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A rare look inside Vietnam 10 years after the fall of Saigon and the tangible and emotional legacies of the war on the country.
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00:00Major funding for Frontline is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
00:07Additional funding is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
00:13Tonight on Frontline, Vietnam ten years after America's pullout.
00:19They need things from the West, from the world, from the commercial marketplaces.
00:25They need money, they need aid, they need equipment.
00:28What is life like there today?
00:30They live here and they don't have any other place to live.
00:34What are the legacies of that war?
00:36Vietnam is going to be a very, very poor country for a long time to come.
00:42Frontline presents an exclusive report, Vietnam under Communism.
00:47From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
01:08This is Frontline with Judy Woodruff.
01:15Good evening.
01:16Vietnam, once again, it is in the news as Vietnamese troops wage a new offensive against rebels in neighboring Cambodia.
01:24And Vietnam will remain in the news this year for another reason, an anniversary.
01:30It has been 20 years since the U.S. Marines landed there in 1965.
01:35And this spring, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal in 1975.
01:44The Vietnam government is preparing for national celebration.
01:48The international press will gather.
01:50Special tours are being arranged.
01:52Vietnam will be putting on its best face for the world.
01:56Tonight on Frontline, an exclusive report by a team who recently spent 35 days in Vietnam,
02:03the longest visit by an American television crew since the end of the war.
02:08They obtained unique access, traveling across the country, and visiting places no one else has yet seen.
02:16Tonight, their journey through a war-ravaged country, struggling now with the problems of peace and the challenges of living under a communist regime.
02:27Our report is called Vietnam Under Communism.
02:31Co-produced for Frontline by Greg Pratt and Paul Henschel of television station WCCO in Minneapolis.
02:50Christmas in Hanoi, 1972.
02:54America unleashes a barrage on the capital of North Vietnam.
02:57The bombing, aimed at both the backs and the spirits of the people, is relentless.
03:06Devastating, but in vain.
03:20This is Vietnam today, as we found it more than a dozen years later.
03:24An independent, proud, hopeful country.
03:27A nation at relative peace, but after a thousand years of conflict, still poised for war.
03:39This too is Vietnam.
03:41Impoverished, depressed, ill-fed, ill-equipped, and ill at ease.
03:47Vietnam, a repressive totalitarian society.
03:57Vietnam, a people America so intimately, yet so brutally met.
04:04A battleground America never fully understood.
04:19Today, still divided, distant, and forgotten.
04:25And forgotten.
04:46Rush hour in Hanoi.
04:47A 1930s French provincial city, frozen in time, and quite literally, an antique.
04:54It's a unique city.
04:56I mean, it's a city of bicycles and big trees.
04:59And it's a city of beautiful autumn sunshine.
05:02Certainly, this is a museum.
05:05And there isn't a great deal of construction.
05:13Richard Bronowski is the Australian ambassador to Vietnam.
05:17The Australians who fought alongside the Americans in Vietnam have recently established diplomatic ties with Hanoi.
05:23Vietnam itself wishes to extend its own range of contacts with the world beyond the very narrow set of friends and allies it has at present.
05:36It's very important.
05:37And you can't ignore, as I said before, you can't ignore a country of 60 million people.
05:44Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta is one of the most densely populated and poorest areas in the world.
05:51This has been the seat of communist inspiration and ideals for more than 50 years.
05:59The people, mostly peasants, are grim but determined and resigned to life in a socialist system.
06:08Most of them are not communists, i.e. members of the party.
06:12But most of them would feel, genuinely, that the system of government they have here is the one that they want.
06:18A young guard who lost two brothers and a sister in the bombing explains the allegiance to the state and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's late communist leader.
06:30Ho Chi Minh tried to solve the problems of our people, to bring happiness to Vietnam.
06:39He gained independence for us from the imperialists.
06:43We remember his teachings, and both myself and the people love him dearly.
06:47Love him dearly.
06:52Every Sunday morning, some 15 to 20 thousand people pass through Ho's tomb where he lies in state.
06:58A building which is one of the few new construction projects completed since the war.
07:02In the north, the loyalties to Ho Chi Minh are not as entirely deep rooted as they may seem.
07:08In the North, the loyalties to Ho Chi Minh are not as entirely deep-rooted as they may seem.
07:26These children, many of whom are the more privileged sons and daughters of party or government officers,
07:31sing only the official songs of the state.
07:35Their loyalties, in other words, are not only encouraged,
07:38they are enforced.
07:54For the older generation in the North, most of whom live outside the cities,
07:58political allegiance is less of a concern.
08:02Once they worked for the French, today they toiled for the state.
08:06They are enterprising, though poor.
08:09Above all, they have endured.
08:12You see, in the history of mankind, no other country had suffered so long and so heavy as Vietnam from foreign domination.
08:26We have been 1,000 years under domination.
08:32Nguyen Cô Thọc is Vietnam's foreign minister.
08:35Considered to be one of the most powerful members of the Vietnamese Politburo, Thọc grew up with a legacy of war.
08:40Too much invasion.
08:42And the bloodiest war in the world, it is the Nixon and Johnson war.
08:49And we have paid so much our blood for our independence.
08:55No country, no other country in the world have paid so much blood for its independence.
09:01Many parts of the North still bear the scars of war.
09:13As we traveled outside of Hanoi, we saw plants, roads and bridges in dire need of repair.
09:28Here at Zak Miu, an artillery base near the former demilitarized zone, it seems that America left only yesterday.
09:41This is a forbidden zone.
09:43Live ammunition remains strewn about.
09:46We proceeded only with the assistance of our guide, Tuan.
09:53Even after 10 years in this area, it's been very dangerous.
09:58A lot of mice still left there and some kind of bones.
10:04And if you are not careful when you step on, it's very easy to step on mice and we may die here.
10:16Since the end of the Vietnam War, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 Vietnamese have been either killed or wounded as they stumble across live ammunition.
10:32Along Coastal Highway 1, tons of so-called GI junk litter the landscape.
10:38As America withdrew from Vietnam, millions of dollars worth of military hardware was abandoned.
10:44Much of it simply left to rot.
10:46Here, in a Hanoi suburb, the wreckage of an American plane peers from a community pond.
11:01Bunkers first built by the French and later used by the Americans still stand today.
11:14Testaments to a century of war.
11:16In all, an estimated 3 million Vietnamese people died in wars with the French and the US.
11:29More than half of the casualties were non-combatant civilians.
11:34Virtually everyone can claim a family member killed, wounded or missing in action.
11:39A bomb hit my house and it collapsed.
11:48No one died, but five members of my family were injured.
11:52So we became very angry at the Americans and asked the world to put them on trial and destroy them to the end.
12:00Here, you know, ten years are torn by war and 15 million tons of bombs dropped in my country.
12:09Twice the number of bombs dropped during the Second World War.
12:14So you can imagine how big, what is the dimensions of our wounds of war.
12:23Perhaps Vietnam's most controversial wounds, which the Vietnamese frequently show visitors, are on display here at Tu Zou Hospital.
12:32These are all deformed babies. We keep them for research purposes.
12:38As you see, some have cancer. The deformities are the result of poisons used by the Americans in Vietnam.
12:46Every year this ward is full. We have about 80 beds and most are occupied with women who have cancers, of the cervix, of the ovaries and so forth.
13:01The percentage of women with cancer in Vietnam is very high. And this, we believe, is because of defoliation.
13:09According to a 1983 International Research Symposium, the incidence of still and premature births, as well as birth defects in Vietnam, is rising.
13:28Relative to other third world countries, gynecological diseases and birth deformities are unusually high.
13:34These are Siamese twins. I think there is a relation to the spraying, but it is not clear.
13:46We cannot measure dioxin in the blood, the tissues or the organs.
13:51We can only experiment and maybe in the future we will know more about this problem.
13:57The toll on the Vietnamese people is even greater than the rising rate of medical problems.
14:08As we journeyed south through Hue and Da Nang, we met a fisherman and former refugee in what for many Vietnamese was a confusing, if not absurd, war.
14:18I didn't understand anything about this war, about all the fighting.
14:27I met Americans, but they never hurt me. They weren't fighting me. And to this day, I still don't understand it all.
14:37This fisherman, who lost a brother and a nephew in the war, says his life has improved little since the fighting ended.
14:49Many in the cities would say the same.
14:52Ho Chi Minh City, or so at least the government has renamed it.
15:07Virtually everyone here, though, still calls this Saigon.
15:13Saigon, Hanoi's long-time antagonist to the south, the former seat of both French and American influence and power.
15:23A westernized city where in the past people got raucous and rich.
15:30Today, Saigon is an occupied city.
15:35A virtual police state whose subdued population is constantly and carefully watched.
15:42If you're talking about the state and state surveillance, Vietnamese state surveillance, yes, of course.
15:47There's a strong element of that. There are violations of human rights.
15:51There's no course of justice as we know it.
15:56There is a certain degree of capriciousness in the law here.
16:00People are taken away without due process.
16:04These are western systems of democracy and law that we respect.
16:09They don't necessarily, necessarily respect them here.
16:13The Saigonese know that they're not trusted, so they expect to be watched.
16:18And I think that those factors contribute to a certain air of tension that one can feel in the streets of Saigon.
16:39Professor William Turley, a Vietnam analyst, recently returned from Vietnam.
16:46The regime trusts the people more in the north than it does in the south.
16:50The northern population doesn't require very close regulation to stay in line.
16:56But the regime can't trust the south quite so much.
16:59I don't have anything for work in this case.
17:02The people in Saigon are tightly controlled.
17:04And by administrative rule, they are forbidden to talk with foreigners.
17:08There's nothing for me working.
17:10This man, allowed to work only as a petty shopkeeper, risked an interview with us.
17:15Outside of market, I know people like that.
17:18Maybe in this case, can you help me, my father and my sister,
17:24who worked for many long time for U.S. government and like the U.S. government very much.
17:30But now we cannot go there.
17:32I can do many works with Americans, but now I cannot do for my government.
17:41As most Vietnam experts would agree, Saigon remains under the control of the Hanoi government.
18:01But many of Hanoi's hand-picked officials here have been disciplined or removed,
18:07while Hanoi continues to proclaim national reunification and reconciliation.
18:12But if by national reconciliation, you're talking about a burying of the hatchet,
18:18that obviously has not taken place.
18:20And I doubt that it will take place in the lifetime of Vietnamese now living.
18:25There's no more freedom at all. No independence, no freedom.
18:34And hard life, miserable life. That's why people have to leave the country.
18:42One of these days, I wish I could see my family all over here. That's my last dream.
18:48I would like to be with my husband over there, so I can stay home with him and take care of the family.
18:58It is my dream to spend my life in a home with my husband and children.
19:03Don Ang is home for Nguyen Tai Vaughn, a mother of four and former bookkeeper for the Americans.
19:14She and her family have officially applied to leave Vietnam.
19:18Vaughn's husband, Vaughn Bang, lives and works in the American Midwest.
19:26A former officer with the South Vietnamese Army, he stayed behind in 1975,
19:31reluctant but willing to work with the communists.
19:39He was instead imprisoned for five years at hard labor.
19:42He nearly died, but eventually escaped in a boat such as the one used by these fishermen.
19:49I escaped because I don't think I can stay in the camp forever and ever.
19:57I think in my mind before I do that, I think that I better die out of the ocean better than I die in the prison camp.
20:04Vaughn is but one of more than half a million Vietnamese who have officially applied to leave Vietnam.
20:24Because she has asked to go, she can no longer work.
20:27She has also lost her food ration privileges.
20:30That's not very.
20:33They...
20:35They're very poor.
20:36Nobody starving but very poor.
20:39I think that...
20:40the life for my wife and children is becoming kind of harder if I'm not there.
20:47But, for suppose if now I'm home, I cannot do nothing for them.
20:54Because I don't have a job, I don't have nothing to do.
20:57to do, and sooner or later they sent me to NEZ. NEZ, or New Economic Zone. Had Phan been
21:09released from a forced labor camp, he and his family would likely have been sent to
21:13an NEZ such as this. NEZs are planned agricultural communities, sometimes constructed to reclaim
21:23defoliated land. More than a million people have been sent to NEZs, many displaced persons
21:29who lost their homes and villages during the war.
21:39Others come from the ranks of the unemployed. Some are so-called war criminals. They are
21:45assigned to work here. The government calls them volunteers.
21:51People were simply rounded up on trucks and taken out to the countryside and deposited
21:55next to the road with a scrap of barbed wire and a hole and said, till your field. Of
22:03course that was not adequate preparation of the site and people very soon, as soon as
22:07they could, made their way back to Saigon.
22:15On the day we visited this NEZ, guards with automatic weapons patrolled work areas. We asked the
22:25director of this work zone why so many people had tried to escape.
22:33You see, many of the people brought here from the cities did service work for the old government, for
22:40the Americans. They had good jobs or did illegal things. They earned an easy living and now they
22:48resist our socialist plans for a better life. They like entertainment more than they like having
22:54to work hard for a living.
23:03New economic zones have met with mixed results. Some are productive. Others are located in areas with poor soil.
23:11Many have been mismanaged and few have met their full production quotas.
23:22Some people, mostly displaced peasants, have embraced their new homes.
23:26But generally it would be, I think, accurate to say that the concept of a new economic zone has not been a
23:32sensationally popular thing in Vietnam. And they themselves freely admit this.
23:44With many segments of the state-run economy either stagnant or failing, Vietnam is deeply in debt.
23:51The people in the south have hardly embraced the notion of working for the state.
24:01Despite extensive propaganda efforts, the majority of the people here remain, at best, indifferent
24:07to the policies of the new regime. Many of the people have yet to reap the benefits promised
24:15by the Communists.
24:16Yes, they live here and they don't have any other place to live. She came into the
24:31city in 1980 and she's lived out on the streets like this in various places since then.
24:39The average income is about $175 per year. The population is growing out of control.
24:50Tens of thousands are un- or underemployed, surviving any way they can.
24:56She gets old refuse paper. He's a garbage collector, in other words.
25:04David Marr, a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer who served in Vietnam, is currently an historian with the Australian National University in Canberra.
25:14As a scholar, this is his third visit to Vietnam.
25:18There hasn't been a great deal of improvement since the end of the war, overall. If they don't manage to constrain their population growth, it won't do any good to increase production. It'll all be eaten up by new mouths.
25:32Rampant inflation, approaching 100% per year, eats up the wages of low-paid government workers.
25:46$300 for one duck.
25:50Rice, meats, sugar, cloth, even cooking oil are rationed.
25:56So that's almost a month's salary for the ordinary state employees.
26:02They can't live on their salaries. They just can't do it.
26:08The people who are making money in Vietnam today are those who have some little private scam or are able to use their official position for corrupt purposes.
26:20But people who try to live within the means given to them officially by the state can barely do it.
26:27My dream is how to have enough food for the people, clothes for the people, medical care for the people, and education for all children.
26:43The government claims the literacy rate is high. Outside observers say just over half the people can read and write.
26:53Political connection often has as much to do with who stays in school as does ability or performance.
27:03Those with no opportunity to go to school find other ways to buy their time.
27:11For the children of Vietnam, the future is bleak.
27:21Disease and malnutrition are common. Medicines in short supply.
27:29On the average, the government spends about $1 per person per year on health care.
27:37On the average, a child in Vietnam today can expect to live just 47 years.
27:44In all, the quality of life in Vietnam has actually fallen since the end of the war.
27:49They feel they'd like to lick their wounds and recover.
27:54They need things from the West, from the world, from the commercial marketplaces.
28:00They need money, they need aid, they need equipment, they need stimulation.
28:04I don't think many Americans feel they have any obligation to Vietnam in terms of reparations,
28:11in terms of paying the Vietnamese something for the pain of the war.
28:17That's a reality.
28:18I would like to ask, what is the responsibility of the United States to end the world of war in Vietnam?
28:28I don't think the Vietnamese government can continue to blame all their problems on the Americans and before them the French.
28:37That's a rationale that's going to run out of time sooner or later.
28:44When the war wound up, many of them thought that within a couple decades,
28:49Vietnam would have completed the initial stages of industrialization and be well on its way towards taking a place beside
28:57the other industrialized nations of the communist world.
29:04But that is just not going to happen.
29:08Vietnam is going to be a very, very poor country for a long time to come.
29:12The Mekong Delta, the richest and most productive region in all of Vietnam.
29:27Vietnam is going to be a very, very poor country for a long time to come.
29:42Expansive and remote, this is a haven for pockets of resistance to communism.
29:48This is home for millions of poor peasants, many of whom openly shrug communist efforts to
29:53collectivize and control agriculture in the south.
29:57This is also home for Tho Oum, a 14-year-old Amerasian boy still living in Vietnam.
30:09The communists are not much different than the government they took over from.
30:16Mike Shado lives in Titusville, Florida.
30:19A Vietnam veteran, he and his Vietnamese wife Tee left Vietnam in 1971.
30:26It was difficult enough for me to get permission for my wife to leave with me.
30:32And we left our son with the grandparents.
30:35Todd Oum is Mike Shado's son, an American citizen named Lance.
30:45Too ill to travel with his father, Lance was left behind with his grandparents.
30:49Her family was way down in the Mekong Delta and a very poor family.
30:59And if you don't know anyone in Vietnam, you don't get anything done.
31:03All I want is just to have our son back.
31:11It's been a long time that I still haven't seen him yet.
31:14Lance Shado is but one of an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 Amerasian children still in Vietnam.
31:22The Shado's have pleaded with the Vietnamese government and officially requested not only
31:36their son's release, but his grandparents as well.
31:41Thus far, they have had no response from the Vietnamese government.
31:44And Vietnam being an Amerasian child has a social and racial stigma attached to it.
31:52I have to do everything I can, for all of them, and so that's where we are right now, nowhere.
32:09We have nothing, we are sick, and I have asked my daughter to send us money.
32:18The Shado's say they have sent money to their family in the Delta,
32:21both to support them and to pay the bribes they say are required to get Lance out.
32:27Most of the money has never been received.
32:34The Vietnamese officials with whom we inquired about the Shado case
32:37claim they have tried repeatedly to contact the family.
32:42Yes, we have heard about them.
32:44Actually, we have seen this family on the special list
32:50given to us by the American authorities.
32:52They also claim the government does not open mail and take money.
32:57They emphatically deny there are any required bribes and payoffs.
33:00If they could have the money to pay off the officials, there would be no problem for the exit visas,
33:13there would be no problem for the pay port to get up to Ho Chi Minh City and get on an airplane and leave.
33:20But if you are from a poor peasant family, nobody has the time for you.
33:28And my son wrote letter for me and they cry a lot, you know.
33:34He said, it really hurt.
33:41My family hurt very much too.
33:43When I get him, how old is he going to be? 16, 17, 18, 19, 20?
33:54What chance is he really going to have for an education or
33:57an opportunity in life over here now, let alone someone who has to learn a whole new culture,
34:04a whole new language.
34:06And they don't want him.
34:08They don't want Amerasian people.
34:10They want nothing left to remind them of the war.
34:12I've already lost so many years with him.
34:18And I'm going to get someone that I really don't even know.
34:26In Da Nang, where there are many Amerasians, these children are not as fortunate as Lance Shado.
34:34They have not heard from their father for more than six years.
34:38Few American GIs acknowledge the children they left behind.
34:42For me, America does not matter so much, but their father has obligations.
34:54Obligations to take them and care for them, for their schooling and so forth.
34:58Here, I can only do my best, but it is too difficult for me to take care of this big a family.
35:05This woman has five Amerasian children.
35:08Her youngest son is Randy.
35:13I want to go live with my father, but my mother has to work hard and has to stay here to take care of the others.
35:21Otherwise, she would like to go to America with my father.
35:25Both the Vietnamese and American governments have discussed the Amerasian issue on several recent occasions.
35:36The Vietnamese say all Amerasians may leave at any time.
35:39The U.S. has agreed to accept them.
35:42And we've made it clear we'd like to permit them to come to the United States and through something called the orderly departure program that the U.N. runs,
35:52as we have been able to get out roughly 3,500 of these children and their families so far.
35:57We prepare to take them all in an orderly way.
36:01We think that presently the American authorities are solving this problem too slow and the number they accept is too limited.
36:17The gap between rhetoric and reality on both sides remains wide.
36:25Bureaucratic delays and red tape seem endless.
36:29Randy in Da Nang will probably never know his father.
36:33Lant Shado is now a young teenager.
36:42With no school to attend, he can only learn the life of a peasant farmer.
36:51This is Viet Duc Bui.
36:53College educated in the U.S., Viet returned to Vietnam in 1971.
36:59Neither a government nor military official,
37:02he became a man caught in the middle of the Vietnam War.
37:06With a communist victory, he was suspect, not permitted to work.
37:12He left for America in 79.
37:14It's very difficult to make the decision to leave my family.
37:21I know that.
37:23And I remember it was a rainy day.
37:26I was informed that the trip is ready if I wanted to go.
37:34So I went with my wife and I remember I look at the two boys.
37:43They were so young, five years old and three and a half years old.
37:48They didn't know what was going on.
37:50So I took a bike and carry my wife to a post office in Saigon.
37:59And some people picked me up and that was the last time I saw my family.
38:06We were sure that we were very sad.
38:10And we always expect that we can join.
38:14I can take my children to join their father soon, as soon as possible.
38:22Ann, Viet's wife, lives with her family in Saigon.
38:25She would spend most of the time taking care of the boys.
38:30That's what I want.
38:32I worry whether that, whether it is feasible in my lifetime
38:41that I will be able to see my family again or not.
38:44My wife is very religious.
38:57She believes strongly in Buddhism.
39:04The Vietnamese government encourages atheism.
39:08The majority of the Vietnamese, however, remain Buddhists.
39:14The government regards monks as unproductive
39:17and potentially dissident free thinkers.
39:21Both Buddhism and Catholicism are discouraged.
39:25The numbers of monks and priests has fallen significantly
39:28since the occupation of the South.
39:33I think my wife is becoming more and more religious
39:39because religion would provide her the most relief
39:42and the most philosophical way of life for her to struggle through life.
39:52But I realized that to cope with the emotions and problems
39:57that my family as well as myself are having,
40:01we have to be very present and we have to have faith
40:04that eventually our family will be reunified.
40:11And that's what we are praying for and hoping for.
40:23Well over a million people have already fled Vietnam.
40:26The exodus continues today.
40:33Many of those who remain or resist relocation to economic zones
40:38jam an already overcrowded and sullen Saigon.
40:45Others fill the many rivers that snake through the cities.
40:49Boat people with no place to go.
40:51In Da Nang, Phan Bang's wife, Van, idly awaits permission to leave.
41:03Permission that may well never come.
41:10Viet's wife, An, can only continue her five-year-long vigil.
41:15For its part, the Vietnamese government has granted some 30,000 exit permits.
41:27But the US will accept only about 1,200 Vietnamese per month.
41:37So the process of orderly departure of family reunification is both painful and slow.
41:45Most of those permitted to leave are those against whom the communists bear no grudge.
41:58Those for whom the communists have no room or no use within their system.
42:15For the North Vietnamese, the memories, the images of war have yet to fade away.
42:26An air raid siren is still used to mark the noon hour in Hanoi.
42:36Long Vietnam's remote northern border with China, we came across a citizen's militia preparing for what they regard as the inevitable,
43:03an invasion from China.
43:10This citizen's militia, who were otherwise simple hill tribe peasants, formed Vietnam's first line of defense.
43:17An ancient foe, China did in fact invade Vietnam in 1979 and still occupies territory within the country.
43:32And between Vietnam and China, we are in a state of war.
43:38And now they are still threatening my country and the Southeast Asia.
43:45They do not stop their policy of expansionism.
43:52They are still occupying the territory of India, of Vietnam, you see.
43:58Vietnam's historic and recently rekindled tensions with China have in part led to the buildup of a massive, though inexperienced army.
44:10We encountered these troops in training near the China border.
44:13Together with the militia, they form a force of more than one million men, the fourth largest standing army in the world.
44:25But if you were to ask, does it need those men to defend itself, is the military threat to its security so real and so great that it really needs all these men under arms, I suppose the answer is no.
44:38In addition to its size, Vietnam's army is costly, soaking up more than half the national budget, as well as the best and the brightest from Vietnam's technical schools.
44:53The military also has political clout.
45:00A fourth of the Politburo and nearly one third of the Central Committee are military officers.
45:06New members of the party also tend to come from the military.
45:10General Huang Fang is a division commander who fought both the French and the Americans.
45:19When the Vietnam War ended, we began to rebuild.
45:26We had many, many difficulties, housing, transportation and so forth.
45:31But now China is waging war.
45:33So once again, our strategic task is to be ready to defend the country.
45:38The military leaders themselves have noted that this is a drain on the civilian sector.
45:50And it can only hurt them over the long run.
45:53Kampuchea, formerly Cambodia.
46:03Here, Vietnam's army is also deeply entrenched.
46:08To liberate, it claims, the Kampuchean people from the horrors of the Pol Pot regime.
46:14In the late 1970s, Pol Pot, leader of the communist Khmer Rouge, imprisoned and tortured thousands of his own people.
46:36In all, an estimated two to three million people died during the Pol Pot terror.
46:45He buried many of them in a mass grave outside of Phnom Penh.
46:49The Vietnamese say they are fighting here to protect Cambodia from Pol Pot's return.
47:03Critics say Vietnam wants to control, if not colonize, a vulnerable neighbor whom the Vietnamese distrust.
47:10We have saved the Kampuchean people from the genocide.
47:16So, we are there to help the Kampuchean people.
47:22And, you know, now they are still in the danger of coming back from Pol Pot.
47:29Most Western nations have condemned Vietnam for what they call an invasion, an occupation of Cambodia.
47:40It's the Vietnamese who are trying to rule Cambodians.
47:43And it's ironic that for all the Vietnamese talk about nationalism and independence,
47:49it's they who are suppressing the independent nationhood of another country.
47:56Vietnamese attacks in and around Cambodia have angered much of the West, including the United States.
48:04Vietnam, therefore, remains totally dependent upon the Soviet Union.
48:08In addition to billions of dollars in aid, the Soviet bloc ships into Haiphong Harbor and other ports virtually all of Vietnam's fuel, military, and essential supplies.
48:23Vietnam is in hock to the Soviet Union for the next five or ten years.
48:34They look at it as a comradely relationship.
48:37This is the socialist system that they're part of.
48:42But in almost the next breath, they will also say that they very much want to have relations with the capitalist system.
48:55I was here in 1980, and there was much less market activity at that time.
49:05It's really been in the last three or four years, I think, which it's blossomed or exploded, depending on what word you want to use.
49:14If there is a new battleground in Vietnam today, it is in the marketplace.
49:21Reform-minded planners within the Communist Party have begun a series of economic reforms,
49:27grudgingly allowing private trade on what they call open or free markets, especially in the South.
49:44Today, nearly three-fourths of all consumer goods are bought and sold on free markets.
49:59Dr. David Maher says such capitalist initiatives have taken root here because the state-run economy is in a shambles.
50:06Well, they have to rely on their wives to be out in the market like this.
50:14They often, their children can't go to school because they've got to be out trying to make something.
50:20After hours, they, especially if they've got a little bit of land in the countryside,
50:26they'll be out there trying to grow something for themselves.
50:29There's a hundred different ways that they have to try and make a living.
50:32Though socialists at heart, Vietnamese planners seem to be following the path of China,
50:39which has of late introduced sweeping capitalist reforms into its state-run economy.
50:45Nguyen Co Thoc is one such reformer.
50:48But the peasants, they can sell their goods freely because they are producers after selling to the state,
51:00after paying the taxes.
51:02economic reforms also include incentive, bonus and contract systems.
51:18Again, capitalist ideas.
51:20The productivity gains have been significant.
51:26Two record grain harvests in a row.
51:29If the reforms continue, Vietnam may soon approach self-sufficiency in food production.
51:35In the north, private shops and markets are appearing as well.
51:45Though party purists fear what they call creeping capitalism.
51:49Often, or sometimes, there's a crackdown when there are perceptions of corruption and tax avoidance.
51:54Not just here, but in the south too.
51:57But generally, the private sector won't disappear altogether.
52:09Most people in the north shop in state stores.
52:12Austere warehouses, which are often empty due to a shortage of goods.
52:15Resentment toward private traders grows deep within the ranks of government workers.
52:21They see them creating opportunities for people in the private sector to make much more money than they, the state cadres, do.
52:30And they resent it.
52:31They say, you know, after all, we are the ones who fought and died for the revolution and in the name of socialism.
52:37Now you're going to permit capitalists to make more money than we do?
52:42This is not fair.
52:43Here in Saigon, aging hardline leaders continue to lose their grip.
52:53The Communist Party is actually losing members.
52:57Crackdowns, fines, arrests and imprisonment are common.
53:06Nonetheless, export import companies are thriving.
53:10Private traders continue to flourish.
53:13There has been change.
53:14Now the question is, how much of this activity we see in Ho Chi Minh City is froth, and how much of it is some sort of substantial growth or development.
53:26This could become a major center of activity in Southeast Asia.
53:36But it all depends on policy.
53:38I don't see it happening in the next ten years, even with the best of policies.
53:51Economic reforms and capitalist initiatives have so far prevailed in Vietnam because they are popular with the people.
53:58If allowed to continue, the policies and ideas of reform-minded Vietnamese leaders could bring the Vietnamese people both independence and prosperity.
54:16It looks like a dream.
54:17And I think my dream is modest.
54:18Within five or ten years, we think the life in Vietnam would be better.
54:31And firstly, peaceful.
54:32We will have peace.
54:34In the center of Hanoi is a building, freshly painted, ringed by a wall and an iron gate.
54:52It stands empty.
54:54Vietnam hopes it will be the site of the new U.S. Embassy.
54:58But there are still no diplomatic relations between the two countries.
55:03Foreign Minister Nguyen Cô Thọc, the number two leader in Vietnam, is the main advocate within the Politburo for improving relations with us.
55:12Cô Thọc is in charge of the continuing discussions on MIAs and resettling Vietnam's political prisoners in the U.S.
55:20And he told the producers of this report he no longer expects U.S. aid, but he does want diplomatic and trade relations.
55:29One final note, the producers of this program made a formal humanitarian request for exit permits for the family members interviewed in this report, who are still in Vietnam.
55:40Just a few weeks ago, we learned that Viet Đắc Bui's wife, who had prayed for her family's reunion at the Buddhist temple, has received her exit permit.
55:51Viet Đắc Bui will be reunited with his wife and two boys within the year.
55:56Next week on Frontline, a look at a frightening phenomenon, street gangs in our cities.
56:04It's the story of one man fighting gang violence.
56:08I'm not going to leave you. I'm going to let them know somebody got standing.
56:13Are they going to run me away from here? No way.
56:15Yeah, when I leave, I'll leave you in the box.
56:17A shootout, murder charges, death threats. Who's to blame? What can be done?
56:24Mr. Hawkins' son blew away one of the gang members. The bottom line is they are going to not be satisfied until they get somebody from the Hawkins family.
56:32The program is called Shootout on Imperial Highway, next week on Frontline.
56:40I'm Judy Woodrow. Good night.
57:02For a transcript of this program, please send $4 to Frontline, Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
57:24Frontline is produced for the Documentary Consortium by WGBH Boston, which is solely responsible for its content.
57:35Major funding for Frontline was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
57:40Additional funding was provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
57:45Thank you very much.
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