Soviet and Chinese Economic Aid to North Vietnam

Abstract

Any attempt to gauge the magnitude and composition of Soviet and Chinese economic assistance to North Vietnam since 1955 comes up against the problem of statistical secrecy. The North Vietnamese are the worst offenders: they have published no foreign trade returns, and their general statistical reporting is in the worst Stalinist percentile tradition. In reply to a question put to him by a French correspondent, a Dao Nai coal mine official stated: “Here in the mine we are not interested in tons; we are interested only in percentages. Tons are a matter for the Ministry of Heavy Industry in Hanoi.” A Soviet specialist stationed in Hanoi confided to the same correspondent: “They no longer permit us to get near the machines which we furnished them with.… It is worse here than in China.” Unfortunately, Chinese statistics, though more plentiful, are not much better. Soviet figures are the best of a bad lot, but they give only a partial, not unbiased, picture. Analysis of the North Vietnamese economy therefore reduces itself to the kind of detective work by which Western economists from 1929 to 1954 tried to piece together such information on the Soviet economy as Stalin's security-minded statisticians released.