How Did The Cold War Affect The Economy Of Vietnam

Vietnam had no prosperous period before its independence in 1945. Since then Vietnam’s development path can be divided into three periods. The first period runs from 1945 to 1975 and was a period in which Vietnam was a major battleground of the Cold War with two Indochina wars. The First Indochina War (1946-1954) was between France, supported by the USA and its allies, and the communist force known as Viet Minh supported by China and the Soviet Union. The Second Indochina War was from 1954-1975. The USA and other members of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) combined with the forces of the Republic of Vietnam (the South) to fight against the army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the North), which was de facto supported by the Soviet Union and China. During this period, both market economy and central planning economic models were imported and mechanically applied in Vietnam. Neither model generated the expected results however, partly due to the two wars, a lack of necessary conditions for growth, and the general failure of the economic models adopted. As a result, real GDP per capita increased just 2.9 times (or 4.8% per year) over the period 1955-1973 (the peak year before the war’s end), with real GDP per capita increasing by just 64 percent (or 2.8 percent per year) (Tran et al. 2000).

Vietnam’s economic improvement over the three decades from 1945 was therefore modest, particularly in comparison to the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) that enjoyed a golden period of high economic growth in these