Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [351]
History |
The twenty–first century
National elections in July 1997 brought a long-awaited change of government, ushering in a band of younger, more worldly-wise ministers under Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, who was re-elected in 2002. In 2006 his chosen successor Nguyen Tan Dung took over, continuing Khai’s economic reforms – no simple task given the inherent constraints of a “state capitalism” system – and the battle against corruption, resulting in a number of high-profile anti-corruption trials. Meanwhile, the progress of international reconciliation and trade liberalization included the ratification in 2001 of a bilateral trade agreement between Vietnam and America, and membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late 2006.
Progress on human rights, meanwhile, has been erratic to say the least. Indeed, one of the government’s biggest challenges is how to reconcile the inherent contradictions between economic liberalization and central political control, while also satisfying the growing aspirations of Vietnamese people. Combine this with the need to speed up the restructuring and privatization – or “equitization” as the Vietnamese prefer to call it – of debt-ridden state enterprises without letting unemployment and economic and social inequality spiral out of control, and it’s perhaps not surprising that reform has been painfully slow: a healthy increase in GDP per head disguises the fact that Vietnam remains near the bottom of global league tables for economic and press freedom. Despite this, things are moving slowly in the right direction: according to World Bank figures, the number of households living in poverty has dropped from seventy percent in the 1980s to under thirty percent today. Likewise, child mortality has fallen and the average life expectancy is now around 71 years, compared to 65 in 1990.
Religion and beliefs
The moral and religious life of most Vietnamese people is governed by a complex mixture of Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist philosophical teachings interwoven with ancestor worship and ancient, animistic practices. Incompatibilities are reconciled on a practical level into a single, functioning belief system whereby a family may maintain an ancestral altar in their home, consult the village guardian spirit, propitiate the God of the Hearth and take offerings to the Buddhist pagoda.
The primary influence on Vietnam’s religious life has been Chinese. But in southern Vietnam, which historically fell within the Indian sphere, small communities of Khmer and Cham still adhere to Hinduism, Islam and Theravada Buddhism brought direct from India. From the fifteenth century on, Christianity has also been a feature, represented largely by Roman Catholicism but with a small Protestant following in the south. Vietnam also claims a couple of home-grown religious sects, both products of political and social turmoil in the early twentieth century: Cao Dai and Hoa Hao.
The political dimension has never been far removed from religious affairs in Vietnam, as the world was made vividly aware by Buddhist opposition to the oppressive regime of President Diem in the 1960s. After 1975, the Marxist–Leninist government of reunified Vietnam declared the state atheist, while theoretically allowing people the right to practise their religion under the constitution. In reality, churches and pagodas were closed down, religious leaders sent for re-education, and followers discriminated against if not actively persecuted.
Since 1986 the situation has eased, with the right to religious freedom being reaffirmed in the 1992 constitution. A number of high-profile prisoners held on religious grounds have been released, while party leaders have publicly demonstrated the new freedoms by visiting pagodas and churches. As a result an increasing number of Vietnamese are