the top Party leadership at a special Party conference following the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee in mid-September 1985. Fifty-four full members and ten alternate members of the Central Committee resigned, including twenty-eight elderly cadres in their 70s and 80s. Ten o f the twenty-four member Politburo retired. Many of the cadres appointed to replace the sixty four retiring Central Committee members belonged to Deng's Third Echelon — 76% were college educated and their average age was just over fifty years.44
There are clearly some parallels between the situation in China and Vietnam in the early 1980s. The ruling communist parties in both countries had introduced economic reforms and were coping with problems of implementation, outright resistance from some elem ents in the Party and state apparatus, and unintended consequences. They had similar views on the kinds of skilled, dynamic personnel needed to get the reforms going. Both countries also experienced the growth of corruption, speculation and dissatisfaction amongst some sections of the population as the reforms began to take effect. In these circumstances, and given the common Marxist-Leninist traditions of both nations, it is not surprising that some o f the methods they used to address these problems were similar. China conducted an ongoing Party rectification campaign to fight corruption, recruit a new generation of cadres and consolidate support for Deng's econom ic program. Vietnam had similar drives against corruption and made similar efforts to bring in more young, skilled cadres, in particular during the 1986 self-criticism and criticism campaign. Yet, there were also significant differences between the methods used by the two com m unist parties. The rectification cam paign in China was clearly a tool for consolidating Deng's personal power and campaigns in that country seem to have been carried out with far more ferocity than has been the tradition in Vietnam, with the exception of Vietnam's land reform of the 1950s. In Vietnam, efforts to build support for a particular economic strategy occurred within the context of a collective leadership and there was a stronger tradition of seeking consensus. Vigorous intra-Party debates did occur but the ultimate decision was more likely to be a compromise.
so
6
The Self-criticism and Criticism Campaign
By 1986, in both economic and political terms, the Vietnamese Communist Party was in deep trouble. It had failed to deliver a better standard of living to the Vietnamese people, as it had promised to do ten years earlier. Indeed, the disastrous currency change of September 1985 had put the economy into a tailspin, with inflation running at up to 700 per cent. Rank and file Party members became increasingly disaffected as they fought to survive on lowly salaries. There were reports of a "bitter" mood in the capital, with many officials speaking openly of their disgust at the Government and the need for "old men to leave".1 Similar sentiments were expressed by the populace as a whole.2 People were fed up with the Party's economic mismanagement, corruption and the arrogance and indifference of Party cadres to their concerns. They were seeking a younger, more dynamic leadership prepared to introduce the changes needed to set Vietnam on a course to prosperity. Vigorous debate in the USSR about problems facing the Soviet Communist Party, discussed in the previous chapter, generated demands in Vietnam for a similarly frank appraisal of the Vietnamese Communist Party's performance.3 In addition, the Soviet Union's displeasure at Vietnam's misuse of its aid funds placed considerable pressure on the Party to improve its economic management. All these developments occurred in the context of preparations for a national Party Congress, a now regular process which provided a natural focal point for review of the Party's past performance and debate about future policy directions.
Thus, in 1986 we saw the convergence of several factors which together laid the basis of a legitimacy crisis for the Party amongst both its own staff and the public. It was not the first time the Party had faced such a situation. In 1979, the country had come close to economic collapse after overzealous efforts to socialise the relations of production in the South, its invasion of Kampuchea and the subsequent "lesson" it had suffered at the hands of China. On that occasion, however, there was not the same widespread disillusionment within the Party's own ranks . Party members had expected that the path to economic prosperity would be fraught with difficulties in the aftermath of a protracted war. This explanation did not hold much currency by 1986. Perhaps a closer parallel in terms of rank and file disillusionment was the outcome of the land reform of the mid- 1950s, which created a legacy of years of bitterness amongst Party cadres who had been treated unjustly.
1 Chanda, "The N ew Revolution", p. 26.
2 Nayan Chanda, "Back to Basics", Far Eastern Economic Review, 13 November 1986, p. 108; see also Chanda's
"Honour thy brother and uncle and friend", FEER, 10 April 1986, p. 28.
The Soviet Communist Party's leadership reshuffle, anti-corruption campaign, and the 27th Party Congress all exerted considerable influence on Vietnam. See: Nguyen Kien, Vietnam: 15 Years, p. 62.
Party leaders recognised that resolute action was needed to address the legitimacy crisis and put a credible program together in time for the Sixth Congress. They did not, however, necessarily agree on the form which that action should take. As noted earlier in this thesis, the debate within the leadership can best be characterised as one between proponents of continued centralised control of the economy and society, and advocates of greater decentralisation of decision making and the use of incentives. In a situation of legitimacy crisis, these two groups proposed different solutions to the country's ills. Those supporting centralised control blamed the crisis on the poor performance of officials and the Party organisation and so emphasised organisational measures such as self-criticism and criticism, discipline or dismissal of corrupt cadres, and recruitment of new, more "qualified" cadres. Comparing the Party to a human organism, they attributed its mistakes to an "illness". The implication was that once the "illness" was identified and treated through such methods as self-criticism and criticism, the Party would return to good health.4 On the other hand, the supporters of decentralisation argued that the answer lay in giving enterprises, households and individuals more autonomy and in generally freeing up the economy in the hope that improved economic performance would restore confidence in the leadership.
This debate had flared up again in late 1985 and early 1986 in a publicly aired disagreement between Vo Van Kiet , Chairman of the State Planning Committee and Pham Hung, the Interior Minister. Kiet asserted that the planning process was inflexible, that it had become too involved in the detail of economic management, and that it imposed unacceptable requirements on lower levels of the bureaucracy. He advocated that central agencies confine their attentions to broad strategies and to monitoring developments at lower levels, while devolving greater responsibilities and decision making powers to these levels. Pham Hung, however, argued for continued strong Party control over the process of economic reform and, predictably, urged that Party organisations throughout the country be strengthened by improving the training of members and by recruiting more cadres with specialised and technical skills to cope with the new demands of economic management. By late February 1986, the debate had been taken out of the public domain, perhaps to smooth the way for the Congress preparations,5 but it continued within the Party.
The debate was not contained to the upper reaches of the Party leadership. It was played out at all levels of the Party. There were indications, for example, that the Eighth