Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
From: Sidel, Mark <mark-sidel@uiowa.edu>
Date: Jun 16, 2006 7:32 AM
Subject: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
Dear friends,
I have a query from an academic colleague about the best articles or books to read about issues of land and property reform in Vietnam in the 1980s and 90s - any suggestions from the list? The relevant languages the person reads are English and Chinese.
Thanks and best wishes.
Mark Sidel
From: Nora Taylor <nthanoi04@yahoo.com>
Date: Jun 16, 2006 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
Mark,
Ben Kerkvliet has published extensively on this topic. I don't have the references in front of me but his article in the Journal of Asian Studies is probably the best thing that I have read on the issue of land reform. You can probably contact him directly at ANU or through this list.
Nora
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Date: Jun 16, 2006 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
Do, Quy Toan and Iyer, Lakshmi, "Land Rights and Economic Development: Evidence from Vietnam" (May 2003). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 3120. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=445220
From: Jakob Rupert Friederichsen <rupert@friederichsen.net>
Date: Jun 16, 2006 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
Most of the literature largely ignores the uplands. concerning agrarian change and land relations in the Northern uplands, Thomas Sikor has published quite a lot; e.g.
Sikor, T. (2001). "Agrarian Differentiation in Post-Socialist Societies: Evidence from Three Upland Villages in North-Western Vietnam." Development and Change 32: 923-949.
From: Scott M Robertson <scottmorganrobertson@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 16, 2006 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
For that period, the three Martin Ravallion and Dominique van de Walle
papers are a good start (all can be found on the World Bank website):
1)Breaking up the Collective Farm: Welfare Outcomes from Vietnam’s
Massive Land Privatization, 2002.
2)Land Allocation in Vietnam’s Agrarian Transition, 2003.
3)Does rising landlessness signal success or failure for Vietnam's
agrarian transition?, 2006.
What specific topic or which end user is of interest?
Regards,
From: Stephen J. Leisz <steve_leisz@yahoo.com>
Date: Jun 16, 2006 10:37 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
I agree that most of the literature on land allocation/reform is concentrated their implementation of and the impact these reforms had in the lowland areas. An interesting look at the impact in Son La and Nghe An is Tran Duc Vien, Nguyen Vinh Quang, and Mai Van Thanh's Decentralization of Forest Management and Impacts on LIvelihoods of Ethnic Minority Groups in Vietnam's Uplands, Agriculture Publishing House, Hanoi, 2005. The book also overviews all the relevant state policies from 1958 to 2003.
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jun 17, 2006 4:28 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
Two points:
First, the possible impacts of 1988's Decree # 10 were a great concern to policy-makers.
It is this Decree that started off the various processes of reallocation of land, and changes in how land was and is accessed, that are with us still today. It, as can be seen from the preamble, strongly attacked many rural cadres. It terminated the system of workpoints fundamental to the system introduced by Order # 100 in 1981. It left intact, though, most cooperatives and so some of the powers that they conferred upon their cadres. By freeing up land access, it increased private economic power in many rural areas, and so arguably could have had important political consequences to power relations in the villages. About one half of rural cadre positions were lost as a result of Decree # 10. All this naturally concerned the Party.
As a result, there were some early surveys that were essentially Vietnamese initiatives, close to the Party and its concerns about what was happening. These concerns were far less marked in later foreign-financed work.
Of these surveys, the earliest (MOLISA Ket qua dieu tra muc song va thu nhap - Nhung van de co ban ve cai tien tien luong o Vietnam - Luong toi thieu, Results of a living standards and incomes survey - Basic problems of wage reform in Vietnam - minimum wages, Ha Noi 1990.) covered 6,905 households in 21 provinces.
The later ones (Le Van Toan, Nguyen Sinh Cuc, Le Vu Hang, etc..., Nhung van de kinh te va doi song qua ba cuoc dieu tra Nong nghiep, Cong nghiep & Nha o, Economic and living standards issues as seen through three surveys of agriculture, industry and housing, NXB Thong ke Ha Noi 1991.et al 1991; Nguyen Sinh Cuc, 1991, Thuc trang nong nghiep, nong thon va nong dan Viet Nam 1976 - 1990 (The situation of agriculture, the countryside and the peasantry in Vietnam, 1976 - 1990), NXB Thong ke - HaNoi.1991; Nguyen Van Tiem (ed), Giau ngheo trong nong thon hien nay, Rich and poor in the countryside today, Hanoi 1993, NXB Nong Nghiep, Ban Chinh sach va quan ly, bo nong nghiep va cong nghiep thuc pham.) took particular interest in the extent and trends in the numbers of households defined as 'poor'. The Le Van Toan survey was carried out in December 1989; the Nguyen Van Tiem exercise in 1992 and the Ministry of Agriculture's (Nguyen Sinh Cuc) in 1991.
A good summary of the implications of these can be found in Nguyen Van Tiem (op.cit.: 16-18, on rich families, for poor families pp. 32-44). The basic conclusion reached was that the numbers of poor people had fallen significantly, from around 20% in 1990 to 15% in 1992 Nguyen Van Tiem 1992:43).
More importantly for the Party, they showed no rapid emergence of landlordism. They were sensitive to methods of increasing economic power such as pre-harvest sales of rice to richer farmers at favourable prices as a way of paying off debts, effectively secured on land access and so used to gain control over land. They found not too much of such precursors of landlordism as they saw it. The wider political implications of this were probably considerable.
It is very likely that there are other surveys that were not published.
I have taken the above from the early 1990s Aduki p/l poverty study (for SIDA). Downloadable at http://www.aduki.com.au/1995%20Poverty%20Report%202003%20complete.PDF
Second, and related to the above, it is useful to realise that the great majority of cooperatives left over from the 1980s were not in fact disbanded, and remained important for local cadre positions. They were then revitalised, in some areas, in the late 1990s by the movement to set up 'new-style' cooperatives. Information on this can be found in our study of Farmer Organisations at http://www.aduki.com.au/Farmers'%20Organisations%20-%20Final.pdf
It is therefore worthwhile at least considering the implications of the argument that aspects of Vietnamese rural society were not fully decollectivised by Decree # 10. As in other studies of Land Reform, the literature often shows that the underlying relationships relating to social position and power are important for many reasons, no least that they influence social position and economic power for generations to come. They are rarely best seen as top-down processes. I recall Robert Chambers 'reading into the record' to the then Minister of Agriculture in 1989 that what was happening was a 'land grab' and he should be very careful.
Finally, I have never heard the various reallocations of land in Vietnam in the late 1980s and 1990s referred to as 'Land Reform' (Cai cach ruong dat) as this term refers to the things that happened in the 1950s in the north, which remain painfully present in the memories of many.
Adam
Adam Fforde
From: DiGregorio, Michael <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2006 2:39 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
Adam,
Thanks for the bringing us back to these surveys.
There is another book from this period published by the General Statisical Office. Published in 1995, with data from surveys conducted as part of the first rural census in 1994, this statisitical annual, 'Tinh hinh co ban va co so ha tung nong thon Vietnam' offers researchers something of a baseline survey that puts rural transformation into perspective. Land use (but not distribution) is brought down to the commune level which, with a bit of luck finding an old GIS base map, can be geographically plotted for such things as inhabitants/settlement land or inhabitants/rice land. At a district level, it offers official data for such things as the number of communes with electricity, or motorways, or clinics, etc. And, more amazingly, the number of motorcycles, TVs, radios, and tractors, etc per commune.
Apart from this published data, there are a few 'state ordered' surveys that were published, at least intially, for internal review only. Ocassionally, these were released later as books. Whether they were or not, however, does not mean the information did not get out. It just means there is no easy way for people who were not involved in the research, or somehow connected to people who were, to get it.
The big thing about land redistribution (not land reform) in the late 1980s and early 1990s is that is made an essentially frozen asset into a bankable and transferable asset. This was a one time gift - for lack of a better word - which cannot be repeated in the same way or extent. Unless, of course, land titles are converted to freehold. But that is another story.
Mike DiGregorio
Ford Foundation
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jun 18, 2006 4:45 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Land reform in the 1980s and 90s
Hi Michael,
Thanks for this. Useful. I had forgotten the 1995 study. As you say there are lots about.
Land a frozen asset? Hardly frozen rock solid, I think, and I have a feeling you do not mean to say exactly that.
The standard two questions I used to ask in the north - to judge how conservative they were - when visiting communes in the late 1980s was 'when did you dissolve your collective pig herd' and 'what % of the land before Decree # 10 was 5% land'. The latter question usually made people laugh as the answer was rarely 5%. It varied a lot as farmers and cadres did their thing.
Also, the fascinating article by Dinh thu Cuc in NCLS 175 1977 reported data that showed that before 1975 the % of so-called 'abandoned land' (dat bo hoang) in the northern wet rice areas had grown to be considerable - I interpreted this as being in fact land being farmed directly by farmers rather than the brigades with relatively good rights to sell product onto the free market (like the so-called 5% land) but 'chui' and so reported as 'idle'. Chaliand reported farmers freely selling to markets in wartime too.
There is other evidence I am sure that de facto land property (and what could be done with product) was malleable and control over it and profits from it far from frozen. Clearly things changed after 1988 and so on and so forth, but the endogeneity in the system was considerable before then - I think.
So I fully agree with your view that talking about Land Reform is wrong - it makes assumptions, such as the dominant role of policy, that are unjustified, and as usual obscure the underlying power relations that the early surveys we are discussing (and others I am sure that we do not as you say know about) focussed upon. I am sure that your local data showed textured patterns of land allocation and re-allocation from the late 1980s and on through the 1990s. I am not so sure about now.
There was interesting work done in South China in the 1980s that surveyed farmers' opinions on regular (every two-three generations) land redistribution and reported that they thought it was a very good idea. Rawls?
Cheers
Adam
From: DiGregorio, Michael <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
Date: Jun 18, 2006 9:32 PM
Subject: [Vsg] Land redistribution
Adam,
Your points are well taken. Maybe 'slushy' is better than 'frozen'.
>From the few villages that I know well, it seems that the village land
most immediately transformed into settlement land after redistribution
was the land people felt they had the clearest rights to. That was the
home garden land and fish ponds on individual home plots and within
villages as a whole, the 5% land. I discovered this through the use of
GIS to analyze plot level housing data in three villages in the Red
River Delta. Steve Leisz and I later used these assumptions to develop
a model for assessing the densification and expansion of settlement
areas in the RRD. This model compared a plot level map of one village
in my dataset with satellite images of the same village. Steve Leisz
and John Vogler developed a remote sensing model sing these satellite
images that compared vegetation cover in 1992 and 2000. The output
almost precisely matched the data I had for home construction.
I should also be fair in pointing out that not all new house
construction began after land redistribution was complete. From
interviews in these three villages, it became clear that 5% land had
been allocated for use as housing plots, initially for returning
veterans in the late 1970s.
Mike
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au> M
Date: Jun 19, 2006 12:15 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Land redistribution
Cool
Adam