Introduction

In 2004 Vietnam continued on the path of political, social, and economic adjustment that has given direction to its affairs since the mid-1980s. The regional and global environments and a number of domestic realities defined the challenges and opportunities before the country. While indicators of progress proved impossible to overlook, close observation of events in Vietnam during the year also offered cause for concern. The period between the end of 2004 and the opening of the Tenth Party Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) during the first half of 2006 may well come to be seen as one in which the sustainability of Vietnam's remarkable economic and social progress of the recent past hung in the balance.

Endemic corruption and newly vigorous efforts to confront it, an increasingly active National Assembly, and serious disturbances among ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands counted among the highlights of Vietnam's politics during 2004. In the economic sphere, continued steady growth accompanied worries over the country's public investment strategy, its timetable for accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the pace of its equitization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and its long-term international competitiveness. The state of Vietnam's education and public health systems only added to these concerns. The year's developments in the area of international relations included Hanoi's success in hosting the Asia-Europe Meeting, continued albeit low-level tensions over the South China Sea and human rights, deepening of the Vietnam-United States military-to-military relationship, and the well publicized, somewhat embarrassing use of Ho Chi Minh City as a channel of escape for a large group of North Korean asylum-seekers on their way to South Korea.

Vietnam's foreign affairs during 2004 thus mirrored Vietnamese affairs as a whole. Historical, ideological, political, and even demographic legacies framed the country's ongoing, almost inexorable integration into the post-Cold War international economic and political orders. The year raised not only the question of whether Vietnamese efforts at reform and adaptation have been “fast enough” but also the more basic one of whether these efforts have rested on viable foundations.