Debunking Meo Mun’s Lies About Vietnam
This is Nonla Collective’s official response to the article “The Broken Promises of Vietnam” by “Meo Mun,” first published in Vietnamese on July 14th, 2021, then translated to English and released on August 20th.
You can read the original article (in Vietnamese) here.
You can read the English translation here.
Since being released in English, this article has been spread far and wide by Western leftists, and to date we haven’t seen any critical assessment of the claims made in the article. Right away, we want to point out something which non-Vietnamese might never notice, but which is glaringly obvious to anyone who was born and raised in Vietnam: all of the arguments presented in this argument mirror exactly the arguments which Vietnamese anti-communists and fascists have been spouting for years.
Communist posters in Hanoi, Vietnam.
We want to recognize two things, up front:
- We do not expect non-Vietnamese people to notice these anti-communist dogwhistles and tropes. We do not blame non-Vietnamese people for not understanding the nature of this rhetoric, nor to immediately catch instances of misinformation and distortion of truth, especially given the extreme hostility of mainstream capitalist media and NGOs when it comes to reporting on Vietnam.
- Therefore, we recognize that it is our responsibility, as Vietnamese socialists, to make a case against the distortions presented in Meo Mun’s article, and to try to help non-Vietnamese people to recognize what is, ultimately, reactionary and anti-communist rhetoric thinly veiled as a good-faith critique of the Vietnamese revolution from an anarchist perspective.
Growing up in Vietnam, we tend to have “trained ears” to spot anti-communist and fascist rhetoric, couched and concealed as progressive “concern,” right away. This is because we are confronted with this kind of rhetoric every single day on social media by “three-stripe” anti-communists who spread misinformation and try to whip up anti-communist sentiment in our communities.
Meo Mun’s arguments are the exact same arguments used by reactionaries that Vietnamese socialists (who compose the bulk of Vietnamese society) are very familiar with. This rhetoric is rooted in the idea that Vietnam’s revolution presented a “false promise” of a “communist society.” The reactionaries contrast the idea of a “communist utopia” which we were supposedly promised with the current quite-imperfect material conditions which we face. This is a distortion of our revolution and its promises, as no serious Vietnamese socialist, going all the way back to the 1920s, has ever expected a quick and easy path to communist. On the contrary, we have always known that building socialism would be a long and difficult process, especially since the downfall of the Soviet Union and the rise of capitalist-imperialism to dominate the globe.
In the article we are addressing, Meo Mun has signalled clear intentions: this is an article which advocates directly for the overthrow of our socialist revolution, justified by the claim that “the Communist Party of Vietnam leaders are not real communists,” and that CPV members are inherently reactionary.
We maintain that if Meo Mun’s ambitions were fulfilled — if our revolutionary government were to be overthrown — it would constitute just one more in a long line of USA-led capitalist-imperialist counter-revolutions against socialism, and the people of Vietnam would suffer tremendously, as the people suffered in Chile after the CIA-backed coup against Allende, as the people suffered in Indonesia after the State Department-backed genocide of over one million communists in Indonesia under Sukarno, and similar to what happened in Russia back in the 1990s, with all the privation and exploitation that goes with toppling socialist revolutions, up to and including open and widespread child prostitution. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that we debunk Meo Mun’s lies and set the record straight for the security of our own people and the success of our own revolution.
As such, we will now present Meo Mun’s article in its entirety, with our own commentary and responses to each point made. We want to make it clear that we do not believe Vietnam is a “perfect country.” We also want to make it clear that many of the critiques presented in Meo Mun’s article are accurate, and reflect problems with the Vietnamese government and society which must be addressed. It is not our intention to present Vietnam as “above critique.” Unfortunately, it is the case that reactionary propaganda tends to present facts dishonestly, so as to build narratives and fictions which obfuscate the truth, as we discussed in this article on Western reporting on Vietnam.
Now, let’s begin reading Meo Mun’s article:
Vietnam 2021, the mood in the air seems to be that of optimism. The government’s relentless pursuit of a Zero-COVID strategy has won them widespread approval both domestically and internationally. The economy managed to squeeze out positive growth whereas many of its neighbours suffered a decline from the pandemic. Yet underneath all this bravado, one could sense that something is amiss. There’s this nagging feeling that no one seems to be able to put a finger on. Almost as if, there is a spectre haunting Vietnam, the spectre of communism — the true kind without any bells and whistles.
As Emma Goldman astutely observed, there was no communism in the USSR. The same can be said of present-day Vietnam. The party in power — the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) — has long strayed from the path to communism.
We want to be absolutely clear: nobody has ever claimed that Vietnam is “communist.” Not the members of Nonla, not the Communist Party of Vietnam, not Ho Chi Minh, nobody. Communism is a stateless, classless society. Communism is the goal of socialist revolution. Emma Goldman was absolutely correct to assert that the USSR was not “communist,” and no Soviet communist would have ever claimed that the USSR was “communist.” The USSR was attempting to build towards communism through the dialectical process of socialist revolution.
We will try to avoid diving too deeply into the Marxist-Leninist theory and Ho Chi Minh thought which guides the communist revolution of Vietnam; suffice to say: we are hoping to build communism. In today’s age, we only refer to our nation as socialist. We are the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This indicates that we are in a transition state between capitalism and communism.
The stateless, classless society of communism is our end goal. So, in order for Meo Mun to back up the claim that the Communist Party of Vietnam has “long strayed from the path of communism,” it will need to be demonstrated that Vietnam is not moving towards the goal of developing socialism to eventually transition into communism. Let’s see if that case is made through the rest of this article.
Meo Mun continues:
Before the current party leader assumes his third term (2020–2025), he formulated an ambitious road map, in which by 2045 Vietnam would become a “developed” country, on par with Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. To us radicals, this is a betrayal to the working class, indigenous people, and marginalised groups who sacrificed so much for Vietnam’s revolution. But as Marxist-Leninists with bright eyes and adamant conviction would tell you, that’s all part of the plan™ and 2045 will be the long-awaited year when Vietnam finally advances to a classless, moneyless, and stateless country.
However, a closer look at Vietnam’s society today would show that the plan is but an illusion, and the promises are mere justification for the ruling class and capitalist class to continue sucking the life out of Vietnam for a while longer. The difference between what the party elites preach and what they allow to happen in reality is that between day and night.
There is no indication whatsoever that Vietnamese people feel “betrayed.” According to the Asian Barometer Survey, an independent survey conducted by National Taiwan University, showed that 85% of Vietnamese were satisfied with the way democracy works in our country over two different survey periods, the highest consistent results of any Asian nation surveyed:
The same survey asked how respondents defined democracy, and Vietnamese people, more than people in any other country surveyed, defined democracy as “Social Equity.” Vietnamese people also, by a wide margin, ranked “Freedom and Liberty” as the least popular definition of “democracy” out of any other surveyed country:
Combined, these data points indicate that Vietnamese people are much more likely to be concerned with material concerns and much less concerned with liberal idealist notions of “freedom and liberty,” yet we still overwhelmingly support the democratic institutions of our revolutionary government.
That said, Vietnam is a poor and developing country. We have much less wealth than more developed capitalist countries in Asia, such as Japan or South Korea. So why would people with a materialist mindset, concerned with material conditions, rate our government so favorably, considering that we are, to this day, a poor country?
It’s because we Vietnamese people can see, firsthand, the rapid development of living conditions which we ourselves have benefitted from over time.
Nearly every member of Nonla Collective grew up in what can only be described as abject poverty. In our youth, in the 1990s, when most of us were children, we suffered tremendously, largely due to the cruel comprehensive embargoes which the United States placed on Vietnam up until 2006. We grew up without running water, we grew up with unstable access to electricity, we grew up malnourished. But through our lives, as we grew up, we watched Vietnam develop extremely quickly. We saw our parents get access to running water — not through free market schemes, but through direct government intervention. We saw the electrical grid stabilize. We saw wealth enter our country. And we know that it was not because of capitalism, but in spite of it.
This article, by the Communist Party of Vietnam’s magazine Communist Review, explains the basics of Vietnam’s socialism-oriented market economy. If you are a Western leftist, and you are skeptical of the concept of a “socialism-oriented market economy,” we understand that. But there’s a reason that 85% of us are in favor of our democracy right now, and it’s because we have lived through the material benefits of our socialist-oriented market economy.
90% of Vietnamese people own their own homes. 90% of us have full access to healthcare. Compared even to many wealthy countries, these stand as remarkable achievements, especially when you consider the privation of Vietnamese society under colonial and imperialist domination into the 1970s. Today, we have stable electricity, running water and plumbing, and our recent victories over COVID (which even Meo Mun recognized) have shown us that our society truly values every human life.
We also know, very well, that Vietnam was bombed “into the stone age” as USA general Curtis LeMay so glibly put it and intoxicated with agent orange, less than fifty years ago. The horrendous devastation of our nation is something we all know well. Most of us have family members who fought and died in the war, or died in USA bombing runs over our civilian population centers. We’ve seen the bomb craters in our villages, and we have seen the scars of the war left on the bodies and in the eyes of our parents and grandparents.
It is against this wanton devastation of our entire nation’s infrastructure, in these dire material conditions, that we are trying to build socialism. Nobody in Vietnam ever expected any of this to be easy. And yet, today, quality of life and income are advancing with extreme rapidity, despite our horrific starting point.
Marx and Engels clearly explained how to build a classless, stateless, communist society society — and one of the primary principles is that the proper material conditions must first be met before the transition to communism can truly begin. That is why we, Vietnamese socialists, believe that this stage of socialism is a necessary step that will allow us to collectively accumulate wealth in a harsh imperialist environment before striving towards communism.
By Meo Mun’s logic, we should immediately dissolve the revolutionary government we have spent decades building, and that doing so would somehow allow us to immediately achieve a “perfect communist society.” This is Ultra Leftist thinking which does not recognize the material conditions of reality. Socialism is a world of abundant, advanced productive forces, not poverty and scarcity.
This article by the Communist Review (again, the Communist Party of Vietnam’s political magazine), admits openly that we are aware of the many economic problems and contradictions which currently face our society:
“Socially, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, the quality of education, healthcare and many other public services is low, culture and social ethics are deteriorating, and crimes and social vices are becoming more complicated. In particular, corruption, waste, and the deterioration of political ideology and personality morality are tending to spread among cadres and Party members.”
The article goes on to explain the nature of our transition to socialism:
“We realize that Vietnam is now in a transitional period towards socialism. During this transition, socialist factors have been established and developed, intermingling and competing with non-socialist factors, including capitalist factors. The intermingling and competing are more complicated and aggressive in the current context of market opening and international integration. Along with positive aspects, there will always be negative aspects and challenges that need to be considered wisely and dealt with timely and effectively. It is a difficult struggle that requires spirit, fresh vision, and creativity. The path to socialism is a process of constantly consolidating and strengthening socialist factors to make them more dominant and irreversible. Success will depend on correct policies, political spirit, leadership capacity, and the fighting strength of the Party.”
After reading these words, how can the Communist Party of Vietnam be accused of offering a “false promise” of communism, when there is clearly such an open admission that we are a long way off from communism, right in a magazine published by the Communist Party of Vietnam?
The article in the Communist Review continues by explaining how the government plans to continue developing our socialist-oriented market economy to address these shortcomings and contradictions in the near future:
“At present, we are revising our growth model and restructuring our economy with greater priority being given to quality and sustainability by focusing on infrastructure, human resources and administrative reforms. Socially, we are continuing to pursue sustainable poverty reduction, improve healthcare, education, and other public services, and enrich the people’s cultural life.”
Now that we have a better understanding of the actual promises and ambitions of the Communist Party of Vietnam, let’s continue reading Meo Mun’s article:
As Vietnam’s economy grows by leaps and bounds, so does the chasm between the rich and the poor. And no amount of welfare and regulation can stop the accumulation of capital or reverse the flow of wealth from the hands of the many into those of a few. Nowhere does this accumulation manifest itself more pervasively than in the system of land ownership. This system allows control of the land to be wrested from the peasants and the common people for little compensation and given to capitalists who often make many times more profit. All across the countries, luxurious residential buildings sprung up but few of those displaced by them can afford to move in.
Meo Mun presents no evidence for these claims whatsoever. First, it’s important to understand that land ownership in Vietnam is all collective ownership, in the form of state ownership. As this site explains, individuals and corporations can never permanently own land at all. In Vietnam, it is only possible to obtain a “land use right” certificate for a piece of land. In most cases, corporations (and especially corporations with significant foreign-investment) can only rent land from the government (up to a maximum of 50 years). As a measure against imperialism which so plagues many capitalist nations in Vietnam, foreign individuals are not allowed the land use right in Vietnam at all.
The claim that Vietnamese people are losing our land to capitalists en masse is laughably absurd. Where is the evidence? We will state again that currently, 90% of Vietnamese people own our own homes. Compare this to South Korea, where fewer than 60% of people own their own homes, the UK or the USA, where only around 65% of people own their own homes.
Of course, ideally, everyone should own their own home, and this is a goal we are actively pursuing. In Ho Chi Minh City, right now, one million cheap houses are being built for low-income residents. In Da Nang, ten thousand cheap houses are being built. And free housing is also provided to people in extreme poverty, and various other vulnerable members of society, as you can see here, here, and here.
The government is not just trying to provide more housing, but better and more safe housing. For example, the province of Thai Nguyen recently moved 55 households, Yen Bai moved 50 households, and Hoa Binh province moved 67 households to safer housing after recent flooding. These households were given free land (300 square meters per household), with each plot of land fully prepared for construction with plumbing, electricity, etc. all connected, along with 20 million Vietnam dong or roughly 800 USD (40 million Vietnam dong for those in poverty) to construct new houses, all to make these families more safe from flooding.
Meo Mun also failed to mention that every person who is born in a rural farming village will be given a piece of a rice field, equal to about 500 square meters, for free, from the government at birth. Moreover, these rice fields can’t be purchased by big capitalists, and only cooperative farming is allowed on these farm plots.
The conversion of land use zoning (for example: from agricultural to residential purposes) is controlled strictly and planned carefully in advance. Rezoning must be approved by the government to change the purpose of the land-use, so a villager can’t just build a house on a rice field and try to sell or rent it for a profit, or it will be demolished by the state.
Just like other countries in the world, when the government wants to purchase land usage rights back from a family, they have to first make an agreement with that family. A family can always refuse if they don’t agree with the price offered, unless the land must be used for important national infrastructure (such as airports). In any case, such a transaction must be based, by law, on mutual agreement, and the court can be used to settle disputes.
All in all, we find it outrageous that Meo Mun presented this claim with no evidence whatsoever when, in reality, as we have demonstrated, Vietnamese people enjoy some of the most generous land rights on Earth.
Let’s now continue with Meo Mun’s article:
The billionaire Phạm Nhật Vượng, whose family own as much wealth as 800,000 Vietnamese, couldn’t have built his empire without public properties being handed into to his pocket in this manner.
First, let us recognize this truth: the fact that billionaires even exist in Vietnam is a contradiction. And this is a contradiction which the Communist Party of Vietnam openly recognizes.
As this article in the Communist Review (again, the official political magazine of the Communist Party of Vietnam) admitted:
“Market economy in essence is an economic system with capitalist government, so there is a conflict between the market economy with socialism and socialist orientation.”
It is recognized, even by the Communist Party of Vietnam, that this contradiction may be seen as dishonest trickery by anticommunists, as the article continues:
“…the explanations on the socialist-oriented market economy are just an invisible hat for researchers to avoid facing the internal contradiction between capitalism and socialism, or avoid the question how embarking on the journey of capitalist market economy can reach socialist destination.”
The article continues that it’s vital for the socialist government to closely monitor and regulate the socialist-oriented market economy to work towards negating this contradiction:
“Nevertheless, the state’s regulation in the condition that the private ownership of the means of production still exists is, to some extent, limited. In order to achieve the goal of rich people, a strong country, and a fair, democratic and civilized society, it is necessary to inherit the achievements of the existing society in order to overcome the conflict between the high level of socialization of the labor force and the private ownership of the means of production, which means moving to socialism.”
So, we recognize — as the Communist Party of Vietnam recognizes — that billionaires and wealthy capitalists existing in a socialist nation is a contradiction, and one which must ultimately be negated by moving to socialism. All that said, what of Meo Mun’s claims that Phạm Nhật Vượng, the owner of Vietnam’s largest private corporation Vingroup, had “public properties being handed into to his pocket?” Wouldn’t that be a pretty damning claim that our revolutionary government is siding with capitalists, rather than moving towards socialism, as they claim?
It would be, if it were true. But there is no evidence that we can find (and none provided by Meo Mun) that Phạm Nhật Vượng or Vingroup ever received “public property” “into his pocket.”
On the contrary, we can provide evidence that the city of Hue took back land which Vingroup rented in 2020, and that Vingroup asked the Vietnamese government to allow them to pay their rent once every year instead of once every five months due to COVID-related shortfalls, and that Vingroup paid the city of Thanh Hoa 109 billion Vietnam Dong (nearly $5 million USD) to rent land for fifty years for a school.
The fact is that Vingroup does not own any land. The only way Vingroup can control land is by renting it from the government, just like any other corporation.
So, while we recognize that the mere existence of billionaires is a huge contradiction, we must push back strongly against the idea that billionaires receive free land from the government, and we believe that the system of only allowing limited land rental from the state is a reasonable check against corporations and capitalists buying and accumulating permanent ownership of our national resources and assets.
In Vietnam, capitalists are not allowed to become government employees, nor are they allowed to become members of the military and police, nor become managers of state-owned enterprises.
Vietnam bans the owners of large corporations from joining the Communist Party of Vietnam. Nobody who owns a business with more than 200 employees (agriculture/seafood sectors) or with more than 100 employees (all other sectors) is eligible for membership of the party, and any member who owns a small business must obtain special permission from the party to join. As of 2020, out of 5,300,000 members of the Communist Party of Vietnam, only 2,574 small business owners are members of the party (and, again, no owners of large corporations).
Politicians are not allowed to accept campaign contributions from anyone, and they are not allowed to run advertisements for their political campaigns. The only “campaigning” which any politician is allowed to do is at official election meetings where every candidate gets an equal amount of time to speak.
Compare this to capitalist nations, where billionaires and capitalists buy or become politicians openly. We are not denying that corruption is a problem in Vietnam — even the Communist Party of Vietnam admits that corruption is a problem, and imprisons corrupt officials on a regular basis. There are plenty of examples of wealthy people being prosecuted and punished for corruption, such as the billionaire Bau Kien, who received a 30 year prison sentence because he tried to gain control of the finance sector of Vietnam. (You can see just a few other examples of wealthy capitalists and high-ranked government officials being prosecuted for corruption here, here, and, for a very recent and high profile example, here).
So, our system is not perfect, and, again, we do recognize the contradiction of a society that is simultaneously trying to build socialism while allowing billionaires to even exist, but at the very least we can rest assured that capitalists do not have direct access to the party, nor to the national assembly, and we have strong checks against capitalist influence in Vietnamese political candidacy and governance.
We should also point out the anti-monopoly policies which Vietnam has instituted. For example, the government has required many divisions of Vingroup to either shut down or be transferred to the other corporations so that Vingroup could not become a “Samsung of Vietnam” which would wield too much power or be too big to fail.
Corporations can also be directly ordered to comply with government instructions. For example, when COVID broke out, Vingroup was ordered to produce ventilators and to invest in Vaccine technology (which they COULD NOT PROFIT FROM) under the direction of the Communist Party.
Ultimately, we know that billionaires are a problem and a massive contradiction. It’s clear that Vietnam will have to deal with these contradictions as we move towards socialism. But we think it’s important to understand and recognize the limitations placed on capitalists in our country, and the very real protections we have from permanent mass accumulation of wealth and national assets such as land in Vietnam in considering our path to socialism. Meo Mun’s omission of these facts constitutes a huge distortion of reality in Vietnam.
Now, back to Meo Mun’s article:
Vietnam’s already precarious ecosystem and indigenous communities also pay a heavy price for this rapid economic development. The plan for the electricity sector until 2045 gave some concession to renewable energies whilst supporting the construction of many new coal power plants, ignoring their huge CO2 footprint and many warnings about the link between coal power and the PM2.5 fog that covers major cities, threatening the well-being of millions. In the mid-2010s, hundreds of small hydroelectric power plants sprung up in the mountainous area around the country to sate the power-hungry cities and factories. These plants not only disrupted the river network and deprived the downstream agricultural land of essential sediment, they also caused untold damages to indigenous communities during construction and operation. Solar energy plants in Ninh Thuận robbed the indigenous Chăm of their ranching land. The Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s primary rice cultivating area, is facing an existential threat from the many dams being constructed upstream in Thailand and China. And at the same time as a national project to plant one billion trees is ratified, numerous approvals went to capitalists so they can transform thousands of hectares of farm and forest land into resorts and golf courses.
Coal and hydroelectric power plants are traditionally the cheapest and most abundant sources of energy in Vietnam, so it made sense (and, indeed, practically speaking, was the only option) to develop these energy sources when we started rebuilding from post-war devastation and abject material conditions in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Energy security is very important for Vietnam because it affects food security and national security, so Vietnam was forced to make due with what was possible and available at the time to ensure we had enough energy to sustain our economy. It’s important to note that we were under comprehensive embargoes from the USA at this time, and our only powerful ally, the USSR, was faltering by the 1980s.
If we can’t meet domestic demand for power, we have to shut down sections of our economy, which would be devastating and deadly for the Vietnamese people.
All this said, yes, it’s absolutely true that coal power plants and hydroelectric power plants negatively impact our environment and quality of life in Vietnam.
This is precisely why we are focusing on building a sustainable green energy system, with an emphasis on solar and wind. In fact, Vietnam was the 2nd largest developer of solar energy on Earth in 2019 (accounting for 10% of development in the world), standing only behind China! Today, Vietnam has the highest yield of solar energy in all of Southeast Asia. That Meo Mun didn’t include this information when discussing green energy is astounding. Recently, our Prime Minister even made the commitment for Vietnam to become a net-zero CO2 emission by 2050, which emphasizes our effort to prevent climate change.
Of course, even with all of this investment, it will take many years to slowly shift away from coal power, because the demand for energy in Vietnam is high. Climate change is a global issue, and the entire planet must work together to solve these issues. Vietnam, being a poor and developing country with an industrial-based economy, must work hard to overcome these challenges, but our government has made many commitments and our investment in green energy is very strong.
Looking to the future, wind power has a lot of potential in Vietnam: Vietnam has some of the best offshore wind conditions in all of Asia, and we are building the largest wind turbines in all of Asia. We believe that Vietnam’s commitment to green energy is sincere, as evidenced by our rapid implementation of green energy and our strong international commitments, and the implication that Vietnam is not taking this seriously is given by Meo Mun with no evidence whatsoever.
Behind all this is a strong sense of nationalism — an effective tool to silence any meaningful criticism against the state, a value which can be utilised to undermine other people’s struggle in the name of an abstract greater good. Nationalism has become the value that determines a Vietnamese citizen’s worth.
It was nationalism that catapulted the Việt Minh into power during the 1940s.
It was nationalism that motivated millions of young Vietnamese to put the nation’s interest above their own as they throw themselves against foreign imperialism. Since the early days of the Party, there has been a consistent effort to cultivate a strong sense of nationalism everywhere. Nationalism is in the Vietnamese children’s curriculum, in our songs, poems, art, and all over the media.
Here, Meo Mun fails to explain what Vietnamese mean when we refer to “nationalism.”
In the west, nationalism usually refers to “right-wing nationalism,” or reactionary and supremacist nationalism. In Vietnam, we practice revolutionary socialist nationalism, which is focused on an end goal of internationalism and eventually dissolving all national boundaries so that all the peoples of the world can live together in peace.
One of our members, Luna, has a whole video explaining this concept. But long story short, by saying “nationalism,” we never imply or proclaim the superiority of Vietnam or the Vietnamese people over anyone else on Earth. Our nationalism is inclusive of all 54 nations (ethnicities) in Vietnam. We love our country, and our people, and we want freedom and equality both domestically and with all other nations on Earth.
As a victim of colonialism, we seek, above all else, self-determination for our own people, and that’s it. That is our nationalism. When we talk of nationalism, we are simply saying that we do not wish to be dominated or controlled by any other nation. We don’t seek to dominate any other nation, we don’t believe that we are better than any other people, we just want freedom and self-determination.
Our nationalism is explicitly opposed to “rightwing nationalism” and national chauvinism, and, again, committed to a future of international solidarity and the eventual dissolution of all nation states through communism.
Meo Mun either doesn’t understand this (which would be very difficult to believe, assuming Meo Mun was actually born and raised and went to school in Vietnam), or intentionally failed to explain this so as to distort the truth about Vietnamese nationalism. By leaving this explanation and distinction out of the article, most Westerners — who are only familiar with Western chauvinist forms of rightwing nationalism — will naturally assume that Vietnamese nationalism is rightwing nationalism.
We can only assume, if Meo Mun is indeed a native of Vietnam, that this rhetoric was a piece of intentional obfuscation meant to confuse the Western audience about our nationalism.
The argument that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist, that the Vietnamese people are nationalist, as opposed to being socialist or communist, is a very common argument used by anti-communist reactionaries.
As Ho Chi Minh wrote in The Path Which Led Me to Leninism:
“At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.”
In a 1923 article in a French newspaper called Oppression Hits All Races, Ho Chi Minh wrote:
“All the martyrs of the working class, like those in Paris, like those in Le Havre, like those in Martinique, are victims of the same murderer: international capitalism. And it is always in belief in the liberation of their oppressed brothers, without discrimination as to race or country, that the souls of these martyrs will find supreme consolation.”
Our nationalism is the same as the nationalism of Fidel Castro, who said:
“If someday we feel that we need to abandon our beloved flag, we will do it if it must be done. As the prelude to the integration and political unity of Latin America. For us, that is a supreme value. Just as someday the world wanted to organize a just world government, not the world under the heel and domination of a super power that imposes its rule. If humanity advanced so far that it began to consider universal economic and political integration, we would give up our flag because we are internationalists. We are not chauvinists, we are not hidebound nationalists. We are patriots, we love our countries, we respect and uphold our national values, but our philosophy is fundamentally that of internationalism. And this makes us much more prepared for integration than anyone else. The political education of our people makes them more than ready for any step in this direction.”
We hope, now, that you understand what we mean when we talk about Vietnamese nationalism.
Now, back to Meo Mun’s article:
One of the greatest successes of the Party has been the conflation of national identity and party loyalty. Modern Vietnamese capitalists like VinGroup or BKAV can be seen taking a cue from the state propaganda machine and incorporated nationalistic elements into the marketing of their products.
Again, there’s no evidence provided to back up this point, so we can only speculate what is meant. Is Meo Mun referring to the fact that Vietnamese companies and the government both encourage Vietnamese people to buy Vietnamese products? If so, we have to say, such “nationalism” is only common sense when trying to build an economy in a developing nation in an imperialist world. We promote Vietnamese products to improve economic conditions for Vietnamese people and to fight against the invasion of foreign corporations.
Ironically, it is the nationalists that claim to inherit Vietnam’s “communist” revolution, yet they are the most vocal group against any and all radical ideals such as animal liberation, gender and sexuality liberation, indigenous autonomy, decriminalisation of sex work, and solidarity with international struggles, such as those in Hong Kong or Myanmar. The nationalist persuasion predictably morphed into a counter-revolutionary, reactionary force draping themselves in red.
Once again, Meo Mun rattles off a string of claims without providing ANY EVIDENCE to back them up.
Why should Vietnamese communists have solidarity with the failed color revolution in Hong Kong? What solidarity does Meo Mun expect communists to give to a movement that advocates directly for explicitly bourgeois democracy?
As for the situation in Myanmar, it is very complicated. Vietnam is not in a position to militarily invade other countries, and even if we were, we are, like all other ASEAN countries, bound by an agreement to never have any military involvement with each other. The only thing we can do in accordance with international law is to send material aid to Myanmar, as well as calls for awareness, which we did.
The claim that Vietnamese socialists (writ “nationalists”) are “counter-revolutionary reactionary force draping themselves in red” is quite bold. We have fought for generations to have freedom and self-determination. We have struggled to maintain our socialist path against terrible odds. Vietnamese socialists defeated the Japanese fascist empire, the French colonial empire, and the USA imperialist empire — three of the mightiest imperialist forces in human history — yet all of these achievements are dismissed with vague vitriol and no evidence whatsoever.
Meo Mun continues:
“Vulnerable victims of Vietnamese nationalism include, but are not limited to:
Queer people, who continue to face a high degree of discrimination in Vietnam. Recent progress in gender and sexuality liberation has largely come from liberal elements, such as the Pride movement, which is nothing more than a marketing ploy for foreign and local companies. Substantial changes, such as the recognition of same-sex families and transgender individuals’ medical needs as rights have been delayed time and time again to prioritise “more pressing matters.”
Two members of our collective are openly LGBTQ+, so please let us respond. As we see it, gender and sexuality liberation has a different character in Vietnam as opposed to capitalist countries precisely because of it NOT being driven by economics. We agree with Meo Mun that bourgeois-liberal identity politics constitute little more than marketing ploys and cynical co-opting of LGBTQ+ issues.
Vietnam’s traditional culture was quite open in many ways in terms of gender and sexual liberty, especially compared to contemporary cultures. For instance, being gay has never been criminalized in Vietnam at any point in recorded history, and we have rich traditions such as the Lên đồng, which allowed trans people to live openly in our society.
Prejudices against gay and trans people in Vietnam were heavily exacerbated by foreign influences: first by feudalism, as Neo-Confucianism imposed upon our society the idea that we must be “breeders” (that we are not patriotic or socially subservient if we do not get married and produced children), and next by colonialism, as the French imposed Western prejudices and intolerances on us for many decades.
Therefore, our LGBTQ+ liberation movement has a much different character than Western countries and must be viewed as such. At a grassroots level, Vietnam has native access and traditional experiences to draw from in our struggle for equivalence and liberation in society. We do not have to have access to capitalist wealth and media influence to spread our messaging, as is necessary in capitalist nations (though we do have extremely popular LGBTQ+ celebrities and significant media representation for gay, trans, bisexual, and queer people on national television, as our bisexual team member Luna documented in part in this video).
In capitalist countries, LGBTQ+ activists can hardly achieve anything without becoming co-opted by the capitalist class in some way, shape, or form. In Vietnam, we have a movement with roots that go back into our history and ties to our community at a personal level. It is very common to see trans performers in rural villages and at night markets, where old people and children gather to watch, and even bourgeois media recognizes that Vietnam’s society and government are becoming increasingly permissive of open LGBTQ+ activity, and becoming a haven for gay and trans people from other, more conservative Asian nations.
In Vietnam, progress of LGBT issues is made not just by dismantling externally-imposed attitudes, but also by tying our liberation struggle to the real material interests of the working class, and to sexual liberation among straight people, as well. It should be noted that Vietnamese women (cis and trans) have also been fighting for increased equality in Vietnamese society since the beginning of our revolution.
It’s obvious that anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes often go hand in hand with anti-gender equality, and the mere existence of LGBTQ+ people can be seen as threatening to the traditional gender status quo of any society, so in Vietnam, LGBTQ+ activists tie our struggles to the gender liberation struggles of the working class.
For example, one of the members of Nonla has a very conservative father who rejected him for being gay (mainly due to Neo-Confucian attitudes of “not having bio-children”). However, his mom is more accepting, probably because she has fought for her own equality in the household, has been able to maintain financial independence, and holds more progressive social views.
As our member puts it: “My mother realizes that being married, having children, and so on — upholding social values which were forced upon us by feudalism — is not the only road to happiness. And once she understands that me being gay is not a medical condition (‘can you still produce children if you are gay?’ ‘Yes, mom, I just *choose* not to’), but rather a genuine natural sexual orientation, she gradually becomes more accepting of it.”
Our member has been able to convince his mother to accept his homosexuality by tying his sexual identity to her own struggles with gender roles as a woman, the pressures she has faced, and her own drive for gender liberation.
Other LGBTQ+ people have expressed similar experiences in Vietnam with Neo-Confucian attitudes about gender, marriage, and having children. In a video interview, one trans woman in Vietnam explained that, before her transition, her parents always put pressure on her to get a good job so she could find a wife and have kids. After her transition, her parents accepted her, but immediately began pressuring her to wear makeup and look beautiful so she could find a husband and have kids.
With all this being said, we must recognize that LGBTQ+ rights in Vietnam still remain an important issue, and much more progress needs to be made. Fortunately, LGBTQ+ community members have been fighting for our rights publicly, with much more activity ramping up over the last decade. And although we have a long way to go, we still have made achievements which should be recognized, especially in terms of social awareness of LGBTQ+ community, increasing acceptance, and relatively low violence towards LGBTQ+ people compared to most other countries on Earth. In addition, the Ministry of Health has officially announced an intention to provide healthcare services for the LGBTQ+ community in its goals for 2021–2030.
Even the bourgeois-imperialist USA organization USAID has recognized progress made in Vietnam over the last decade, writing in a 2014 report that:
“The perception of the media on the LGBT community has also improved over the last few years. From May 2012 to June 2013, there were over 40 radio programmes with the theme of gay and transgender issues in Viet Nam. Millions of subscribers of newspapers were reached, including through articles in mainstream press such as Tuoi Tre, Thanh Nien, Tien Phong, Nguoi Lao Dong, Sai Gon Giai Phong, Phu Nu, An Ninh The Gioi and VnExpress. Broadcast channels such as VTV3, VTV1, VTV4, and VTV6 aired full-length documentaries about transgender life. ICS organized talk shows on sexual diversity and LGBT rights with 30 universities, clubs and creative youth groups in Ho Chi Minh City and Ha Noi, and also reached out to areas such as Can Tho, Nha Trang and Dak Lak. There were also many successful awareness and information events organized by the community. Community members observed that books about LGBT people written by LGBT people themselves have been published. The LGBT movement has also been growing stronger not only with the effort of LGBT people but also with the support from their friends and family, the non-LGBT ‘allies.’ There are now more heterosexual people speaking up against stigma, discrimination, and violence targeting LGBT people and for the equal treatment of LGBT people before the law.”
That said, we are not trying to sugarcoat the situation or pretend there are no problems in Vietnam, and neither is the government. In this article from 2018, the government issued a report admitting that LGBTQ+ students in schools are more likely to face violence and bullying, and that “in order to prevent the problems of school violence, it is necessary to have a comprehensive and strong effort to combat anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes which includes the participation of the whole community. The Government will continue to analyze and work with experts to come up with sustainable and feasible solutions, contributing to overcoming the current painful school-age violence.”
Ultimately, it’s true that our society has many problems when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues. It’s also true that the Vietnamese revolutionary government can and should do more, and more quickly, to address the needs and concerns of LGBTQ+ citizens. But, speaking as LGBTQ+ Vietnamese ourselves, we do not feel as if we need to be “rescued” by foreign-imperialist organizations like USAID, nor do we see how dismantling our revolutionary government would help our LGBTQ+ movement in any way.
Vietnam has our own vibrant, strong, and growing LGBTQ+ liberation movement. In Ho Chi Minh City alone, in 2019, thousands of people showed up to the most recent pride event before COVID-19 broke out, and activism continues even through the pandemic. The government does not restrict or limit our voices in any way, on the contrary, LGBTQ+ stories are shared positively on state media, as even USAID noted in the passage we quoted earlier. Again, we ask, how would immediately dismantling our revolutionary government help LGBTQ+ people in any way?
We hope that you now see that the landscape for LGBTQ+ liberation struggle in Vietnam is complex and multi-faceted, and that the image Meo Mun presents is reductionist and misleading in couching the situation as a simple matter of the Communist Party of Vietnam oppressing and resisting the advancement of LGBTQ+ liberation.
Coming back to Meo Mun’s article, the next assertion is that:
Sex workers, who are stigmatised and targeted by the police. In the eyes of Vietnam’s patriarchal society, sex work isn’t recognised as labour, but a mere immoral ailment to be eliminated. Consequently, sex work is blamed for the spread of STIs like HIV, and sex workers, especially queer sex workers, are cast to the fringe of society.
Sex work in Vietnam, as in most formerly colonized and impoverished countries, has specific characteristics which must be discussed if we are to understand the conditions sex workers face here. Before we can discuss the sex industry today, we should discuss the history of colonization and imperialism in Vietnam and our surrounding region.
This paper by Isabelle Tracol-Huynh, explains how prostitution “was an integral part of the colonial order.” As Tracol-Huynh writes:
“It has been written that the colonial encounter was a masculine adventure, a ‘male power fantasy’ in which native women ‘express unlimited sensuality … are more or less stupid, and above all … are willing’ (Said 1979, 207). In official discourses or in colonial novels, colonisation was essentially the meeting of White men and native women (Copin 1996; Malleret 1934).”
We should recognize, as Tracol-Huynh notes, that prostitution existed before French colonial rule, and sex work existed in various forms before the French came to establish the colony of Indochina.
Side note: we should point out that one example Tracol-Huynh uses of the novel Kim Van Kieu Truyen as evidence of this fact, though the story of that novel takes place in China, not Vietnam.
Before French colonial rule, the Emperor and other powerful, wealthy members of the feudal order held concubines, and certainly, sex workers in lower levels of society as well. But the French brought a new, colonial character to sex work in Vietnam.
As Tracol-Huynh explains, the French authorities systematically created a situation in which colonial regulation of prostitution was used “to forge the racial and gendered categories that were deemed so vital” to “maintain the colonial order by drawing distinctions between men (clients and Europeans and therefore dominant) and women (prostitutes and natives and therefore dominated).”
Songs, postcards, and literature which sexualized the colonization of Vietnam and other nations flourished in France, so much so that French men viewed colonies as a “sex paradise,” as exemplified in the lyrics of the famous song “La petite Tonkinoise” (“the Little Vietnamese Girls”):
In order to finish my service
I went to Tonkin (Vietnam)
Ah! Ladies! Such a beautiful country
It’s the Paradise of women
They are beautiful and faithful
And I became the lover
Of one native woman
Whose name is Melaoli
As Tracol-Huynh writes: “Many observers wrote that, in colonial (Vietnam), prostitutes were ‘legion’ and ‘prostitution was everywhere,’” and goes on to explain that:
“The colonial authorities depicted a prostitution that was omnipresent because their definition of prostitution was ambiguous: ‘the word prostitute has to be put aside because there is a risk in every woman who gives herself, for money or not’ (Coppin 1930, 130). The use of the Vietnamese word con gai {congai in French) by the colonisers revealed something of this idea: in Vietnamese, this word only means ‘girl’ (as opposed to ‘boy’) but, in colonial discourse, the meaning of the word evolved from this original acceptation to become ‘wife,’ from wife to ‘concubine’ (petite epouse) and from concubine to ‘prostitute.’ Through this final transformation, all Vietnamese women were semantically turned into potential prostitutes. In various regulations concerning prostitution in Tonkin, the word congai was used by French colonial authorities as an exact synonym for ‘prostitute.’ This was a semantic issue, but also a legal one. Although the regulations defined a prostitute as a woman who ‘exchanged her own body for money to all and sundry without choice,’ on the other hand, the colonial authorities tried to apply those regulations to other categories of women, such as the songstresses or the soldiers’ concubines. But following the protests of concubines and soldiers, the authorities eventually gave up.”
The French authorities viewed the sexual use of Vietnamese women as part of the political mechanics of administering the colony. Initially, the French encouraged colonists to take Vietnamese concubines as they believed it would help them to acclimate to local conditions, learn the local language, etc., but by the end of the 19th century the administrators began to worry that taking longer-term concubines would be discouraged as the colonists feared that soldiers might become “less civilized” and “descend to the natives’ level.”
“Therefore,” according to Tracol-Huynh, “civilian authorities forbade their employees to have native concubines” and instead “‘concubinage was replaced by more restricted sexual access in the politically safe context of prostitution.’ Prostitution was politically safer because the sexual interaction between white men and native women could be short and passionless.”
Prostitution was widespread under French colonial rule and caused many health problems for the local population. According to Bach Mai hospital in the 1930s, 70 out of 100 prostitutes who came to that hospital, had venereal disease. There were approximately 5,000 prostitutes in Hanoi, and approximately 99% of them suffered from sexually transmitted diseases.
After the French left, organized prostitution became almost unknown in the communist North. Of course, sex work was not completely eradicated, but the systems of brothels and cafes and concubinage which the French had set up disappeared. Meanwhile, in the South, thanks to the introduction of the United States military, prostitution exploded.
Pimps and brothels flourished in the South from 1960–1975, with American GIs as the clients. The Southern puppet government encouraged prostitution for American soldiers and opened countless brothels across the South. In 1975 (after most of the US soldiers had left Vietnam) there were over 200,000 prostitutes in the South of Vietnam, a figure which is 7x higher than the number of sex workers in the South today (and in terms of population ratio, 30x higher than today).
A Saigon official openly stated: “Americans need girls, we need dollars. Why should we limit it? It’s an endless source of dollars.” In 1966, returning from Saigon, US Senator William Fulbright commented: “The US has turned Saigon into a brothel.”
A Saigon magazine reported: “At that “pig market”, every day there were two or three hundred Vietnamese girls standing in line…for American soldiers to choose to take. With a handful of dollars in hand, American soldiers have so many freedoms: the freedom to destroy Vietnamese culture.”
And these accounts do not even include the widespread sexual predation and exploitation which American soldiers committed against Vietnamese children under the guise of prostitution, and the countless examples of mass rape which US soldiers committed against Vietnamese women and girls throughout the war.
It should be obvious to any anarchist that there was a tremendous hierarchy and power differential between French colonists and US imperialists over Vietnamese sex workers, and that this massive sex industry with a highly colonial, capitalist, and imperialist character developed only from the external force of colonization and imperialism.
This is not ancient history. The Southern puppet government fell less than 50 years ago, and the circumstances and events described are in the living memories of many Vietnamese people today.
Sex trafficking and exploitation of women and girls by Western men began with colonization and develops and continues to this day. Again, any anarchist should be able to notice a distinction between a person who chooses freely to engage in sex work as a means of making a living and women and girls who are forced into sex work by traffickers, exploitative pimps, and extreme poverty. We at Nonla collective recognize that sex work is work, but we also know that here are many instances where consent to be a sex worker isn’t truly given — such as sex trafficking, child prostitution, and organized criminals who coerce people into sex work through economic manipulation and violence.
These problems are rampant in Southeast Asia, and sex tourism is a booming industry throughout the region, creating massive demand for sexually exploitative business activity.
Today, the government focuses on the economic aspects of sex work in Vietnam. Sex trade is illegal in Vietnam, however, sex workers are rarely punished in Vietnam (most of the time they are not even fined) and their identities are always protected in the news. Strong punishment is reserved for pimps and “sex agents,” who often use physical violence, debt traps, and other forms of coercion to force women and girls into prostitution or even traffic them abroad (often to wealthy Western countries).
There are many calls from “progressive” national assembly members (such as Duong Trung Quoc) to legalize the sex trade, but it is a capitalist trap because it will allow large scale exploitation and expansion of sex works under the banner of “protecting the health of the workers”. However, until we can find ways to effectively combat the highly exploitative elements of organized criminal coercion, the sex trafficking, and the highly exploitative nature of sex tourism which run rampant in our region, we at Nonla are skeptical of legalizing sex work through such capitalist schemes of licensure and “regulated brothels” which are being proposed.
We recognize that the situation for sex workers is far from ideal in Vietnam, but we also recognize the brutal impact which colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism continue to have on the sex industry in Southeast Asia and Vietnam in particular, and we recognize that finding solutions to the problems we face today won’t be easy, and we ask: how would dismantling the revolutionary government help sex workers in Vietnam?
Anyway, let’s continue with Meo Mun’s article:
Indigenous communities, who have been at the brunt of Kinh’s (or Việt’s) expansionist policies since the time of feudalism, find no assurance under the “anti-imperialist” rule of the current state. Worse off, the oppression they face has escalated, as the state obtains novel and more effective tools to neutralise any resistance, as well as to proactively patrol the indigenous population.
Here Meo Mun tries to equate feudal conflicts between the Kinh (the majority ethnicity of Vietnam) and the 53 ethnic minorities of Vietnam with the current policies of the revolutionary socialist government. This is a misleading narrative, and factually spurious.
First of all, it fails to recognize the long period of colonialism which existed between feudalism and the present day Socialist Republic.
It is true that there were conflicts between different ethnic groups during the feudal era of Vietnam, and it is also true that the Kinh people gradually expanded South over several centuries during the last millennium. This period was quite complex, and involved not just war and competition for frontier lands, but also alliances, intermarriages and even periods of peaceful cohabitation. In short, the pre-colonial era was a complicated period of feudal interchange, which included feudal conquest, but which simply can’t be compared to modern forms of colonial conquest.
And, of course, these feudal dynamics came abruptly to an end when the French established their colony of Indochina, which forcefully “united” the many peoples of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam into one subjugated colony. The French were brutally exploitative of the majority and ethnic minorities alike in Vietnam, and waged long wars against the Hmong people and other ethnic minorities throughout the period of colonization. The French also practiced a “divide and conquer” strategy to try to pit the peoples of Indochina against each other.
According to a document written by Yen Bai province, a mountain province that is predominantly composed of ethnic minorities, “the ruling policy of the French colonialists was to divide and rule, between the wage-earners and the teachers, within each ethnic group, between the Kinh and other ethnic groups.”
Many comrades of ethnic minorities fought and sacrificed greatly for the communist revolution, and today there are many examples of ethnic minority heroes of the revolution, with ethnic minorities represented in the Communist Party of Vietnam going back to the 1920s.
According to an official history of Vietnam:
“Hoang Van Thu was a Tay, a founding member of the Revolutionary Youth Group (the Party’s predecessor organization) since 1926 in Lang Son, was a member of the Standing Committee of the Party Central Committee in the 7th Central Committee Conferences (November 1940) and the 8th (May 5/1941), was captured by the enemy and brought to the execution ground, still maintaining the spirit a communist fighter. Many families and villages in ethnic minority areas have become reliable revolutionary bases. Many ordinary people in the forests and mountains defied the danger, even sacrificed themselves to protect and help revolutionary cadres. For example, Mr. Lo Van Gia, a Thai from Chieng An commune (Son La town) bravely led the way for some high-ranking Party cadres to escape from Son La prison safely in 1943; When he returned and fell into the hands of the enemy, he patiently endured the brutal torture and was killed by them. He was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the People’s Armed Forces. The Ta-oi and Bru-Van Kieu also helped many revolutionary soldiers escape from Lao Bao prison, avoiding enemy pursuits. Dinh Nup, a guerrilla leader of the ethnic Bhana group during the country’s resistance war against the French, is a house-hold name and every Vietnamese knows about his heroism (there is even a movie about him). There are people everywhere in the ethnic minority areas with such enthusiasm and nobility for the Party and the revolution.”
In the decades since the war, the revolutionary government has worked tirelessly to improve the material conditions of ethnic minorities and to include ethnic minorities in the government itself. For example, ethnic minorities compose about 14.7% of the population in Vietnam, yet ethnic minorities compose 17.8% of the National Assembly, and the government is actively trying to increase the number of ethnic minorities in our government.
To be sure, many ethnic minorities face a wide variety of issues in Vietnam, ranging from poverty, to lack of access to utilities, and various other social and economic problems. We don’t wish to sugarcoat or deny the issues which ethnic minorities face in Vietnam. However, we should also acknowledge the efforts which have been made to address these issues by the revolutionary government.
Recently, there has been a tremendous increase in activity to improve the lives and representation of ethnic minorities in Vietnam. According to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, the Vietnamese government has implemented several programs in the last two years to assist ethnicm minorities, including:
- June 2020: the “National Target Programme (NTP) on Social and Economic Development for Ethnic Minority Groups and Mountainous Areas” for 2021–2030. This programme is the first of its kind in that it addresses various issues contributing to the low socio-economic indicators of the EM and it is expected to boost socio-economic development in these areas and drastically reduce poverty amongst the EM. The programme sets multiple targets in the socio-economic sphere, the environment and biodiversity protection, etc.
- December, 2020: A priority regime of admission to public education institutions for ethnic minority students, specifically mentioning minorities with small populations or minorities from areas with difficult socio-economic conditions where there are few if any minorities holding public offices or working as civil servants and public employees.
- Also in December, 2020: An extension to the project: “Strengthening international cooperation to support socio-economic development in ethnic minority areas” to 2025. The project, initiated in 2013, aims to boost support and investments in ethnic minority areas and exchange of experiences with other countries, promote cooperation and exchange of experiences with international organizations, overseas collectives and individuals and thus contribute to the successful and effective implementation of the NTP.
- April, 2021: “Protection and development of ethnic minorities in the 2021–2030 period.” A program which targets ethnic minorities with very small populations, i.e. those with populations of less than 10,000, which will be implemented in 12 provinces and will address the social and health issues affecting these groups, including maternal and child health, malnutrition, child marriages, etc.
According to the Vietnam constitution, article 5, all ethnicities enjoy equal rights to the Kinh people.
Article 5 states that “all ethnicities are equal, unified, and respect and assist one another for mutual development; all acts of national discrimination and division are strictly forbidden.” Article 5 grants the right for every ethnic group to use its own language and system of writing, to preserve its national identity, to promote its fine customs, habits, traditions and culture.
This article has been translated into actual law and policies that favour ethic minorities, such as: prioritized infrastructure investment (not for profit), priority and extra points on entrance exams for ethnic minority students applying to universities, etc. All minorities are free to practice and preserve their culture, language, writing system, and customs. Even customs which are considered exploitative by the revolutionary (such as child marriage) are simply discouraged through education programs, rather than enforcement through state coercion.
Many ethnic minorities live in the mountainous area, which are difficult to access. However, the government provides teachers and doctors who live and work in those regions to provide services to them. Today the government provides wide access to electricity and internet even to the most rugged areas, and this access is constantly improving.
The government of Vietnam specifically created laws and conditions for ethnic minorities to receive land for farming and living to preserve their culture and traditions, and their lands are protected by law. Vietnamese law explicitly offers protection and allocation of land for the preservation of the cultures of ethnic minorities. As the law explicitly states:
“Agricultural land used by residential communities are allocated as follows:
The Residential Community is land allocated by the state, and has the land use rights recognized in order to preserve national identity associated with the customs and practices of ethnic groups.”
Specific laws protecting ethnic minorities in Vietnam include an exemption of taxes on land for ethnic minorities living in under-developed regions and priority for receiving free land.
70% of Vietnamese people overall are farmers, and most Vietnamese farmers work on farmland owned and developed collectively by families and villages.
90% of ethnic minorities are farmers. Any Vietnamese person (whether an ethnic minority or not) will receive free land for farming upon request from the government, and the allocation of this land gives priority to ethnic minorities, as the law clearly states:
“The allocation and lease of land must give priority to households and individuals of ethnic minorities who have no land or lack of production land in the locality.”
This article outlines one of many programs to ensure that ethnic minorities receive land for farming and to protect their cultural identities. From 2006–2016, in one district (Quy Chau) of Nghe An Province, the government gave 78 ethnic minority communities a total of just over 1,400 hectares (about 14 square kilometers) of land. The same program also gave 40,000 hectares (400 square kilometers) of land to 8,335 ethnic minority households.
One reason the government gives ethnic minorities priority access to land is that one of our big priorities is recovering our forests, which ethnic minorities are very skilled at. In 1990, Vietnam had only 90,000 square kilometers of forestland — only about 27% of Vietnam was covered by forest. Thanks in large part to the program of granting more land to ethnic minorities, Vietnam now has 250,000 square kilometers of forest land, or about 42% (higher than the world average of 29%).
It is true that many ethnic minorities have suffered from hardship under COVID-19, which we won’t deny. This is true of nearly all people in rural areas, and we recognize that this should become a priority for the revolutionary government, since rural areas are less likely to recover from financial hardship than urban areas where people have better access to government programs and markets.
Again, we ask, why did Meo Mun neglect to mention the many programs that benefit ethnic minorities in Vietnam? Why did Meo Mun leave out the continuing development of infrastructure and quality of life for ethnic minorities in Vietnam? Why did Meo Mun fail to mention that ethnic minorities have such a high representation in our national assembly? We can only assume that all these details were left out to obfuscate the situation and to create a false narrative.
Continuing with Meo Mun’s article:
Abroad, many defenders of Vietnam’s “socialism” have witnessed and ignored these obvious red flags, for all are justified in the name of their favourite “socialist” state’s development. This demonstrates an apathy and ignorance toward Vietnamese people’s continuous struggle for a just society, not to mention the embracing of capitalism, as long as it is draped in a red flag and claims to be against the imperialistic ambitions of “the West,” especially the US, even when all signs show that communism is and was never on the agenda.
In the end, to exist is in itself a victory, thus a role manifests itself, a role to represent the voices of Vietnamese radicals. We aim at the future working class, the youth, who are both perpetuating and oppressed by capitalism and the state so that they can break through its oppressive chains.
We can’t speak for people who live outside of Vietnam, but we can say with assurance that no socialists in Vietnam “ignore these red flags.” On the contrary, as we feel we have demonstrated throughout our response, we are fully aware of all the problems and contradictions we still have in our society and we are taking active, material steps to change them! The important difference here is that we understand the roots of those problems, we understand the full context of these problems. We understand the historical development which has led to these problems and we have a clear plan for developing our way out of them.
Meo Mun has used a common anti-communist tactic of only providing a limited perspective, with vague inferences and claims that aren’t backed by any evidence, to mislead an unfamiliar reader into drawing the wrong conclusions.
In Vietnam, we are trained in dialectical materialism. We are taught to always seek a comprehensive viewpoint before we speak up. We seek out as much information as we can and try to develop a full understanding of the historical development of situations, based on material evidence, before drawing conclusions.
Meo Mun’s article presents a very narrow outlook which lacks any grounding in evidence and history whatsoever, and we are startled that it has had so much circulation among Western leftists.
Meo Mun claimed that we Vietnamese are “oppressed by capitalism and the state,” but in this article, Meo Mun has perpetuated the same exact red-scare propaganda which we see used so very often by pro-capitalists and reactionaries about Vietnam. Unlike Meo Mun, we at Nonla Collective do not expect anyone to simply take us at face value. We have provided links and sources for every one of our claims. We have tried to give you a historical and comprehensive perspective for all of these problems. We have admitted flaws where they exist in Vietnamese government and society, and we have been open about the contradictions which we know need to be resolved as we build a path towards socialism. We ask only that our readers in foreign countries approach Vietnam with the understanding that our history is rich and complex, and that our struggle for independence and freedom has been an arduous struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and fascism, and that in this context, our struggle towards socialism is arduous, and we are beset on all sides by imperialists and fascism.
In this context, we ask one last time, in concrete terms: how would the people of Vietnam benefit from the dismantling of our revolutionary government? And we think the answer is obvious: no, there will not be any benefits for Vietnamese people by dismantling our revolutionary government and Party, but on the contrary, only misery awaits.
