EP86: Reflecting on 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon with Dr. Huong Le Thu
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Welcome to Straight Talk Southeast Asia. This is a podcast that covers current developments in the region, particular countries, domestic politics, as well as regional issues. We look in depth at what is happening, why it might be happening. We speak to analysts, academics from the region, based in the region, and to better understand what's happening and what might be the projections of what's happening ahead. We're now in our second season.

I'm Bridget Welsh. I'm a political analyst and academic who's worked on Southeast Asia for many decades. I was raised here. I'm living here. And very importantly, I care about what's happening in the region. Thanks for joining me. Welcome to Straight Talk Southeast Asia. You're with Bridget Welsh at Zakabuza. This is episode 18 of season three.

Listeners, thanks as always for listening in. We're on the second episode of this week, an unprecedented thing for Straight Talk Southeast Asia. But given all the developments in the region, we felt it was appropriate to do so.

We spoke to Elvin Ong about Singapore and the polls that will happen on May 3rd. And in this episode, my co-host Zach Abouza talks to Dr. Lee about the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, reunification of Vietnam, and the 30th anniversary of the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral relationship. As a primer to the conversation, I want to talk about a few other developments that are happening in the region.

The first of which is the lessons we're learning from the U.S. administration tariff negotiations with Southeast Asia. The Trump administration has sent multiple different signals to Southeast Asian countries because their different agencies are sending very different types of messages. This is adding to the confusion and to the difficulties in carrying out the negotiations.

The Trump administration continues to see Southeast Asia through the lens of China and not necessarily on the countries individually. While they want them to engage in bilateral negotiations over the tariffs, they don't really have a clear sense of what they want. And this is adding to the economic insecurity in Southeast Asia.

It's also coming at a time when the Trump administration and the negotiations are increasing discussions about non-tariff barriers, as well as introducing 232 tariffs, which are tariffs involving areas that are deemed to involve national security, such as pharmaceuticals, technology, and critical minerals.

There's added complexity as well as mixed signals that are being sent that make the negotiation process even more complex and challenging. Speaking of bilateral, this is the second issue that I wanted to talk about. The trip that the Thai prime minister made to Cambodia. She was in the news because she fell sick after the trip. Unfortunately, she's better. Part of that trip involved the difficult issues of transnational crime.

One of the challenges that Southeast Asia as a region is facing is that a number of the countries have had a deepening of scam scanners and scam compounds. And this has put pressure not only in terms of human trafficking and the rise of scamming in Southeast Asia, it's also put pressure on the region as a whole from a reputational issue.

Thailand has placed tremendous pressure by the Chinese to address some of the issues along its border and its neighbors to address the issues of scam compounds.

It's very difficult now in Southeast Asia for regional neighbors to convince their other neighbors to reduce their scam compounds, given the degree and intensity of the scam economy that's emerged in the region. And this is really a challenge for Southeast Asia, like it was for Latin America, where you had the rise of drug cartels affecting the entire region. Well, this is what's happening in Southeast Asia as well.

This discussion over scams between Cambodia and Thailand tried to emphasize the positive, but in fact, it speaks to the difficult obstacles that are ahead for Southeast Asia to change the bad behavior that exists within the region and the corrosive influence of transnational criminality that is deepening, not getting better, as the UNODC has said in its recent report.

highlighting that the region's potentially getting to a point of no return, given the scope and the depth of the scam economy that is emerging and has evolved in the last few years. The final issue I'd like to highlight is that we have and are in election season.

We know this from the conversations we've had about Singapore and straight talk earlier in the week. But let's not forget that we have the Philippine midterm elections happening on May 12th. And next week's episode, we'll talk about the Philippine elections. But it's important to realize that the intense campaign had very interesting developments. One example of that has been the Marcus administration has decided to cut the prices of rice by half.

particularly those rice allocated for the poor. So this is going to cost U.S. dollars of $178 million. Many people call this a campaign ploy, but it also speaks to the challenges of food security. These types of policies do yield rewards, and it's hoping that the Marcos administration or many of their allies will benefit from this type of initiatives. Spendings of his administration are also illustrative as the way that leaders in the region are trying to gain legitimacy.

As always, thanks very much for listening in on Straight Talk. And I look forward to engaging you in the next episode next week. Thank you very much for joining us. Vietnam is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the capture of Saigon and the reunification of the country.

And while Vietnam is making steady progress towards achieving its goal of becoming a high-income country by 2050, it's not all gone smoothly. Their GDP when they entered the Doi Moi renovation period was only $36 billion, a far cry from the $429 billion that it was in 2024.

Why don't you start by walking us through the lost decade after reunification? What were the lessons learned and lessons not learned?

Thank you, Zach. It's such a pleasure to be with you and to engage with the podcast. I've been a fan for a while, especially talking about this topic on a very important anniversary. But yes, let's start from turning back the clock and how did we get here today? Because as you said, Vietnam is indeed in a very interesting juncture geopolitically, but also socially.

economically developing as an own case study of its own. After the reunification of North and South, as you mentioned, in 1975,

It was an experiment. I don't think any other country has done it the way Vietnam did it, in a way that North-South reunification with the victory and governance of the communist North was expanding and incorporating the capitalist South. That was a very unique experiment that has really no other

playbook or blueprint to work on from different cases. There have been several major policies that were, for example, taken from the Soviet Union in terms of economic governance that were not necessary with the same conditions and environment in Vietnam.

In many assessments, Vietnamese communist economic policies were not as sophisticated as the ones that were in the Soviet Union, for example. But by and large, the direction was to eliminate capitalism because it was back then seen as illegal and evil.

There were several campaigns over the decades, even before the reunification, where the North Vietnam wanted to do this heavy-handed socialist reconstruction directed against private ownership. It did it within North Vietnam and then wanted to replicate some of that also to South Vietnam. And that included land reforms and eradicating private ownership and also liquidizing

private capitalistic businesses after the reunification as well. That caused a lot of issues and because South Vietnam was actually bustling with entrepreneurship, it was rich because of the private businesses. And those reforms directly after the reunification caused all sorts of economic distress. And also as a side effect, the exodus of a number of Chinese Vietnamese in South Vietnam who were very active in the private

the private business domain. And of course, other Vietnamese, Southern Vietnamese too, also didn't find the new reality viable for their conduct.

So central planning was conducted in all directions with a view of transforming everything into this state-owned enterprises, big, heavy, bureaucratic, oftentimes not very well suited to the industry and a collectivized production system that slowed down the economy and caused even more distress to the Vietnamese economy.

Some historians, when assessing the long multi-decade war, said that Vietnam in 1975 won the war but lost the peace because how economy was mismanaged at that time.

That led us to a whole of decade until 1986, the Doi Mo reforms have turned the tables and started what we see today as successfully developing economy of Vietnam while still holding on to its political systems, also called socialist country of market orientation system.

and the direction that still Vietnam's leadership is holding on to. How did Vietnam come to the Doi Moi renovation program? Part of it was tied up with the decision to withdraw from Cambodia, which they completed in September 1989. But what were some of the other factors?

In the official rhetoric and narrative, it was presented as a very enlightening, sudden turn of the direction by the party leaders that set Vietnam on the more progressive path. And Doi Moi means renovate, change to the new. Often in Vietnam, it's referred to as open-door policy.

But there have been a number of circumstances that led to that. Foreign policy, geo-strategic conditions. So we started with how economically the country was not doing well. The people were not living good lives.

When I was born in that decade, and from the memory, it was referred informally as the darkest decade. Some of the Vietnamese even refer to the post-war era as even darker than during the wartime because of the poverty and near even hunger in some cases. So there were domestic factors. There were external factors that pushed the leaders of the Communist Party to that direction.

Changes were happening in Soviet Union itself, so-called Novo-Myshlenian new thinking in the Soviet Union, the Glaslov and Perestroika that really inspired the Vietnamese leaders towards this new thinking within Doi Moi reforms. Because Soviet Union become the only diplomatic partner of Vietnam at the time, it was isolated from all the rest.

The West, of course, the U.S., were still in post-extensions from the wartime. Vietnam was isolated from the rest of the Western world. Relations with China got worse. The border war happened in 1979, and they were still not normalized until 1991, the bilateral relations. Another neighbor was Cambodia, which you said had established

had a stressful relationship in terms of Vietnamese operations. Then earlier on the Khmer Rouge provocations, all of that, as well as others shunned Vietnam, others in Southeast Asia, the original ASEAN members, everybody shunned Vietnam. So it saw that it became normal

not positioned in the regional and global affairs with Soviet Union becoming also weaker and also thinking of changing itself.

Within the Vietnamese Communist Party, the fraction calling for reforms or necessity of reforms prevailed. The slogan of the day at the time was renovate or die, reform or die. It was really necessity, a call from Vietnam to also revisit its dogmatic ideology.

foreign policies that involves also how it conducts its economy or trading with everyone and opening avenues for private entrepreneurs within the country. All of that led to so-called Doi Moi reforms that were

successfully passed in the Sixth National Party Congress in 1986 that slowly started, set Vietnam on the path that is increasingly progressive in foreign policy. So it didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen smack on the 1986 year as a lot of narrative would have us

but gradually. So 1987, for example, the foreign direct investment law passed that allowed that foreign entrepreneurs quite liberal for the time and quite liberal for the region as well, leading us into the 1990s where enterprise law in 1999 was passed. And then we saw the 2000s really as a decade where Vietnam opened up for businesses, including foreign businesses. But that also was predicated

but with normalization with major powers, normalization with the United States, with China, both in the 1990s and, of course, joining ASEAN. All of that happened in the 1990s that allowed Vietnam to open up, integrate with the region, trade with everyone, and culminating that really with a major milestone in 2000s, which was accession of Vietnam to the WTO,

your World Trade Organization in 2007. Hope you're enjoying listening to this episode. If you want to find out more about previous episodes, you can reach this on the website, straighttalksoutheastasia.com. The link should also be available in the show notes. If you want to contribute to the production costs of the podcast, you can hit the link, buy me a coffee. Every little penny counts. All that money will not go to me, but go to the producers who are helping me to put the show together. Thanks for listening.

One of the hallmarks of the renovation era has been the regular transition of leaders. We have party congresses now on a regular five-year schedule, and we've seen this regular transition of leadership. We're getting ready for the 14th party congress coming up next January. What are the major challenges for the leadership right now?

A lot has changed since we were taking a high speed train through the recent decades. The thing that the Vietnamese Communist Party leadership have been trying to hang on to is collective leadership, where the power is dispersed among so-called four pillars of the leadership.

That's the party secretary general, the top position, the president, the prime minister, and the chairperson of the National Assembly. These four pillars is to avoid accumulating power in one person overtly, which Vietnamese Communist Party considered as a challenge to its conduct, to its leadership and stability of its power.

But this has been shaken up in the recent years due to a various number of reasons, whether poor health, old age of those in the position, but also unprecedented internal party turmoil resulting from anti-corruption campaign and disciplinary measures that had happened in the recent years that started from the previous party secretary-general, Rick Futcher, who passed away recently.

recently. And because of those, we had some period of time where there were three instead of four and one person taking more than one role. There have been a lot of speculations whether the next party Congress in January next year will have us

Fixed with the four pillars or are we going towards three pillars? So those are among such speculations. What has happened as a precedent in the recent years, because Secretary Meng Fuchang died in his role, the interim secretary general is now the party's secretary general and poised to be re-elected or elected really.

In January 2026, he holds a lot of power now. I think this is the period of time where internal politics will clarify before really the party congress happens, the consolidation of power, the reforms that he's already undertaken in terms of administrative reforms and a lot of changes that are not necessarily very transparent

transparent to the external observers. This is the period where the most interesting and perhaps the most decisive things happened before the actual party congress happened.

You've mentioned in the opening remarks that Vietnam has set for itself very ambitious goals, which is becoming the high-income country by 2045. This will be upon the next party leadership, the next term, to deliver, to set the country on the path to achieving this goal. So there's a lot of pressure in terms of economic performance, and economic performance in the

in a way legitimize this one party rule and consolidate their power and trust and popularity among people as well. Even though it is a one party state, it still needs that legitimacy and economic performance has been something that continuously given the party that mandate. But we are in troubled times. We are in troubled waters now because Vietnamese economic model are

of trading with everyone, of manufacturing and exporting is now going to face a lot of questions. At pitfalls, nobody knows what's ahead of us with the trade war, with very heavy tariffs that the U.S. has announced under the second term of President Trump. Vietnam has had for a number of years quite significant trade surplus with the United States. It's been a massively competitive

biggest, fastest expanding market for Vietnam's export. This was flagged on the first term of President Trump. He already at that point flagged that Vietnam as a trade surplus toward United States or United States deficit was something that bothered him. He called Vietnam the worst abuser at the time. While he was away, while President Biden took over that surplus, all from the United States perspective, that deficit only grew

Right now, he took measures and addressed Vietnam with big tariffs. There are a lot of thinking within the Vietnamese Party leadership how to go about this dependency on export, on manufacturing, what we're going to do with that new imposed tariff in terms of the market of United States that they've successfully expanded. It's not only Vietnam. A lot of countries in

in the region, a lot of developing countries will have to adjust their economic strategies and even goals. I'm not going to go to economic predictions, but that alone already has a lot of economists thinking that Vietnam's GDP growth projection will need to be adjusted, lowered, and therefore perhaps stricter on effect to that major economy.

ambitious goal of becoming the high-income country so soon, so fast. It's got to be very frustrating for the Vietnamese because so much of the supply chain diversification that Vietnam has benefited from came during the COVID pandemic when the Trump administration was encouraging U.S. corporations and other Western corporations to diversify their supply lines out of China.

Vietnam did everything right, with perhaps the exception of as their trade surpluses grew, they really flatlined on their imports from the United States. And that is an obsession with the Trump administration.

Beyond that, here we are, the 50th anniversary of the reunification of the country. At the same time, it's the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations with the United States. So maybe you could assess the state of bilateral relations beyond the trade dispute.

historians will go back to this point and see the real impact. And I can get to some early signs from the Trump second administration and where that puts the bilateral relations. But until now, I think the trajectory has been really good, positive trajectory. And I think there was a lot of momentum going on that was culminated by upgrading the bilateral relations policy.

to a comprehensive strategy partnership in the tail end of the Biden administration in September 2023, I think.

There were a lot of goodwill from both sides in the recent years, including more cooperation on the security relations, which had been compared to, for example, economic relations, a little bit slower going. It needed time for both sides to heal, both sides to reconciliate the past. They had been actually proactive towards the recovery

There had been initiatives of cooperating to find the missing inaction of repatriating and new remainings of clean mines, right mines and unexplored ordnance still in a lot of lands of Vietnam and also beyond Laos and Cambodia. So there had been a lot of that going on. A number of visits from Secretary of Defense in the past years had come to Vietnam talking about closer cooperation.

defense, maritime cooperation, capacity building, there had been transfer of equipment, all of that positive and building that necessary trust between the two sides. I had argued elsewhere that at that point, the bilateral relations was best ever. But we have this dispute going on

Also, since President Trump came into office, he dismantled a lot of development initiatives, including USAID, but also the United States Institute of Peace that was tasked with some of the reconciliation efforts. So that has put a stop to momentum, especially in terms of reconciliation efforts and clearly mining and legacies of war.

And that may have some impact on the defense relations, the security cooperation in a trust fielding.

But on the other hand, the strategic importance of the United States is there. I think the security advisors in the new administration also understand the strategic value of Vietnam. Perhaps President Trump is focused on economic sides elsewhere. I think there is understanding of the strategic importance of Vietnam to the United States.

Vietnam is interested in Americans' defense military hardware. So this is something that is going to still be ongoing. It may be transactional. It may be something that speaks more clearly to President Trump. It is going to be still, I think the relationship is still going to be strong regardless of

certain hurdles. Vietnamese businesses are also interested in American market in a way. We had a big investment from VinFast. Let's see how successful, but investing in American soil, building factories and manufacturing, creating jobs of a big, huge step for a small developing country to be investing multi-billion projects in the industry.

in a very competitive space, but that indicates certain interests. The American and multinational companies, whether in tech or other sectors, remain interested in Vietnam as well. So I don't think the momentum is completely over. There are still strongholds, but it's not going to be as easy as it used to be.

I couldn't agree more. I would note that despite the slashing of so many USAID programs across the region, I believe seven that are directly related to reconciliation efforts and addressing the legacies of war are still being funded, though they will switch over to the State Department. It certainly sowed a degree of doubt in American reliability.

because those war legacy issues are the foundation upon which all other cooperation is built on.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful insights. We've got two very important anniversaries coming up in Vietnam this year. I know on the 30th, the skies are going to be lit up in Ho Chi Minh City. Maybe you could just give one last thought for a very young population. What does reunification mean to Vietnamese?

The Vietnamese demographic will happen after the war. So many, if not majority, actually, in terms of the citizens don't remember. They may have some memory passed through generations secondhand. So it's not felt the same. There isn't that personal comparison that they can draw from.

They are born into a united country and they are raised in a country where that reunification is proving to be a successful one. Among young generation, you will not see much difference in terms of how they perceive the world or the political organization of the country. I think Vietnam has gone through different phases. So we've started at how

difficult it was to govern economically two very different economic ecosystems. But then Vietnam embraced that capitalism, holding on to the political socialist one party, but it embraced capitalism, it embraced globalization. It has started to open up the world for the young generation that now is able to study everywhere, acquire information from everywhere.

and be integrated with the world. To give you an example, the Vietnamese send more students abroad than all of ASEAN together. So you can see the hunger or the appetite of the young Vietnamese population towards the world and vice versa.

I was also on that way. I was curious of the world. That's why I started to travel and live abroad and having foreign relations with everyone. That was the biggest breakthrough for Vietnam. Not being dogmatic, not just being friends with the ones that shared the same ideology, but opening up with everyone, trading with everyone.

This is the world that the winners of the West of America constructed. But now the Vietnamese are told the reverse, not trading with everyone, trading only with friends, or we're not in the world of open relations with everyone. They were more increasingly protectionist, and they're closing down a lot of avenues in many ways. And even before President Trump's return, there were protests

some foreign policy narratives coming from the United States when they referred to competition with Chinese China, referred to the Communist Party of China as not a friendly actor, which may make sense from the United States' point of view. But from the Vietnam's point of view, it made no sense anymore because the whole idea of Vietnamese opening up was not to be limited by

by ideology. And now it is sometimes being told different things, sometimes contradicting things. So it's quite confusing. And I think it may be reflected in how young people approach the world these days. They may ask the question, so are we dogmatic? Are we not? Should we be dogmatic or not? Is the world dogmatic or not? Those are the questions that the next younger generations of foreign policy generation

maybe have to grapple with again. Thank you so much. That was Dr. Honglei Tu, the Deputy Director of Asia for the International Crisis Group. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Zach. It was a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the episode. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast listening app. If you'd like to keep up to date on current Southeast Asian political affairs, just keep following me.

This is Bridget Welsh, and I look forward to connecting to you in the next episode. Straight Talk Southeast Asia is produced by Norman Chella, a.k.a. Norm, and you can find him at thatsthenorm.com. Thanks so much for listening.