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The National Library, founded in Hanoi in 1919, includes more than a million volumes. A number of specialized science and social science libraries are located in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Most major museums in northern Vietnam are in Hanoi, including the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts and the Army Museum, which includes weaponry and aircraft from the Vietnam War. The Cham Museum, located in Da Nang, houses a collection of cultural artifacts from the ancient kingdom of Champa, including many sandstone sculptures of Hindu images. Most of the major museums in southern Vietnam are located in Ho Chi Minh City. Two of them, the Vietnam Revolutionary Museum and the War Crimes Museum, focus on the Communist struggle for power in Vietnam and the Vietnam War.
During the centuries of Chinese and Vietnamese imperial rule, Vietnam’s society was predominantly agrarian. Its major source of wealth was rice. Although some manufacturing and trade existed, they received little official encouragement and occupied minor segments of the gross domestic product (GDP). Under French colonial rule, agriculture continued to occupy the primary place in the national economy, although emphasis shifted to the cultivation of export crops. In addition to rice, these crops included coffee, tea, rubber, and other tropical products. Small industrial and commercial sectors developed, notably in the major cities, but their growth was limited because colonial officials were determined to avoid competition with goods produced in France. After partition in 1954 the governments of North and South Vietnam sought to develop their national economies, although they established different economic systems with different resources and trading partners. The North operated under a highly centralized, planned economy, whereas the South mostly maintained a free-market system that had some government involvement. After reunification in 1976 the North gradually extended its centrally planned economy throughout the country. In 1986, however, the government launched a reform program to move toward a mixed economy that operates under private as well as collective or state control. As a result, Vietnam entered a period of rapid development. By 2005 GDP had risen to $52.4 billion, increasing at an annual rate of 8.4 percent in the 1990s. However, per capita incomes remained low, averaging about $630.50 a year. The services sector contributed 38 percent of GDP; industry, 41 percent; and agriculture, forestry, and fishing, 21 percent.
In Vietnam, as in other states ruled by Communist parties, the government is expected to play a guiding role in all matters, including the national economy. Classical Marxist economic theory calls for all major industries and utilities to be nationalized and for farmland to be placed under state or collective ownership. Such was the situation in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and initially in the reunified country established in 1976. However, Vietnam’s economy performed disastrously in the first decade after the war. Excessive government controls, lack of managerial experience, limited capital resources, and the absence of a profit incentive all contributed to the weak economy. In 1986 the government launched a reform program called doi moi (economic renovation) to reduce government interference in the economy and develop a market-based approach to increase national productivity. The need for economic reform gained urgency in 1990, when poor harvests and economic mismanagement left millions of Vietnamese facing malnutrition. However, Vietnamese leaders initially encountered many difficulties in their effort to renovate the system. Among those obstacles was the reluctance of party leaders to further privatize the economy as well as a high level of bureaucratic interference in economic affairs. The pace of economic reforms accelerated following the Communist party’s approval in 2001 of a ten-year development strategy enhancing the role of the private sector. The strategy simultaneously affirmed the primacy of the state in driving economic development, and Vietnam’s economy came to be characterized as “a market economy with socialist orientation.” In the second decade of the doi moi reforms, Vietnam achieved one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Annual growth rates exceeding 7 percent ranked Vietnam second only to China. The country’s economic vitality attracted surging levels of foreign investment and significantly decreased the number of Vietnamese living in poverty. However, Vietnam lagged behind in modernizing its infrastructure, a crucial step in making Vietnamese businesses competitive against foreign competition. Vietnam sought to increase foreign trade and investment through membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Following more than a decade of negotiations, Vietnam’s entry was formally approved in November 2006, paving the way for the country to become the organization’s 150th member in December.
The official labor organization in North Vietnam is the Vietnam General Confederation of Trade Unions, founded in Hanoi in 1946. After the country was reunified, the organization absorbed the South Vietnam Trade Union Federation. The confederation is an umbrella organization overseeing the activity of specialized labor unions in Vietnam, such as the National Union of Building Workers. By the mid-1990s the confederation contained more than 50 labor unions with a total membership of more than 4 million. As in all Communist systems, the labor movement in Vietnam is under strict party supervision. Labor unrest, including unsanctioned strikes, has increased since the doi moi reforms were launched in 1986. Much of the hostility fueling this unrest results from poor working conditions and low salaries in foreign-owned enterprises. Vietnam’s labor force numbered 44 million in 1996. Agriculture, forestry, and fishing employed 60 percent of the workforce in 2003; the services sector employed 24 percent; and industry employed 16 percent.
Vietnam has traditionally derived the bulk of its wealth from agriculture, especially from the cultivation of wet rice. During the traditional and colonial eras most farmland was privately owned and cultivated either by owners or tenants. Under Communist rule, however, the government placed farmland in the North under collective ownership. After reunification, the government attempted to collectivize all privately held farmland in the South, but local resistance and declining grain production eventually persuaded party leaders to dismantle the collective system. Instead, they granted long-term leases to farmers in return for an annual quota of grain paid to the state. Surplus production could be privately consumed or sold on the free market. Agricultural production increased dramatically, rising 62 percent between 1985 and 1997. By far the most important crop is rice, which is farmed under wet conditions in the Red and Mekong deltas as well as in parts of central Vietnam. Most rice-growing areas can support two crops per year, and three crops per year are possible in parts of central Vietnam. Total rice production rose from about 16 million metric tons in 1985 to 36 million metric tons in 1997, while tea production rose from 28,200 to 110,000 metric tons. Other important crops are coconuts, coffee, cotton, fruits and vegetables, rubber, and sugarcane. The annual fish catch increased from 808,000 metric tons in 1985 to 3.1 million metric tons in 2004. The growth of commercial forestry has been hindered by a lack of transportation facilities as well as by the mixture of different species of trees, which makes it uneconomical to harvest a single species. Furthermore, population pressures have increased the rate of deforestation. Since 1992 the government has banned the export of logs and some timber products in an attempt to preserve remaining forests. Most harvested roundwood is used for household fuel. Timber production, primarily teak and bamboo, has remained stagnant.
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