The Origins and Evolution of Vietnam's Doi Moi Foreign Policy of 1986

Abstract Drawing on new archival evidence, this paper focuses on the origins of Vietnam's foreign economic policy of 1986, better known as doi moi (renovation). The existing scholarship contends that doi moi ideas emerged amid Vietnam's socio-economic crisis during the late 1970s through a bottom-up process of market-oriented activities by local authorities. I argue, however, that these scholars overlooked the early ideas of economically engaging the West to obtain advanced technology to raise the Vietnamese products’ quality, and therefore, their competitiveness in the socialist bloc. Following the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, Vietnamese diplomats-turned reformists studied the role of western technology and capital investment in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Politburo entrusted Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Co Thach, a senior advisor to Hanoi's chief negotiator Le Duc Tho in Paris, to conduct a series of clandestine studies on the role of western technology in economic relations between East and West. Thach's learning about the West's technological revolution led them to the shocking conclusion that the Soviet bloc was at least a decade behind the West in technological development. The fear of Vietnam being trapped in economic backwardness propelled these reformers to advocate bold ideas of economically engaging the West in the post-Vietnam War era to extract advanced technology to support post-war economic development and modernisation. However, it took an economic crisis (1977–78), followed by another costly two-front war against Cambodia and China between 1979 and 1985, for reformist Nguyen Co Thach's ideas to prevail over the conservative faction's military-first policy.