Doi Moi
From: Thomas Jandl
Date: Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 10:27 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
There is some literature on the point that coastal China and particularly Guangdong were chosen for the reform experiments because of the sizable Chinese diaspora and the possibility that these overseas Chinese would invest in their home provinces.
I wonder whether anybody knows about similar studies or arguments about Vietnam and doi moi. Is there evidence that Sai Gon was chosen as the starting point for market reforms because of the Chinese diaspora that might be willing to invest their money there?
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 10:45 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I don't think Saigon was chosen because of the sizable Chinese diaspora. There was/is a sizable diaspora, of both ethnic Vietnamese and Hoa Kieu.
Furthermore, as the economic hub of Vietnam since the early 19th century, it made sense that Saigon would re-emerge as the site for learning about the workings of a market economy and for Doi Moi policies to be implemented there first. Nguyen van Linh had extensive experience in the Saigon area. Ditto Vo van Kiet.
This is not to ignore the role of overseas Chinese in the making of the Vietnamese South, which has been well documented by Li Tana and other scholars. But I don't think there was any alternative to saigon once it was decided to launch Doi Moi, with or without remittances from overseas, both from ethnic Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese.
Hue Tam Ho Tai
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From: Joseph Hannah
Date: Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 2:41 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I have also heard the idea -- facetious or not -- that Saigon was chosen precisely due to its distance from Hanoi...
Joe Hannah
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From: Thomas Jandl
Date: Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 2:47 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I think the idea of distance is not facetious. The new Ezra Vogel biography of of Deng Xiaoping says very clearly that Deng thought that Shanghai was simply too close to Beijing to allow them to experiment and potentially "pollute" the country with reactionary ideas. Distance means isolation of results that are not allowable. Also, Sai Gon could always be called reactionary if things didn't turn out well.
But in China, the diaspora and the likelihood that it would invest in the regions where they were from also played a role -- I have never found much in terms of making the same argument for Vietnam and Cho Long/Sai Gon. That's why I am asking whether someone else might know some literature on that topic.
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 3:07 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
China had alternatives to Guangzhou, even though they might not have been politically desirable. Where else but Sg could Doi Moi have begun? Hanoi has never been an economic powerhouse, Hue even less so.
On the subject of remittances, the majority went to the South because that's where expats came from, whatever their ethnic origins. These remittances predated Doi Moi (I should know!).
In fact there have been studies of the role of remittances in the Vietnamese economy, I remember a presentation on the topic at an AAS meeting by a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell who passed away before completing his dissertation. I'll try to remember his name.
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From: Daniel C. Tsang
Date: Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 4:49 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
On remittances and Vietnam, a Google Scholar search results in numerous citations to scholarly articles and book chapters etc.:
URL: http://scholar.google.com
Search term: remittances Vietnam
Here is just the first page of results, displayed without live links (links are on the site when you search online); I didn't limit to any ethnic group:
Migration, remittances, livelihood trajectories, and social resilience
[PDF] from uea.ac.uk
UC-eLinks WN Adger, PM Kelly, A Winkels, LQ Huy… - AMBIO: A Journal of the …, 2002 - BioOne
... We investigate one aspect of the relationship between demographic change, social resilience,
and sustainable development in contemporary coastal Vietnam: the effects of migration and
remittances on resource-dependent communities in population source areas. ...
Cited by 111 - Related articles - BL Direct - All 25 versions
[BOOK] The Canada-Vietnam remittance corridor: lessons on shifting from informal to formal transfer systems
[HTML] from google.comR Hernández-Coss - 2005 - books.google.com
Copyright © 2005 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20433, USA All rights reserved Manufactured in the United
States of America First Printing: March 2005 printed on recycled paper 1 2 3 4 5 07 06 05 ...
Cited by 31 - Related articles - UC-eLinks - Library Search - All 8 versions
Do foreign remittances matter to poverty and inequality? Evidence from Vietnam
UC-eLinks CN Viet - Economics Bulletin, 2008 - ideas.repec.org
Empirical findings on the impacts of international remittances on poverty and inequality have
not been consistent. This paper uses fixed-effect regression to estimate the impacts of foreign
remittances on income and consumption of remittances-receiving households, and ...
Cited by 14 - Related articles - Cached - All 4 versions
Determinants of Remittances: Recent Evidence Using Data on Internal Migrants in Vietnam*
[PDF] from grips.ac.jp
UC-eLinks Y Niimi, TH Pham… - Asian Economic Journal, 2009 - Wiley Online Library
The present paper examines the determinants of remittance behavior for Vietnam using data
from the 2004 Vietnam Migration Survey on internal migrants. It considers how, among other
things, the vulnerability of a migrant's life at the destination, their link to relatives back ...
Cited by 8 - Related articles - All 9 versions
Determinants of remittances: recent evidence using data on internal migrants in Vietnam
[PDF] from worldbank.orgY Niimi, TH Pham… - World, 2008 - papers.ssrn.com
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to
encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to
get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The ...
Cited by 8 - Related articles - UC-eLinks - Library Search - All 9 versions
Social vulnerability to climate change and extremes in coastal Vietnam
[PDF] from uea.ac.uk
UC-eLinks W Neil Adger - World Development, 1999 - Elsevier
... Similarly, the informal assistance between Communes in Vietnam may be concentrated among
war veterans or other specific groups or associations ... Migration of part of the available labor in
a household which results in remittances to the household are generally undertaken for ...
Cited by 376 - Related articles - BL Direct - All 15 versions
Gender and remittance flows in Vietnam during economic transformation
[PDF] from uni-muenchen.deW Pfau… - Asia-Pacific Population Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, …, 2008 - papers.ssrn.com
Since the 1990s, Vietnam has experienced a dramatic growth in remittance flows. This paper
uses the Vietnam Living Standard Surveys for 1992/93 and 1997/98 to study the role of gender
in these remittance flows, both from the perspective of receiving and sending remittances. ...
Cited by 5 - Related articles - All 13 versions
Determinants and impacts of international remittances on household welfare in Vietnam
UC-eLinks WD Pfau… - International Social Science Journal, 2009 - Wiley Online Library
Remittances can potentially help to promote economic development by providing a mechanism
to share risks, reduce poverty and improve equality. However, from the viewpoint of economic
theory the overall impacts of remittances are uncertain, as different mechanisms lead to ...
Cited by 4 - Related articles - All 3 versions
Social protection in Vietnam and obstacles to progressivity
UC-eLinks M Evans… - Asian Social Work and Policy Review, 2008 - Wiley Online Library
... Private transfer/remittance received from within Vietnam, 0.136, 0.020, 0.000***. ... There is a
significant relationship between overseas remittances and higher social protection transfers,
but remittances within Vietnam have a slight negative relationship. ...
Cited by 13 - Related articles - BL Direct - All 4 versions
[PDF] Remittances: The new development mantra
[PDF] from g24.orgD Kapur - G-24, 2004 - g24.org
... most. Even countries like Cuba and Vietnam show zero remittance inflows while
Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada show zero or very little outflows, despite the
large diasporas of the former and migrant workers in the latter. ...
Cited by 289 - Related articles - View as HTML - Library Search - All 26 versions
dan
--
Daniel C. Tsang, Distinguished Librarian
Data Librarian and Bibliographer for Asian American Studies,
Economics, Political Science & Business (interim)
468 Langson Library, University of California, Irvine
PO Box 19557, Irvine CA 92623-9557, USA
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From: Ivan Small
Date: Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:09 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I have not seen remittance data that disaggregates Viet-Hoa and Viet-Kinh remittances. But what is interesting about the Pfau & Long (2008) paper cited by Dan is that the Hanoi/Red River Delta region received 31% of international remittances in 1992/1993, shortly following the Doi Moi reforms, which is not that far off from the 43% received in the Ho Chi Minh City/Southeast region during the same period. In the north, socialist bloc labor contracts were a significant source of international remittances in the 1980s. I would therefore be wary of an explicit causal connection between overseas Chinese remittances and regional targets for Doi Moi market reforms. It is probably the case, as Hue Tam suggests, that the introduction and success of market reforms in the south has more do with Saigon's pre-1975 history and connections.
Cheers,
Ivan
Ivan V. Small
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 5:10 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks for the information, Ivan.
I think the difference (31/43) is significant. Perhaps, more important is where did the remittances go?
In the North, they probably went to villagers from which guest workers came--in other words, they were dispersed throughout the countryside. In the South, they likely went to the Sg-Cholon area, where most expats came from, allowing for capital accumulation (on top of wealth hidden in gold bars).
But I also think familiarity with how markets operate was an important factor. It's not for nothing that Saigon's iconic structure is the Ben Thanh market.
for those interested, Brantly Womack did a comparison of Guangzhou and HCMC. It's useful to remember Guangzhou's secular role as a trading port--Shanghai was created relatively recently--and that it came under Communist control later than other major cities. See Ezra Vogel, Canton under Communism.
Hue Tam Ho Tai
--
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From: william turley
Date: Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 9:31 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The article to which Tam refers is Brantly Womack and William Turley, “Asian Socialism’s Open Doors: Guangzhou and Ho Chi Minh City,” in Transforming Asian Socialism: China and Vietnam Compared, edited by C. Chan, B. Kerkvliet, and J. Unger (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield; and Canberra: Allen & Unwin, 1999). pp. 73-97. It confirms inter alia that neither Guangzhou nor Ho Chi Minh City was "chosen" to experiment hence distance could not have been a factor (the politics were much more complicated) and comments, briefly, on the Chinese in HCMC but does not mention, as I recall, remittances, a grievous oversight.
Bill Turley
William S. Turley
Chemin de Coste Longue
Lançon-de-Provence, France 13680
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 8:56 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Bill|
My abject apologies forleaving you out! I mixed up your joint article and Womack's The Politics of asymmetry. But the article is the more relevant to this discussion.
I think remittances were important for providing capital, but both pre-1975 institutions and centuries old commetcial culture worked in HCMC's favor,
Another possible factor: the reluctance of many northern urbanites to abandon the safety of their guaranteed salaries and pensions, and the greater participation of southerners in the private sector, either because so many were shut out of state jobs or some other reason.
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From: David Marr
Date: Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 4:58 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Maybe one reason Brantly and Bill left out remittances is that no one knows how much money is involved. From the late 1980s (or earlier?) a host of techniques arose for transferring money from Viet Kieu and Hoa Kieu to families in Vietnam under the counter. Often no currency had to move physically. The payment was made overseas, a coded message transmitted, and money delivered in VN. I only glanced at the long list of publications that started this thread, but wondered if economists were drawing a long bow when they stated amounts, trends, etc. More recently wealthy families inside VN are dispatching gold value overseas, presumably also without necessarily having to move the stuff across borders. What chance does the state have of controlling such flows?
David Marr
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 5:31 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Steve Graw and others just estimated how much was involved, which was in the billions; at a time when the Vietnamese economy was in the doldrums, this was a quite siginificant amount, and it was all in private hands. The state had no means of capturing this amount.
I remember exactly the system you describe.Since money was not actually sent, remittances nay not be the right word. More accurately, gold bars that were secreted in Vietnam changed hands.
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From: william turley
Date: Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 11:51 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
All good points. Care may have to be taken as well to distinguish between remittances (which usually means money sent "home" by overseas workers and relatives) and investments in the form of off-the-books "suitcase money" that made its way into Vietnam from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and other points in Southeast Asia during the 70s and 80s.
Bill Turley
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From: David Brown
Date: Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 10:36 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
As uncertain as the size of the remittance flows may actually be, they figure importantly in VN Government economic planning. The steadily growing inflow from the worldwide Viet-kieu community is briefed to journalists each year -- usually around Tet. As I recall, in 2010 it was on the order of seven or eight billion US dollars, and may have dipped slightly that year in consequence of the global recession and economic uncertainty in Vietnam. A number that large presumably incorporates the VNG's estimate of unrecorded flows.
Exercising the search engines of vernacular newspapers would bring up quite a few articles on the subject of VK remittances -- regrettably not broken down by origin or destination.
David Brown
occasional journalist, erstwhile diplomat