Vietnam Rising

From Vietnam’s acceptance into the World Trade Organization to its post-Vietnam War reform and socialist ideals, this overview concisely examines the cultural, political, and economic changes currently at work in Vietnam within a historical context and then discusses the effects such changes have had on businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Vietnam is credited with having one of the “most successful antipoverty campaigns ever undertaken anywhere, raising up about two-thirds of those who lived in poverty two decades ago, by combating both the anti-productive aspects of tradition and the needless poverty still imposed to some degree by the dead economic hand of Ho Chi Minh and his followers.” A country that experienced chronic, centrally imposed food shortages for decades has radically changed course, greatly reduced the percentage of the population living in poverty, from over 70 percent in the mid-1980s to 14.7 percent in 2007. Except for China, Vietnam has had the fastest growing economy in all of Southeast Asia.

In Vietnam Rising, William Ratliff, one of the leading experts on the economics of Southeast Asian countries, examines the remarkable, pro-market, pro-entrepreneurial changes underway in Vietnam. Ratliff then reviews the cultural and historical experiences that provide the foundation for current pro-enterprise reforms, discusses the changes that followed “reunification” at the end of the Vietnam War, and the reforms that began twenty years ago. In the process, Vietnam Rising illuminates the hows and whys of entrepreneurial opportunities and the changes necessary to address the remaining traditional and institutional challenges for creating a truly open, market-based, entrepreneurial climate

William Ratliff (1937–2014) was a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and a Research Fellow and Curator of the Americas Collection at the Hoover Institution. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American/Chinese history from the University of Washington.