Vietnam, like China, is a socialist country with a socialist system.
However, Vietnam has recently implemented a political system reform, which has introduced the political system of some Western capitalist countries and has a clear tendency to Westernize.
The main reason why Vietnam carried out this political and economic system reform is that after vietnam implemented reform and opening up in 1986, Vietnam's economy has developed by leaps and bounds in the past 30 years, and the economic growth rate has always maintained a rapid growth rate of more than 5%. Especially in 2019, Vietnam's GDP growth rate once again broke the 7% mark, and the economic growth rate even exceeded that of China.
With Vietnam's economic development, Vietnam has found itself increasingly dependent on Western societies for capital and advanced technology and management experience, especially after joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP), the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Area Agreement and the Regional Comprehensive Partnership Agreement (RECP), Vietnam has become more dependent on Western countries.
In order to cope with the political and public opinion pressure of Western countries after joining some organizations, and to effectively solve some inherent shortcomings of the political system that have become more and more prominent in the country's development, Vietnam finally decided to reform the Vietnamese political system.
The last reform in Vietnam was carried out in 1986 under the guidance of China's "reform and opening up", which made Vietnam's economy develop rapidly and became an important economy in Southeast Asia, thus laying the foundation for Vietnam to carry out political reform again this time and continuing to promote the political and economic development of Vietnamese society.
So the problem is, in 1986, Vietnam was the peak of its military power, with a total strength of 1.2 million troops, and there were garrisons in Burma and Cambodia, which was the "little bully" in Southeast Asia.
Why did Vietnam, which is dreaming of hegemony, suddenly disarm and reduce its troops and carry out innovation and opening up?
The Chinese strange book "Zhou Yi. There is such a sentence in the "Dictionary of the Department": "The poor pole is changing, the change is accessible, and if it can be reached, it can be permanent." ”
This is also the source of what we usually say: "Poor change, change is general, general is long".
In the mid-1980s, Vietnam imitated China in disarmament, reduce troops, and the most important reason for innovation and opening up was because of a "poor" word.
The first reason for Vietnam's "poverty" is the "military disaster".
Vietnam was a vassal state of china's ancient feudal dynasty for more than a thousand years, until the end of China's Qing Dynasty, when Vietnam was occupied by France and reduced to a French colony.
From the beginning of Vietnam's occupation and colonization by the French until 1989, Vietnam was in a state of war of varying degrees.
Franco-Vietnam War:
In the mid-19th century, French imperialism, in order to open up new markets and divide up the world's wealth, implemented a policy of plunder and expansion abroad.
In 1847, under the pretext that Japanese missionaries were killed by the Vietnamese, France provoked war against the Hue court in Vietnam at that time, and sank five Vietnamese ships, and then shelled the port of Toulon again in 1856, and France began an armed invasion of Vietnam.
From 1858 to 1862, Vietnam and France fought the First Vietnamese-French War, and the Hue imperial court army in Vietnam was far from being the opponent of the invading army such as France, and was forced to start guerrilla warfare by the invading army without any ability to fight back, and finally signed the humiliating "Treaty of Friendship with France and Spain", ceding a large area of southern territory.
From 1873 to 1874, Vietnam fought the Second Vietnamese-French War with France.
After consolidating the achievements of the First Vietnamese-French War, the French colonists occupied the three provinces of Vietnam and continued to advance north. Fortunately, with the help of the Chinese rebels, Vietnam won the Second Vietnamese War.
However, at this time, the corrupt Vietnamese rulers were afraid of provoking French retaliation and were eager to make peace with France, and finally signed the Treaty of Saigon with France, allowing France to maintain law and order within the Nguyen Dynasty and recognizing French rule in Jiaozhiina.
Then from 1883 to 1884, the Third Vietnamese-French War broke out again, and France sent more than 4,000 troops to attack the capital Hue in two ways and eliminate the Chinese rebel Black Flag Army, citing the resistance of the Vietnamese army and the killing of French soldiers.
The weak and incompetent rulers of the Nguyen Dynasty were only concerned with fighting for power and profit, and after the capitulationists won, they signed the Treaty of Hue with France, and France gained the "right of protection" of the entire vietnamese state.
However, this treaty provoked a large-scale revolt of the Vietnamese people, and the struggle against France became more and more intense.
It was not until 1885 that France basically completed its occupation of Vietnam, and through three predatory wars of aggression, Vietnam eventually became a French colony.
War of Resistance Against France:
From September 1945 to July 1954, vietnam and the French colonists who had ruled Vietnam for nearly 70 years broke out into a larger nine-year war of resistance against France.
The two sides invested nearly 1.2 million regular troops and militia guerrillas in this war, of which France invested more than 100,000 troops, including land, sea and air forces, Vietnam invested 85,000 National Guard troops, and about 1 million local troops and militias.
With the continuous support of new China's military supplies, this war finally followed the victory of the "Battle of Dien Bien Phu" that determined the fate of Vietnam, announcing the end of French rule in northern Vietnam and the victory of the War of Resistance against France.
War to Resist US Aggression:
In 1955, with the end of world war II, the international order gradually returned to normal, and France, as the aggressor, began to withdraw from occupied South Vietnam in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Agreement.
For the sake of its own strategic interests, the United States tried in vain to use South Vietnam as a bridgehead against the Socialist Camp in Asia, such as the Soviet Union and China.
In flagrant violation of the Geneva Agreement, the United States seized the opportunity to use military assistance as an excuse to send troops to infiltrate South Vietnam, gradually replacing French forces, establishing a puppet government of Saigon in South Vietnam, obstructing the reunification of the North and South Vietnamese regions, enslaving the South Vietnamese people, burning and looting, and doing all kinds of evil, turning South Vietnam into a colony of the United States.
In order to realize the reunification of Vietnam and peace on the Indochina Peninsula as soon as possible, North Vietnam launched the Vietnam War against the United States with the support of the socialist camp countries such as China and the Soviet Union, and with the puppet government of Saigon in South Vietnam, which was enslaved and supported by the United States and other capitalist countries.
The large number of people on both sides of the war, the breadth of the war, the thoroughness of the damage caused to Vietnam, and the very serious impact on Vietnam.
According to statistics, more than 850,000 South Vietnamese troops participated in the war, more than 540,000 people directly participated in the war in the United States, and South Korea, as a loyal "running dog" of the United States, also dispatched 48,000 people to help the United States fight the Vietnam War.
The number of North Vietnamese participants in the war was about 690,000, and the number of Chinese logistics support forces and direct combatants assisting North Vietnam was 320,000.
That is to say, mainly around the South Vietnamese region and parts of Laos and Cambodia as a battlefield, the two sides have carried out a major local war with a scale of more than 2 million people.
The Vietnam War was also the war in which the United States had the largest number of participants, the largest number of deaths, and the greatest impact on the United States since World War II.
The war was very cruel to Vietnam, and the United States used all modern weapons, including chemical weapons, except nuclear weapons, to inflict very complete damage on the Vietnamese people and Vietnamese society.
How cruel is that? According to statistics from both sides, the death toll in South Vietnam was between 220,000 and 310,000 in this war of resistance against the United States, more than 1.1 million in North Vietnam, and nearly 60,000 american soldiers. Where the war passed, the city was in ruins, the land was scorched, and there were dead bodies that had not been buried.
China's self-defense counterattack against Vietnam:
In the 1970s, Vietnam was reunified with the unreserved help of China, and the vietnamese authorities after the reunification did not regard the stabilization of Vietnamese society and the development of the country's economy as a top priority, but were carried away by victory.
With the support of the Soviet Union and the United States, Vietnam has vigorously carried out expansionist movements, regarding its former benefactor China as the "number one enemy" and attempting to occupy China's territory by force and invade its neighbors.
In order to curb Vietnam's wolf ambitions and defend the country's territorial security, in February 1979, the Chinese army launched a punitive limited war against Vietnam.
Vietnam's millions of troops were not opponents at all in the face of the Chinese army, and the Chinese People's Liberation Army was overwhelming, and soon basically controlled the strategic areas in northern Vietnam, and carried out punitive damage to Vietnamese factories, schools, bridges, roads and other facilities built with Chinese aid, and won the victory in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam.
Since the northern region of Vietnam is a heavily industrialized area developed in Vietnam,
According to the relevant information, the punishment of the Chinese army directly rewinds the Vietnamese economy by "20 years".
Punished this ungrateful "white-eyed wolf" fiercely.
Then, in the decade from 1979 to 1989, Vietnam and China engaged in a decade of skirmishes, including mine warfare on the Sino-Vietnamese border, which did not end until 1989, when the two sides announced the resumption of friendly relations.
It can be seen that in more than 300,000 square kilometers of Vietnamese land, due to the early imperialist aggressors and the wrong policies of the Vietnamese government itself, there was a war for nearly a hundred years, and the Vietnamese people were tortured in these continuous wars. It's good to be able to keep food and clothing.
Especially in the 30 years from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, Vietnam has been in a state of war, the war has seriously depleted the country's national strength, destroyed Vietnam's economy, made Vietnam mournful, the people are not happy, even agriculture has been seriously damaged.
The 30-year war in modern times has seriously affected vietnam's economic development, and the protracted war has almost hollowed out the home of Vietnam.
But even after the Sino-Vietnamese War with China and the punishment of the Chinese army, Vietnam still did not repent during this period.
Still immersed in the illusion of "the world's third military power", a country of 50 million people has maintained a huge army of more than 1 million, and military expenditure accounts for almost 50% of the national budget.
It can be said that the war and the misjudgment of its own war situation have seriously dragged down Vietnamese society and vietnamese economy, and to a large extent led to the stagnation or even regression of Vietnam's economic development.
The second factor that caused Vietnam to be "poor" and had to break free from the illusion of "the world's third military power", take the initiative to disarm 500,000 people, and carry out innovation and opening up is that the economic assistance received by Vietnam is almost gone.
As we all know, whether it was Vietnam's War to Resist France or vietnam's War to Resist the United States, China provided continuous and large-scale economic assistance to Vietnam, a "brother country", including military materials, infrastructure construction, factory construction and cash assistance.
Let's take a look at China's war and reconstruction assistance to Vietnam between 1950 and 1978:
According to relevant data, during the Period of Vietnam's War to Resist the United States alone, China's assistance to Vietnam could arm almost 2 million troops, which was worth as much as 4 billion yuan at that time, and if it is calculated according to current prices, I am afraid it will be at least close to the scale of 50 billion yuan.
In the period from 1950 to the outbreak of China's self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, China's aid to Vietnam and the military expenditure of Chinese troops to Vietnam totaled about $20 billion at the international price at that time.
In terms of materials, during this period,
The various kinds of aid provided by China to Vietnam were equivalent to about 20.5 billion yuan at the national price at that time.
These include 5 million tons of grain, 2 million tons of oil, 35,000 cars, more than 600 ships, 176 ships, more than 70,000 cannons, more than 170 aircraft, more than 550 tanks, and so on.
Moreover, the length and quantity of China's assistance to Vietnam are rare in the world, which is also the fundamental reason why Vietnam has Chinese gritted its teeth after treating China as its "primary opponent".
And this is also an important reason why Vietnam dares to maintain an army of more than 1 million people.
But after Vietnam "betrayed" China, China almost completely cut off its assistance to Vietnam, and it was not until recent years that China began to provide small-scale assistance to Vietnam in order to take care of the revolutionary friendship of the older generation of leaders, but the scale of assistance was no longer what it used to be.
In addition, due to Vietnam's hegemonism and sanctions by many countries, some socialist countries that originally provided economic assistance to Vietnam, which also belonged to the camp of socialist countries, stopped their assistance to Vietnam.
And, starting in the 1970s, Vietnam received at least $1 billion a year in aid from the Soviet Union.
However, from the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union gradually lost in the global struggle with the United States, and the Soviet economy was also dragged down by the competition of the United States and fell into an economic crisis. In order to solve its own problems and reduce expenditures, the Soviet Union also gradually stopped economic assistance to Vietnam.
The reduction or even cessation of a large amount of aid has exacerbated Vietnam's fragile economy, which was already devastated by the protracted war.
Vietnam has been unable to maintain the size of the huge army, and the Vietnamese government's finances have been dragged down, unable to promote the development of the domestic economy.
The third reason that caused Vietnam to wake up from the dream of hegemony, take the initiative to disarm 400,000 people, and carry out innovation and opening up is the stimulation of neighboring China.
As we all know, since China carried out a thorough reform and opening up policy under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the country's economic vitality has achieved unprecedented liberation, with an average annual economic growth rate of 9.8%, and the GDP has risen from 364.5 billion yuan in 1978 to 1 trillion yuan in 1986 in only 8 years.
Per capita GDP has gradually risen from low-income countries to middle-income countries, with China's GDP per capita reaching only 381 yuan in 1978 and 1112 yuan in 1987.
In terms of taxation, in 1978, China's national fiscal revenue and tax revenue were only 113.23 billion yuan and 51.93 billion yuan, while in 1986, China's national fiscal revenue was 212.201 billion yuan, and the tax revenue also reached 209.073 billion yuan, which doubled several times in 8 years.
The major achievements of China's reform and opening up have been looked at by all countries in the world, and they are naturally seen by Vietnam as China's neighbor.
Keep in mind that if the Vietnamese leaders at this time did not have "envy, jealousy, or hatred" for China's development, no one would believe it.
On the other hand, before Vietnam implemented "reform and opening up" with reference to China in 1986, prices in various parts of Vietnam soared, the Vietnamese dong depreciated sharply, the inflation rate was as high as 700 percent, the economy was sluggish, lacked vitality, and still relied heavily on agriculture as an important source of taxation.
All these circumstances have caused Vietnam's policy of disarmament, troop reduction, and innovation and opening up to the point where it is on the arrow and has to be done, otherwise the ruling position of the Vietnamese government is likely to be shaken, and the division between the north and the south of Vietnam will be staged again.
Some people of insight in the Vietnamese Party witnessed in China the strong economic vitality brought about by China's implementation of the "reform and opening up" policy and made remarkable economic achievements.
The party decided to let the next Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Nguyen Nguyen, implement a policy of "innovation and opening up".
In 1986, the Long March officially announced the resignation of all posts in the Vietnamese Party and recommended Nguyen Van Linh, who has studied economic construction, as the core of the Party's leadership, and Vietnam officially began to change its development model and foreign diplomacy direction to improve relations with China.
Also in this year, under the leadership of Nguyen Van Ling, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam began to implement the Vietnamese version of the "reform and opening up" policy, that is, the "reform and opening up" we mentioned earlier, requiring Vietnam to actively develop a diversified commodity economy, expand foreign trade, attract foreign investment, develop the private economy, and expand the right of enterprises to operate independently.
In October 1987, Nguyen Van Ling published an article in Vietnam's "Communism" magazine and further pointed out that Vietnam currently belongs to the primary stage of the socialist transition period, and "the main task of the current primary stage is to make the economy and society basically stable and create conditions for large-scale industrialization in the future."
In 1991, the Communist Party of Vietnam held the "Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam", at which the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam once again emphasized and established the overall goal of "taking economic reform as the center".
Later, at the "Eighth and Ninth Congresses" of the Viet Cong, it emphasized learning from China's experience to continue to deepen reform.
After 1996, with the deepening of Vietnam's reform and opening up, Vietnam's rapid economic development, Vietnam also tasted the sweetness of innovation and opening up, Vietnam officially established "innovation and opening up" as Vietnam's long-term national policy.
Generally speaking, the Vietnamese authorities' sudden choice of disarmament, military reduction, and innovation and opening up in 1986 was the result of the common choice of the Viet Cong and the Vietnamese people, mainly forced by "poverty" and had to do so.
In other words, Vietnam's initiative to abandon the dream of hegemony is not sincere, but the result of being forced by reality.
Once vietnam's economy completely improves, no one can guarantee the comeback of the ambitions of the former "little bully".
We need to be vigilant about this.