Post-1975 Collective Farming in Southern Vietnam: How Local Politics Contributed to the Failure of and the Shift in National Agrarian Policy*

Abstract

From 1975 to mid-1980s the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) had struggled to establish collective farming in the south. The Party leaders believed that collective farming would increase agricultural productivity and production, and improve people's living standards. However, the result was different from the Party leaders' expectations. By examining and comparing two localities in the south, Quang Nam Province in the central coastal region and An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta, this paper illustrates how villagers' everyday politics and local cadres' corruption and malpractices contributed to derailing the VCP's agrarian policy. In other words, due to local politics, collective farming failed badly throughout the regions of the south in fulfilling the above objectives. Despite the Party's continual efforts and policy modification to improve collective farming, in the mid-1980s the country faced severe food shortage and even the economic crisis, which led to the Party leaders finally deciding to revers...