The original questions that underline this book concern first, the extent to which the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, having a communist political system, can sustain its economic growth and development without appropriate political reforms; second, the basis on which the legitimacy of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) lies. Would economic growth be sustained better with a “big bang” of political and economic reforms in tandem, than with an incremental approach that has economic growth and development taking the lead and political reforms trailing behind? In turn, can the legitimacy of one party rule be sustained purely by economic growth and development and minimal political reforms, or is the demise of the communist system inevitable with economic reforms that will spring demands for political reforms? How long can the communist system last in a free-market economy and globalization, with concomitant spread of liberal political values?

These were important questions of the early 1990s when I first decided to become a scholar on Vietnam. They led me initially to study the basis of the legitimacy of the VCP and one-party rule. I wanted to discover how strong the party-state was, and whether economic changes were eroding the iron-handed controls that the party-state had for so many years. I also wanted to find out whether the party itself was changing, by approaching the matter from the angle of how the VCP trained and educated its officials. Neither of these two approaches bore fruit for me in the mid-1990s. I soon discovered that these questions resembled a French traffic circle that had too many avenues leading into and out of it; the project was too big. Furthermore, in the mid-1990s, as a starting graduate student, I did not have the right connections to allow me to do an in-depth study of the VCP schools system that could illuminate internal changes in the VCP.