Jonathan London

In China and Vietnam, ruling communist parties have instituted market-based economies along with fiscal and social policies that exhibit a mix of progressive and regressive elements. This is demonstrably the case with respect to pensions. We develop a comparison of evolved features of China’s and Vietnam’s pension schemes up to the present and identify similarities and differences. Moreover, we ask whether there are redistributive mechanisms that recall the enduring importance of socialist ideology in both countries (Hypothesis 1). Further, because their post-socialist economies resemble global trends of liberalisation as well as characteristics of other East Asian countries, we examine three additional hypotheses from the literature on neoliberal, productivist, and conservative/familialist welfare models. We show that, while avowing commitments to socialism, China and Vietnam have evolved broadly dualist patterns of pension arrangements. In particular, we find a dualism between civil servants and formal sector workers on the one hand, and informal workers and peasants, who make up the majority of the population, on the other. Older urban–rural dualisms continue to play an important role here. Within this dualist and stratified pattern, degrees of protection in the two countries vary, reflecting differences in their socio-cultural, political, and economic institutions.

In 2019, a semblance of political stability prevailed in Vietnam even as the affairs of the Communist Party were beset by the uncertain health of its general secretary, corruption scandals, and the intensification of Beijing's encroachment on its continental shelf. Vietnam saw continued economic growth but an increasingly complex growth picture. Improvements in the quality of life masked the persistence of economic vulnerability and increasing inequality, while civil society was constrained by state repression. Ominously, Vietnam's ecological crisis intensified.

In 2018 Vietnam saw intensifying party discipline and state repression, rapid economic growth, spasms of dissent, and new questions about the direction of the country’s social and political development. Amid deepening but perpetually fragile relations with Beijing, Hanoi furthered its strategic ties with the US, Japan, India, and other powers.