Martin Gainsborough (2002) The 'new landlord class'

'[I]s it right to see Vietnam as a country devoid of a large landowning class? Despite continued formal restrictions on the maximum permitted landholdings in the countryside, the reform years have been accompanied by the growing incidence of landlessness with its obvious corollary, namely, the re-emergence of large landowners. There is also a confluence of interest between the government's state desire for foreign investment in agro-processing and the need for large landholdings. Foreign investment in agro-processing has been limited to date, but there is some evidence that foreign agro-processors have been able to secure large tracts of land when desired.

One might also argue that while the large landowners of the ancien regime have been toppled, in their place there has emerged a new landlord class, namely Communist Party cadres and government officials. After all, it is very often they, or their family members, who dominate the rural economy. If this analysis is correct, the prospects for a widening of the political space look less good.'

Martin Gainsborough (2002) Political change in Vietnam: In search of the middle-class challenge to the state Link

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