The Slow Road to Socialism

Like countless other communities in Asia, Ho Chi Minh City--also known as Saigon--last week celebrated Tet, the three-day lunar New Year. Flowers bedecked the streets, although perhaps not so many as in years gone by. The city's florists did not believe that South Viet Nam's new Provisional Revolutionary Government would allow such a luxury. As one of them put it, "We were not prepared to grow flowers on time."

For the first time since 1968, when Tet was the occasion of a devastating Communist military offensive, firecrackers were allowed in Saigon and could be heard exploding sharply throughout the sprawling city. There were also the usual multicolored dragons snaking rhythmically through the streets, along with swarms of whining, air-polluting Honda motorbikes.

Good food and excellent French wines were still available at the Hotel Caravelle, a favorite hangout of foreigners in the old days. Lissome Saigonese women wore hip-hugging jeans and colorful ao-dais; although the P.R.G. frowns on prostitution, streetwalkers and bar girls were still hawking their charms. American pop songs blared out from the jukeboxes of cafes and bars, and the old Thieves' Market on Bac Si Calumette Street was jammed with TV sets, cameras and transistor radios tak en from abandoned American PXs.

It is now nine months since North Viet Nam's Russian-built T-54 tanks rumbled through the gates of former President Nguyen Van Thieu's palace.

In the view of recent foreign visitors, life in Saigon is remarkably unchanged. The big question is how long that situation will last. The leaders of the P.R.G. have left no doubt that they intend to build a new socialist society in the South modeled on that of North Viet Nam. At least 25,000 North Vietnamese cadres have been imported to run everything from government bureaucracies to the telephone and bus companies.

But the Communists are moving slowly and cautiously along the road to socialism, presumably because of the awesome task they face in consolidating their hold over 20 million people, many of whom were loyal to the old regime.

There has been no evidence of the massive bloodbath that many Americans predicted would follow the collapse of the Thieu regime, and no tales to match the stories of mass executions being brought out of Cambodia by refugees from the Khmer Rouge in Phnom-Penh. Nonetheless, the new Communist government has taken some tough measures to discourage resistance. A few wealthy Chinese--traditional scapegoats of the Vietnamese--have been executed. Summary executions of petty criminals and looters have served as warnings that disorder will not be tolerated, though thievery and muggings still take place. Attacks on North Vietnamese troops continued at least until late last fall. Larger-scale resistance continued in the countryside, carried out by units of ARVN soldiers, Montagnards and members of the anti-Communist religious sect, the Hoa Hao, which still controls much of the Delta. The Communists claim that some 7,000 "enemy troops" have been captured in the past six months. Though the anti-Communist holdouts do not pose a serious threat, the North Vietnamese have not yet withdrawn their estimated 20 divisions (200,000 soldiers) from the South.

Saigon's new rulers like to tell foreigners: "We don't believe in harming the enemy who has fallen from his horse." Brutal mass retaliation against former ARVN soldiers and bureaucrats who worked for the Thieu regime would have produced exactly the kind of mistrust and disunity that the new government wants to avoid. Instead, the P.R.G.

has resorted to the time-honored Communist technique of "re-education" for its enemies, including some political prisoners arrested since August. Camps have been set up throughout the country for indoctrination sessions that usually last about three months. A special compound near Tay Ninh on the Cambodian border has been set aside for former generals, who go through a longer process of study and manual labor. After graduating from their reeducation, former soldiers and officials are given certificates that, theoretically at least, restore their full rights as citizens.

Broad Base. Traditionally, the South Vietnamese have looked down on their cousins from the North as country bumpkins; in private some Saigon intellectuals--who worry that Communist rule will gradually limit freedoms--dismiss the rulers of the P.R.G. as a bunch of "peasants." Since the P.R.G. needs popular backing for the task of economic reconstruction, it is making efforts to gain a broad base of support. Last month the government of Saigon was turned over by the interim military administration committee to a 15-member civilian committee. A few members of the old non-Communist "Third Force," the loose amalgam of intellectual and religious leaders who opposed the old Saigon regime, have been invited into the government. These include Women's Rightist Madame Ngo Ba Thanh and Buddhist Thich Thien Hao. In addition, the P.R.G. has allowed some open criticism in the press of such bad leadership habits as "bureaucratism and authoritarianism." The official South Vietnamese daily Giai Phong, for example, recently attacked P.R.G. cadres for making unjustified arrests, "disorderly" searches and illegal tax collections.

These measures make good political sense. Even the Communists admit to foreign visitors that "some sections of the Saigon citizenry do not trust us."

Nevertheless, there is no evidence that any amount of opposition will deter the new regime from fulfilling its major objectives. The most immediate of these is reunification. One token of this is that the most common propaganda slogan seen on Saigon's streets these days is a Ho Chi Minh aphorism: THE COUNTRY OF VIET NAM IS ONE; THE PEOPLE OF VIET NAM ARE ONE. The P.R.G. and

North Vietnamese leaders ratified the principle of reunification at a Saigon conference last fall. The next step comes in April, when national elections--presumably based on approved lists of candidates--for a representative assembly will be held. The assembly will begin the final work of reunification, formally approving a new constitution, choosing a new flag and proclaiming Hanoi the national capital.

Just as they have taken a conciliatory line toward the South Vietnamese people, the Communists have made a few peaceable gestures toward an old enemy. Hanoi has indicated that it is ready and even anxious to establish diplomatic relations with the U.S.--"as soon as possible," North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong told visiting Senator George McGovern in Hanoi last month. The Vietnamese, McGovern was told, would welcome trade with American companies. North Viet Nam has potential exports of tea, art, jute and oil, and is desperately in need of the kind of technology the U.S. can provide.

No Obligation. Hanoi also insists --though not as a condition for diplomatic relations--that the U.S. provide $3.2 billion in reconstruction aid which, it claims, was promised by the Nixon Administration in 1973 just after the signing of the Paris peace agreement.

Washington feels that North Viet Nam's conquest of the South was an egregious violation of the accords and that therefore the U.S. is not obliged to supply aid. In any case, the Ford Administration has stated that the North Vietnamese must show a willingness to help the U.S. locate the Americans missing in action before reconciliation can take place.

Hanoi has followed a flexible foreign policy toward other countries, trying at once to promote its revolutionary credentials and get aid and even investment from industrialized nations. The Soviet Union is the Vietnamese Communists' best friend and the largest aid donor ($500 million in 1975); Chinese aid is estimated at about 40% of that.

Not surprisingly, Hanoi has voiced support for Soviet policy toward Portugal, India and Angola--all of which have been bitterly criticized by China. At the same time, Hanoi has sought, and received, commercial contracts with Swedish, Indian, Australian and French companies. The Japanese are building a chemical fertilizer plant with a potential yearly output of 120,000 tons, and a Tokyo oil company last week was awarded exploration rights to Viet Nam's as yet unproved offshore oil reserves.

The Vietnamese need all the help they can get to rebuild the shattered economy of the South and reinvigorate that of the war-exhausted North. During the war, South Viet Nam imported 80% of its goods. Since American aid stopped, many of the country's industries have run down, and there are an estimated 1 million unemployed. Thanks to a bumper crop in the Mekong Delta (plus some imports from the North) the government has been able to supply ample rice at low prices. But most canned goods are now beyond the reach of ordinary people. Gasoline for Saigon's swarms of Hondas is officially rationed, but it can be obtained easily on the open market for about twice the rationed price, which is $1 per gal.

The P.R.G.'s moderate policies toward small businessmen and foreign investors is part of South Viet Nam's slow transition to socialism. P.R.G. officials have offered to "guarantee" a profit to small businesses that reinvest earnings to create jobs and share profits with "worker funds." Foreign investors, beginning with the giant French Michelin rubber plantation, have been reassured that they will be allowed to stay in business.

The P.R.G. has tried to solve its most pressing economic problems by resettling people in the countryside. "New economic zones" have been set up in rural areas; each returning family is guaranteed about 3.3 acres of land, a simple dwelling, tools and six months' supply of rice; after that, the returnees are on their own. So far some 300,000 people have left Saigon for the farms, and the P.R.G. hopes to move 1.5 million more by the end of this year. But the relocation process is slow. In Saigon, whose population swelled from 500,000 in the late '40s to more than 3 million at the end of the war, generations of farmers have settled into a big-city existence; they are reluctant to go back to a subsistence life of hard labor in the pad-dyfields. In most cases, the government has used soft-sell persuasion to get people to leave the cities. But former ARVN soldiers and Saigon civil servants returning from re-education centers are invited to join a new economic zone in the countryside; they are warned that their rice ration cards can be withheld if they decline.

The P.R.G. has tried hard to wipe out some of South Viet Nam's worst social problems. Last month, for example, 19 drug-addiction centers--they are known as "restoration of human dignity centers"--were opened in Saigon; acupuncture is being used to relieve withdrawal symptoms. A major clinic for the treatment of venereal disease, which is rampant in Saigon, has been set up.

When people seemed reluctant to use its facilities, it was renamed the "Center for VD and Skin Diseases," giving potential patients a face-saving excuse. Another major project is reconstruction of the 1,050-mile Saigon-Hanoi coastal railroad, which has 496 bridges, 520 culverts, 20 mountain tunnels and 150 stations. Appropriately, it will be called the Thong Nhat [Reunification] Line.

Soccer Field. Signs of the U.S. presence are gradually disappearing. Communist cadres have moved into the villas in Saigon's suburbs once inhabited by Americans and wealthy South Vietnamese who fled to the U.S. Saigon's golf course has been converted into a public soccer field. The Cercle Sportif, once the city's fashionable center for tennis, swimming and outdoor table hopping, is now a workers' recreation center. Saigon's five newspapers practice a prudent self-censorship. Although books of all kinds are still available on small street stands, most stores are stocked with ideologically "sound" works imported from the North.

As usual in Communist regimes, the hard task of shaping a socialist state promises to come at the incalculable cost of political liberties. Many South Vietnamese may not be willing to pay it.

For the time being, the Communists can still blame their problems, including resentment of their rule, on "the bad influences of American culture." Gradually, however, the P.R.G. will have to stand on its own record. Most observers believe that even barring serious political discontent, it will take at least a decade for reconstruction to be completed.

Meanwhile, perhaps, the biggest advantage the Communists have is that for the first time in 30 years, the entire country is at peace. There may be troubles ahead, but as one Japanese recently returned to Tokyo put it, "Saigon sticks together, clearly because the people right now would prefer anything--even the P.R.G.--to war."

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