Vietnam aims to become Asia’s next tiger economy by 2045, but it seeks to do so under one-party socialist rule, an untested development path, political theorist Jake Scott has said in an article published by the Foundation for Economic Education → view source.
Scott notes that:
- Vietnam’s approach is distinct from East Asian tigers and China, as it seeks high growth while retaining socialist political control.
- Comparisons are drawn to European “tiger” economies like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia, which liberalised and democratised to achieve rapid growth.
- Vietnam faces constraints: state-owned enterprise dominance, US classification as a non-market economy, and risks of inefficiency and cronyism.
- The core gamble is that Vietnam can combine capitalist dynamism with one-party socialist rule, despite limited historical precedents for such a model.
That is to say, the Government of Vietnam is heading out on a path of its own and it’s far from clear that the goals it has set can be achieved the way it wants.
See also: Vietnam’s Private Sector Development Push: Unpacked