Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City: The long struggle of two cities/Recovering from endless war

Abstract

There are few cities in the Third World with such a difficult and long struggle behind them, as is the case of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Since independence, the other Asian cities and the majority of new countries in Africa were generally spared from violent foreign control, while the immediate consequences of conflicts in Vietnam continued through to the end of the 1980s. The USA and China sent their own troops to war on Vietnamese territory, and the former Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Bloc countries offered military assistance to North Vietnam, enabling it to conduct a proxy war (Fig. 11.1). Vietnam itself then turned to the role of aggressor, attacking the neighbouring countries of Laos and Cambodia. The material price Vietnam paid for the years of war was the destruction of infrastructure, facilities and settlements. More than 10% of the population died, leaving about one million orphans; 3% of the veterans returned home crippled – the former social structure had been destroyed. Until the decline of the Eastern Bloc, North and South Vietnam and later the Socialist Republic of Vietnam received financial aid from their respective allies to counter the consequences of war. The ratio of capital input over the past four decades to current key geo-economical indicators could not be worse when compared to the ratio in other developing countries. While countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and even the Philippines enjoyed a period of relatively peaceful economic growth during the first half of the 1990s, the decline of the planned economies in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia hit Vietnam particularly hard. Not only did the substantial development aid provided by the Eastern Bloc come to an end, but its collapse led to the gradual introduction of a free market economy in Vietnam. The recent financial crisis in the Southeast and East Asian countries has however delayed this process of change.