Speaking Out in Vietnam: Public Political Criticism in a Communist Party-Ruled Nation.

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Author: Vasavakul, Thaveeporn

Speaking Out in Vietnam: Public Political Criticism in a Communist Party-Ruled Nation. By Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Hardcover: 224pp.

Although Vietnamese citizens are able to speak their minds, the manner in which they do so varies according to the political situation they find themselves under. For instance, during the period of state socialism (1951-89), collectivized farmers displayed their disapproval of state planners' compensation and agricultural price policies by neglecting cooperative agricultural lands in favour of their own private plots. Managers and workers at state-owned enterprises misreported capacity information and exaggerated input demand in response to central planners' ambitious targets and meager inputs. Such acts of disapproval were public, systemic and political, forcing authorities to pilot reforms that propelled Vietnam's transition away from central planning to a market economy. As the Soviet communist bloc disintegrated, intellectuals, writers and even some senior leaders of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) publicly cast doubt on the regime's viability. In looking at recent socio-political developments in Vietnam, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet's Speaking Out in Vietnam: Public Political Criticism in a Communist Party-Ruled Nation confirms that the practice of speaking out publicly remains a prominent and persistent political feature of Vietnam's one-party system in the reform era.

Speaking Out in Vietnam investigates four clusters of public political criticism occurring between 1995 and 2015: factory workers protesting their working and living conditions...