil society institutions more of a critical dialogue partner with the state. As China’s market became increasingly free, think tanks too seized the opportunity to find private financial sources. They began to use media and overseas sources as outlets for civil society. Their scholars, looking to profit from their access to the media, began representing their own views in the media rather than those of the institution. Lastly, the newly acquired money and independence from government leaders allowed them to become financially autonomous and intellectually free. Today, Chinese think tanks fill a gap caused by the Cultural Revolution and other isolationist policies of the past.

The policy arena in China is becoming progressively open and there are an increasing number of actors involved in public policy decisions. This change has not only affected the domestic activities of Chinese think tanks, but has also had a profound impact on the influence of Chinese think tanks on the world stage. A Brookings fellow noted in a recent speech that more 13 and more representatives from Chinese think tanks are coming to the United States every week to meet with U.S. institutions to exchange policy ideas. 

The majority of Chinese think tanks are sponsored or directly affiliated with government agencies, such as the Development Research Center of the State Council and the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations... The Chinese government sees the need to increasingly heed public opinion in its decision-making and uses input from think tanks as a way of maintaining legitimacy through a more collective leadership strategy... The political stance of the leadership in China naturally affects the dialogue and freedom of Chinese think tanks, especially with regard to domestic social issues... despite the opportunity to pursue more liberalized research, the major focus of research institutions in China today is economics and international security concerns, two transnational factors that are extremely important to China’s future and political leadership.

James G. McGann (2012) Chinese Think Tanks, Policy Advice and Global Governance 

Ivan Szelenyi (2015) The Vietnamese transition

Vietnam, much like China some seven years earlier, dismantled the agricultural cooperatives and gave agrarian production back to the peasants (this is something Russia never did and the Central European countries did not do either). So in one stroke Vietnam eliminated food shortages and as far as we can tell dramatically reduced poverty during transition (while as we saw poverty skyrocketed in the former USSR and its European satellites). Vietnam also followed China by NOT combining perestroika with glasnost, hence retaining the political monopoly of the Communist Party, what arguably was the precondition – but for a price what many would judge to be unaffordable – of a gradualist transformation (this again is something what distinguished Vietnam and China from the European post-communist regimes – see this point in Yamaoka 2007. 9.) Nevertheless, Vietnam’s reforms were not only later than the Chinese, they also had more of a shock element. While Vietnam did not rush to mass privatization, it moved more aggressively to market liberalization, shut down early state enterprises, opened faster rooms for the private sector and opened up its borders to FDI (Bunck 1996. 236.). Hence I may argue Vietnamese “capitalism from below” came with a “neo-liberal” flavour. Nevertheless, Vietnam never experienced the transitional recession/depression mainly because in the first stages of reform the rapidly expanding household sector absorbed most of the costs (and labour freed from SOEs – see McCarty 2000.) So far Vietnam is a “success story” – much like China is. They managed the transition without the frightening costs other post-communist transformation trajectories could not avoid. 

But both for China and Vietnam the BIG question is – much like for the neo-patrimonial/ rentier states, but for a different reason – sustainability. There are two major reasons why the East Asian transformation from below is vulnerable: (i) will they be able to retain their export led industrialization once the price of their labour will catch up with the rest of the world? (ii) can the political monopoly of the communist party maintained under market capitalist conditions and if it cannot is a “gradualist” transformation of the political system conceivable? If it is not and political systems either stay or fall, what would be the social and economic consequences of such a political disintegration? 

Szelenyi, I., 2015. Pathways from and Crises after Communism. Part 2.The Case of Former USSR and China. BelvedereMeridionale, 27 (1), 5-26.

Phillip Taylor (2007) State attitude towards rural people and ethnic minorities

'... in the government's suite of programs for rural development, the state is responsive to other interests as well: donors such as the Australian and US governments and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, which offer aid conditional on the adoption of market-based policies. There are strong indications that these interests—and those of an increasingly assertive urban middle class—have captured the voice of government, whose approach to rural development today embodies a mix of deference toward universally applicable laws of development and a paternalistic attitude toward rural people. This attitude is especially evident in depictions of rural people in official development reports as poor, backward, remote, unconnected, unaware, and dependent on the state for their uplift. It is most blatantly revealed in official attitudes toward ethnic minorities, including Khmer people..., whose “backward” customs, religious orientations, and cultural insularity are deemed to impede the operation of markets and of state programs, the beneficial effects of which are taken for granted.'

Phillip Taylor (2007) Poor policies, wealthy peasants: alternative trajectories for rural development in Vietnam

Tran Thi Que (2014) Gender inequality and wealth inequality in access to funds

'In order to satisfy the demand for funds, the government furnishes credits to households through the Vietnamese Bank of Agriculture (VBA)... [M]ore than 90 per cent of loans are given to men, and households of the upper middle-strata are the dominant borrowers.

Apart from the Vietnamese Bank of Agriculture, there are share banks and credit cooperatives. Their loan facilities, however, are small and the interest charged is much higher than that of the VBA. Again, poor households and women have difficulties in borrowing from these financial organizations.

In some cases, credits from international organizations are quite attractive to Vietnamese because these organizations follow simple and flexible rules... These credits certainly favour women, but they reach neither poor households nor households in the mountains and remote areas.

Since most poor households have no access to official credits, they are forced to borrow from the informal credit system at very high interest rates... Most borrowers in this category are women, although many men also have to borrow on these terms in order to cover expenses for gambling or drinking.'

Tran Thi Que (2014) Gender Issues in Vietnam's Development, in Carolyn Gates, Irene Noerlund, Vu Cao Dam (Eds.) Vietnam in a Changing World Link

World Bank (2012) Welfare for people in extreme poverty

'Existing poverty and social protection programs provide only partial coverage and limited benefits to poor and at-risk individuals. In 2010, only half of the extreme poor were eligible for benefits under the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA).'

World Bank (2012) Well begun, not yet done: Vietnam's remarkable progress on poverty reduction and the emerging challenges Link

Edwin Shanks, Cecilia Luttrell, Tim Conway, Vu Manh Loi and Judith Ladinsky (2004) Poor people's participation in mass organisations

'[T]he mass organisations are often depicted as the means by which the Party and state have been able to extend supervision and control into different social spheres, to promote its power at the grassroots, and to preempt any challenges from the non-state groups (Koh 2001b: 280). Such organisations, it is argued, exist as “instruments of top down control, despite playing lip service to be representative of group interests” (Tran Thi Thu Trang 2002:12). Even if the mass organisations do serve a bottom-up, representative role, they may not necessarily represent the interests of the poor. Many of the very poor do not join mass organisations, the structures of which are weakest in the poorest areas of the country (Fritzen 2002). In this light, reliance on the mass organisations as channels of information sharing, consultation and representation of the poor is problematic (World Bank 2000).'

Edwin Shanks, Cecilia Luttrell, Tim Conway, Vu Manh Loi and Judith Ladinsky (2004) Understanding pro-poor political change: the policy process - Vietnam Link

Jonathan London (2013) Welfare and inequalities

'Nor should the progressiveness of Vietnamese or Chinese market-Leninism be over-stated. States in both countries combine Leninist tactics of political organisation with market-based strategies of accumulation and social policies that exhibit both redistributive and neo-liberal elements. Unequal forms of citizenship imposed under state-socialism are reproduced and transformed in a manner that preserves the political supremacy of the Communist Party, while creating new market-based opportunities and inequalities. Terms such as “market socialism” or “capitalism with Chinese/Vietnamese characteristics” are inadequate as descriptors of the welfare regimes in these countries. By contrast, the term “market-Leninism” rejects the widely held but false notion that planned or market economies have any inherent political character. The market-Leninist welfare regimes in Vietnam and China demonstrate that as a class-based determinant of distributive out-comes, Leninist political organisation is ultimately much more important than socialism per se, at least for now.'

Jonathan London (2013) Welfare regimes in China and Vietnam Link

David Hausman (2009) Persistence of patronage through civil service reform

'True pay reform would threaten the interests of those who distributed and earned large allowances, project funding, or bribes; the government had not attempted it. The salary increases of the past decade had, like Vietnam’s other reforms, attempted to satisfy domestic and international pressure for reform without placing patronage networks at risk... [M]ost of the measures offered ample opportunities to continue old practices from within the framework of new policies.'

David Hausman (2009) Policy Leaps and Implementation Obstacles: Civil Service Reform in Vietnam, 1998-2009 Link

Ramona Vijeyarasa (2010) Law-enforced stigma of victims of trafficking

'Trafficked returnees are directly implicated by the State's approach to sex work as a 'social evil'... The language of social evils has negatively influenced attitudes toward sex workers and victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation alike... My argument is that the State and the family, two central facets of the communist community, and the values promoted by these institutions, inhibit access to social services and undermine the ability of trafficked returnees to 'reintegrate' into the Vietnamese society. This thereby defeats the very goal of supporting returnees that the government is attempting to advance.'

Ramona Vijeyarasa (2010) The State, the family and language of 'social evils': re-stigmatising victims of trafficking in Vietnam Link

Tran Hai Hac (2008) Critique of World Bank's pro-poor growth

'Tất nhiên, xoá đói giảm nghèo, trợ giúp người cực nghèo là một hoạt động có ích, cần thiết, cấp bách, cho dù qui mô của nó khiêm tốn. Song không thể không nhận xét rằng hoạt động này được mọi xã hội sử dụng như bình phong để che đậy và không bàn đến vấn đề bất bình đẳng và bất công trong xã hội. Hay nói cách khác, tăng trưởng 'vì người nghèo' giống như việc làm từ thiện của người giàu: nó có chức năng xã hội là duy trì và tái sản xuất những quan hệ xã hội bất công, phi bình đẳng. Về mặt này, Việt Nam, chí ít cho đến nay, không phải là một ngoại lệ.'

Trần Hải Hạc (2008) Tăng trưởng 'vì người nghèo': World Bank và 'câu chuyện thành công' của Việt Nam Link

Adam Fforde (2011) Critique of poverty measurement

'The Vietnamese experience suggests that the core problems of poverty of the current decade are precisely to do with power asymmetries and exclusion that are linked to structures that lead to groups ‘lower down the food chain’ having lives that are measured as having, relatively speaking, low incomes but high levels of health and education. This creates a stable ‘syndrome’, within which the usual mechanisms of stigmatisation (such as of  ‘backward’ ethnic groups) may come into play.'

Adam Fforde (2011) Vietnam: a discussion of poverty, its measurement and likely causes, with special reference to agriculture Link