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Thinking about freedom from Hanoi
SCOTT PIEPHO
Cases and Controversies
Published: January 20, 2017
I first visited Hanoi, Vietnam 14 years ago to complete the adoption of our younger daughter. Last month my family toured Vietnam, in part to show my younger daughter the country of her birth. As a result, I was able to see how the country changed over the last decade and a half.
When I first visited, my dominant impression of Hanoi was how undeveloped it seemed to be. I had expected a gleaming, tech-embellished Asian capital. Instead, I found a city where a 10-story building was a rarity, giving the impression of a small third-world town. The outskirts were dotted with shanties; the whole city seemed to need a fresh coat of paint.
The guide books had noted that the northern districts still lagged well behind the former South Vietnam in development, and the contrast with Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, was stark.
But after spending some time in Hanoi, I saw a spirit of freedom in the form of rampant entrepreneurship, to warm the heart of any American. Scrappy hucksters were everywhere, selling everything from street food to tchotchkes to high-end brand luggage of dubious authenticity. I came back saying that after the war, the Americans and the Communists both lost.
Having returned, I wish to revise my original observation. Certainly capitalism has flourished, visibly raising the quality of life for the Vietnamese. But the Communists retain power, maintaining a political system that remains predominantly unfree.
First, the good news. Vietnam has boasted one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia over the time since I first visited. We saw plenty of the evidence, especially in Hanoi. The skyline now features high-rises that didn’t exist when I first visited, plus dozens of construction cranes building the next wave. The population has spiked and fewer of the residents have to resort to improvised shelters.
Outside Hanoi, we saw the main driver: miles and miles of industrial parks and factories. Some bear logos for familiar companies like Canon and Samsung; others have obscure names typical of businesses that contract with the garment industry.
Unfortunately, the human rights picture remains dire. The Communist Party maintains a monopoly over political power and oppresses any attempt to challenge it. The people retain few political freedoms. Elections are neither free nor fair, and expressions of dissent are routinely punished. According to both Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department, citizens who criticize the government—particularly land rights activists and bloggers—are routinely harassed, arrested and imprisoned.
American political discourse has accepted as a basic principle the proposition that when a country moves toward a market economy, political rights and personal freedom will naturally follow. The most optimistic version of this view holds that government need only maintain the conditions for free markets in order to guarantee all other freedoms.
The experience of countries like Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China belie this idea. While they have created market economies with assortments of economic freedoms, they remain authoritarian. Their political systems no longer feature strict economic control or state ownership of the means of production, but they retain the one-party monopolies of Marxist states.
In retrospect, this should not be surprising. Communism was discredited for immiserating its subjects. Generating support for free market capitalism was relatively easy, requiring little more than appeals to self-interest (and its less savory cousin, human greed).
On the other hand, creating space for personal and political freedoms requires more than free markets. Creating the institutional protections for political and personal rights is difficult work and necessarily threatens the position of those in power.
This is a sobering realization on the dawn of an American administration that has repeatedly shown contempt for the established institutions and norms of our democracy. Institutions such as the White House press corps and various government ethics office (to cite two that have been overtly threatened recently) evolved over decades and have served as part of the apparatus that brought us to this moment. No one should assume that they can be upended without considerable risk.
The Trump administration will likely expand economic freedom with its promise of deregulating the economy. But those freedoms do little to protect political or personal rights. Repealing Dodd-Frank, for example, will not protect the press from vindictive use of government power.
As the next chapter in the American story plays out, the voting public and the other branches of government will need to work to hold this president’s professed authoritarian tendencies in check. We cannot be complacent with expanding economic liberties when protecting our political freedoms.