Cambodia and Vietnam development since the 1970s

[Marmite]

This might take have been covered before but what are the generally accepted reasons why Cambodia has failed so dismally to develop after the excesses of the KR period,while Vietnam has pushed ahead so quickly since their war and looks increasingly like its developing into a modern and complex economy?

We know how many people died in Cambodia but I read today that it's estimate around 3 million civilians and around 1.3m north Vietnamese, south Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters died also. That's a crushing loss and yet they seemed to bounce back quite quickly.

I'm hopelessly ignorant of Vietnamese history. Was there a lot of international or soviet aid to help them?

I can't work out a good reason why two countries who suffered equally devastating occurrences at around the same time have fared so differently since then.

[kinard]

...I can't work out a good reason...

Cambodia is a basket case.

[ផោមក្លិនស្អុយ]

Watch the rice grow, watch the river flow and make love

[doktor_d]

This might take have been covered before but what are the generally accepted reasons why Cambodia has failed so dismally to develop after the excesses of the KR period,while Vietnam has pushed ahead so quickly since their war and looks increasingly like its developing into a modern and complex economy?

We know how many people died in Cambodia but I read today that it's estimate around 3 million civilians and around 1.3m north Vietnamese, south Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters died also. That's a crushing loss and yet they seemed to bounce back quite quickly.

I'm hopelessly ignorant of Vietnamese history. Was there a lot of international or soviet aid to help them?

I can't work out a good reason why two countries who suffered equally devastating occurrences at around the same time have fared so differently since then.

"Soviet aid" and "sitting on the neck of the Cambodians for about a decade" is a good place to start.. Then look into the official rice production numbers in Vietnam in 1979-1989 and compare those to the numbers in 1989-1999. Do the same for Cambodia and ask yourself why the numbers completely shot through the roof in Cambodia after the Vietnamese occupation ended..

Then try to think why that is.. Then consider how long it took to completely dissolve the Khmer Rouge and contemplate how that would affect progress in Cambodia from 1979 to about 2000. Then last but not least look at the development in Cambodia from 2001-2017..

There are plenty of reasons why Vietnam and Cambodia have fared differently since 1979. I'd say one of the reasons is that it's easier to pick yourself up and go on when you've just won a war and you are taking over a still a semi-functional country and economy.

It's perhapsa little different when your entire country and infrastructure and most of it's educated and intellectual people have been completely annihilated.. and you start on square one. With nothing. And just when you're about to start picking yourself up, the big elephant that is Vietnam comes and kneels on your neck for ten years with significant help from Soviet before they went tits up and cut their economic support causing Vietnam to pull out the siphon, pack up and more or less leave for good.

Vietnam has done very well since 1979, but I'd say they've had a pretty good head start on Cambodia and they didn't exactly start on equal terms either.. But hey.. I'm no historian. This is just something I've just scribbled down after a few beers.

You'd do better to pick up a handful of books on the subject and make up your own mind of what the reasons are forthe difference in development in the two countries since 1979.

[vladimir]

The Khmer Rouge targeted the educated.

They removed two or three generations of scholars and artists in a few years, destroyed libraries and centres of learning.

Learning was officially given a negative, even fatal, status. Urban dwelling was deliberately forsaken and neglected in favour of the agricultural dream, and there was a huge exodus to the provinces.

Everything went back to zero, and almost by necessity, education was given a low priority.

It takes time to recover from such an event.

That's just part of the reason, I know.

The Cambodian situation was very different to the Vietnamese situation.

[Hanno]

The North Vietnamese government also targeted teachers and the like, for example during the Tet offensive. Vietnam was a basket case in the 70's and early 80's. There was no food and the big socialist plan had totally failed. I would suggest work ethics are completely different in the two countries, having worked in both.

[Mèo Đen]

The trade embargo imposed by the US didn't help much!

December 1991 WASHINGTON, Dec. 20— The Bush Administration appears to be on the verge of lifting a United States embargo on Cambodia that has been in effect since 1975, when Americans fled the advancing Khmer Rouge and their brutal restructuring of the nation.

"One single clear and continuing theme in United States policy to Cambodia has been our insistence on the inclusion of the Khmer Rouge in the interim Government," Mr. Atkins said in an interview today. "That is really quite astonishing. It sent an enormous signal to the Cambodian people that the killing fields could very easily happen again."

"Every day's delay by President Bush in lifting the trade embargo on Cambodia benefits the Khmer Rouge," Senator Alan Cranston said in a statement issued today. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world ... -near.html

[Hanno]

The trade embargo imposed by the US didn't help much!

There was pretty much nothing available when I first arrived in Vietnam, but that changed in no time at all. Even more important was that the VN government allowed Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) to invest, the economy exploded when that happened.

[Mèo Đen]

The trade embargo imposed by the US didn't help much!

There was pretty much nothing available when I first arrived in Vietnam, but that changed in no time at all. Even more important was that the VN government allowed Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) to invest, the economy exploded when that happened.

Exactly, I have worked with Vietnamese on health related issues in the past,and their determination and resilience has always been impressive. Doi Moi implemented around 1986 I think was largely responsible for the transformation. Which succeeded despite draconian sanctions.

What they had to contend with is worth a read:

The U.S. war against Vietnam didn’t end when President Richard Nixon was forced to withdraw the troops in 1973 or when the Pentagon-controlled southern puppet army collapsed in 1975. Washington continued hostilities by transforming its bombing war into almost 20 years of an economic and political war intended to prevent Vietnam from recovering.

During the Paris Peace Talks of 1973, Nixon promised Prime Minister Pham Van Dong in writing that the United States would pay Vietnam $3.5 billion in reparations. The Hanoi government counted on these reparations to help rebuild its shattered society. But the promise turned out to be worthless.

After Washington’s surrogate regime in Saigon disintegrated, the White House changed its trade rules so that any exports to Vietnam by U.S. companies or their subsidiaries abroad had to be approved by the State Department. This amounted to informal sanctions.

Next, the U.S. government instructed the World Bank—then headed by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara—to suspend desperately needed agricultural grants for Vietnam. This influenced other international agencies to distance themselves from Hanoi’s postwar needs. In addition, Washington froze Hanoi’s assets in U.S. banks, some $70 million. This was pocket change for the U.S. government, but much-needed survival funds for Vietnam.

Worse, in February 1979, China invaded Vietnam. This unfortunate confrontation took place after Hanoi decided to march into Cambodia, China’s ally, to remove the Khmer Rouge from power after enduring repeated provocative military actions on Vietnamese soil.

The Chinese assault was pushed back fairly quickly by the powerful Vietnamese army, but not before China unleashed considerable destruction, adding to Vietnam’s economic woes. The United States, already in a tacit alliance with China against the Soviet Union and seeking one against Vietnam, subsequently tightened the economic screws on Hanoi.

Responding to U.S. wishes in 1979, Great Britain successfully pressured the European Community to halt its aid to Vietnam. That aid had consisted of sufficient milk shipments to nourish Vietnam’s children, since farm animals were killed in the wars and Hanoi had not yet been able to replace them.

Two years later, with Ronald Reagan in the White House, Washington banned U.S. humanitarian groups and agencies from sending any aid, not just to Vietnam but to socialist Laos and Cambodia as well, three poor countries that once constituted “French” Indochina. By now the sanctions were almost total.https://www.liberationnews.org/05-07-01 ... us-w-html/

[RobW]

The trade embargo imposed by the US didn't help much!

There was pretty much nothing available when I first arrived in Vietnam, but that changed in no time at all. Even more important was that the VN government allowed Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) to invest, the economy exploded when that happened.

I've garnered that you and I were contracted into VN at the same time, 1995. But the explosion started in 1992. That's when government officials and patriots were granted land.
I know this because some government officials were in Edinburgh with me and quite literally got phone calls, on the company landline, from their wives saying they had the right to take ownership of the land they lived on.
Vietnam person + opportunity = boom.

[Hanno]

The trade embargo imposed by the US didn't help much!

There was pretty much nothing available when I first arrived in Vietnam, but that changed in no time at all. Even more important was that the VN government allowed Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) to invest, the economy exploded when that happened.

I've garnered that you and I were contracted into VN at the same time, 1995. But the explosion started in 1992. That's when government officials and patriots were granted land.
I know this because some government officials were in Edinburgh with me and quite literally got phone calls, on the company landline, from their wives saying they had the right to take ownership of the land they lived on.
Vietnam person + opportunity = boom.

I started working in Phan Thiet in 1995 and there was really bugger all. Early 1996 the government allowed investment by overseas Vietnamese and construction took off like nobody's business. Admittedly that was in the boonies, but even in HCMC there wasn't much at the time. Miss the days.

[RobW]

The trade embargo imposed by the US didn't help much!

There was pretty much nothing available when I first arrived in Vietnam, but that changed in no time at all. Even more important was that the VN government allowed Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) to invest, the economy exploded when that happened.

I've garnered that you and I were contracted into VN at the same time, 1995. But the explosion started in 1992. That's when government officials and patriots were granted land.
I know this because some government officials were in Edinburgh with me and quite literally got phone calls, on the company landline, from their wives saying they had the right to take ownership of the land they lived on.
Vietnam person + opportunity = boom.

I started working in Phan Thiet in 1995 and there was really bugger all. Early 1996 the government allowed investment by overseas Vietnamese and construction took off like nobody's business. Admittedly that was in the boonies, but even in HCMC there wasn't much at the time. Miss the days.

Wish I could find it but there's a photo of me on the front page of Asia Week with a very broad smile, out of my face on some of the best white powder in the world, entitled "Americans celebrate the lifting of the US embargo".

Let's not forget that this impediment was in place till the end of '95 and Mr. Yuon still got his back up off the wall and made VN what it is today in those short years.
Not that I would take any pleasure in comparing them to our hammock snoozing hosts here of course.

[AE86]

I think another factor which led to Vietnamese returning to Vietnam was the declining economy in the U.S. as well. I know personally of some semi wealthy (maybe a million usd networth) Vietnamese who were choking under the taxation and hyperregulation in the U.S., so when opportunities opened up "back home", they jumped ship almost immediately.

Khmer on the other hand, at least the ones I was friends with always told me there was no real reason to return home, and to my knowledge none of my Khmer friends in the U.S. have even considered returning, even the semi wealthy ones.

Personally I think too many countries have walked over Cambodia over and over, driving out the innovators, destroyed much of it's history and stomped the motivation and hope many people have had about succeeding. Sure I know a lot of Vietnamese who are harder workers and more naturally driven, but I don't think it's enough to explain the discrepancy in development speeds.

I have hope for Cambodia though. Sure, growth has been slow in the past but I see a lot of bright rising young people who have a sort of light and fire in their eyes, the same light I find so lacking amongst the American youth I know. Motivation is everything often times, and if you don't have that it doesn't matter where you start from.

I think Cambodia will change much more rapidly in the future for the better.

[merchantsmutual]

From talking to a lot of young university educated Cambodians, their situation reminds me a bit of the U.S. where you can get the degrees and be very smart but the opportunities may not be there yet. You still see people with engineering or quant degrees sitting on the sidelines, so to speak, just like in the U.S. where very good people go to waste. I am not sure what can or will be done.