A battle worth winning: The service of culture to the Communist Party of Vietnam in the contemporary era

The Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV) market reform policies—introduced in the late 1980s and carrying on today—have opened the country to foreign investment, deregulated state-owned enterprises, decollectivized agricultural cooperatives, and encouraged foreign direct investment. However, what the Party has not wanted reformed, and has fought strongly on behalf of, is culture. Using primary source official CPV cultural policy documentation and secondary sources highlighting contemporary meanings of Vietnamese and foreign cultures, this paper evaluates the Party’s use of culture as a resource in the direction and regulation of the nation’s market economy with a socialist orientation. While culture is expedient for all governments, I argue that the CPV’s intent is unique in that it uses culture as an instrument to maintain its ownership, rather than simply to legitimize its regulatory ability, over the national political economy. This paper aims to show how culture is part and parcel of post-socialist governance’s political-economic framework and contributes to debates surrounding the reach and impact of neoliberalism in formerly command economies.

► Culture is used by the Communist Party of Vietnam to protect its rule and ownership over the economy.
► Culture is useful to the Party because it is malleable, not because of its inherent essence.
► Evidence shows that the Party is not interested in having Vietnam follow a neoliberal growth model.
► Opposition to neoliberalism does not only arise from a localized force but arises from states as well.
► Alternative state political models should not necessarily be considered superior to neoliberal models.