The Outlook in Vietnam
Howe, Neil
"The Outlook in Vietnam" Neil Howe, formerly managing editor of The Alternative, recently returned from an invcsligaliz,re tour of South Vietnam. This is the second part of his two-part report. 4. The Economy American...
...It is true that a younger generation of Vietnamese, speaking better English than French, are just now beginning to change this trend...
...They mix Buddhist ideals with a sort of dreamy demagoguery and cram their pamphlets with meaningless injunctions to the government, such as "All those who see themselves as an obstacle to peace must resign!- Followers generally come from the poorest of politically active Vietnamese...
...Among the people I talked to who wished to denounce Thieu, the Democrats, or the army, did I sense any hesitancy to do so in the sharpest imaginable language...
...But the encouraging sign is that sound precedents are being set, defining the boundary of power between the executive and the legislature, and that the general trend is toward more freely elected and more freely acting representatives...
...First of all, observes Cuong, there are mineral deposits scattered over the Central Highlands, and the world price of minerals is rising, though he admits that not much can he done to exploit them while fighting in the interior still rages...
...So far this consists ofpreferential loan rates to business (14 instead of 28 percent), widely distributed government contracts to private companies, and judiciously liquid use of American economic aid...
...A 60 percent inflation figure for the first months of 1974 would indicate that the Ministry of the Economy prefers the former path...
...In the Southeast Asian climate, agricultural development brings rapid and even spectacular returns, but even the traditional Vietnamese know that agriculture does not make a complete economy...
...With regard to the arguments which used to consume so much intellectual energy among Americans, I left South Vietnam with two indelible and rather sobering impressions...
...Diem came crashing down in 1963 largely through the efforts of his Buddhist opponents...
...all the resettlers will then settle on the new site in temporary tent-shelters and help clear the area for cultivation...
...the problem was how to create permanent legitimacy...
...Not only have resettled villages improved the South's agricultural production by increasing the total area of cultivation...
...Since Vietnamese Catholics, as awhole well-educated, comprise a disproportionate percentage of South Vietnam's professional and managerial talent, it is not surprising that Opposition Catholics are more Western in their politics and rational in their demands than the Buddhists...
...In recent years, the Buddhist Opposition has been strangely quiet—"waiting,- according to the Venerable Thich Quang Do, "Speaker- of the renowned An Quang Pagoda in Saigon, "until we see a future leader of Vietnam, then we will demonstrate in the streets.- Less sympathetic observers suggest that Buddhist strength has declined due to the increasing political sophistication of the average citizen...
...In any case, the Ministry of Trade and Industry is certain that South Vietnam possesses one commodity which investors must find irresistible: workers...
...Most South Vietnamese, however, continue to look upon "trade and industry" as something mysterious, alien, and quite possibly subversive to the Vietnam in which they have grown up...
...The Republic's first goal, I am told, is to he independent in basic foodstuffs, especially rice, by 1975 or 1976...
...they have also offered a new livelihood to the jobless and thus relieved what was once the worst source of urban overcrowding, deprivation, and unrest...
...embraces all the diverse political forces critical of govern-men( police...
...General Khanh could not handle them in 1964, nor Ky in 1965...
...The much-criticized power of "administrative detention" does enable the executive to imprison anyone for a period of up to two years, but it is rarely used nowadays and significantly all national and local elected officials are granted a sort of tribunal immunity...
...Over the last fifteen years peasants have been steadily driven from the countryside by fighting and enticed into the cities by loose American dollars...
...No, it was only in the large cities where I saw the disgruntled mien of people once used to an easier, better life, people who no doubt have come to take the Western rule of rising expectations for granted...
...Most Vietnamese peasants now have the chance, if they can afford the initial cost of fertilizer, to plant seeds that will yield two, three, even four crops per year instead of the traditional one crop...
...The Vietnamese at last found out," President of the Senate Tram Van Lan sagely remarked to me one evening, "that Ky was really just a bad boy...
...If Thieu falls before the 1976 election, it will be either because he resigns, or because the Opposition is convinced that it has sufficient leadership and popular support to move him swiftly out of office in a coup d'etat...
...The Vietnamese are not, I must add here, a naturally commerical or economic-minded people...
...The Chinese in South Vietnam, most of whom live in the huge, urban "Cholon" district (pop...
...Now that the dollars have vanished, South Vietnam finds that its agricultural output is inadequate, its cities are overcrowded with the unemployed, and its social structure rendered dangerously fluid by disoriented, second-generation town dwellers...
...troop support, hut in any case it is unpardonable that our own leadership forgot that warfare is more than mere technology, that it failed to examine the political impact of both our physical presence and our symbolic usurpation of the South's governing institutions...
...stores with few customers...
...The record over the last few years is encouraging: it shows a continuing decrease in rice imports, from 850,000 tons in 1970 to only 250,000 tons in 1971, about 5 percent of its needs (North Vietnam still imports one third of its rice...
...This is not to say that Thieu was unprodded by American voters and the Vietnamese intelligentsia...
...During the American era, the short-term future orthe Republic was guaranteed...
...In July 1974, Deputy Prime Minister Phan Quang Dan, who has administered the LDHI3 (Land Development and Hamlet Building) program since 1972, announced that as a result of resettlement the last main government camps had been emptied and closed down...
...Indeed, freedom of speech in South Vietnam probably exceeds that of most nations in the western hemisphere, none of which is presently at war...
...Possibly, if oil prospects grow more certain, the government will be able to borrow moneyagainst future production, and thereby turn a long-range hope into short-range assets...
...Near the end of 1972 it was estimated that well over one million refugees—most of these from the Easter Communist Offensive—were living hand-to-mouth in the large cities, most notably Saigon and Da Nang, and along the central coast...
...Large numbers of refugees from the northernmost provinces, for instance, are resettling in areas, both fertile and secure, south and northeast of Saigon...
...Thieu can rally his people in a time of crisis, he is a demonstrative orator on television and radio, and he can make the politic gestures of solidarity...
...Perhaps the worst scar on the Democratic record dates back to the first presidential election in 1967, when Thieu, right after defeating the Saigon lawyer Truong Dins Du by a two-to-one vote, threw Du into prison for five years on questionable charges of sedition...
...Today, the situation is reversed...
...The best result of the oil-boom rumors until now has been the government sale of exploration rights to industry...
...Whether his words, or deeds, will satisfy the aroused Catholics remains to be seen...
...They cannot be arrested without the prior vote of the Assembly...
...This new stage of resettlement is particularly encouraging since it indicates that some of the South's semipermanent urban population is at last returning to the country...
...Thus they mark an advance in the ability of South Vietnamese to draw distinctions between leaders and institutions...
...Even the Opposition admits that these practices have since been discontinued, but now it is accusing the Democrats of tyranny in a new guise: the "Election Decree- passed in December 1972, which requires every party to have a minimum vote of 5 percent in every province...
...4. The Economy American withdrawal and continuing war has meant for South Vietnam that its people must bear all the suffering, and enjoy none of the benefits,- of rapid industrialization...
...If Vietnam cannot profit more from its current commodities, well, then it's time to get some help in finding new ones...
...Both houses meet together for several months each year in what used to be a grand French opera house in downtown Saigon...
...But Opposition leaders can find there a public forum, resolutions reproving Thieu are sometimes passed, and Thieu himself knows that the Assembly cannot be ignored for long without bringing most governmental business to a complete halt...
...The Ministry of Trade and Industry, a youthful and enthusiastic group under the directorship of Nguyen Due Cuong (under thirty years old and a graduate of MIT), is nevertheless undaunted...
...The numbers are impressive...
...It plays no part in Saigon politics, not because there is a law prohibiting avowedly Communist political parties (although there is such a law), but because it is opposed to the whole "sham" of liberal, democratic government...
...No doubt most Buddhist leaders don't give these worldly contingencies a second thought, but to Huy, for instance, leader of the Opposition in the Senate, it is a constant dilemma...
...He is, moreover, a martial symbol...
...The present legislature, such as it is, was founded in 1967 and is called the National "Constituent" Assembly...
...6. The Future How long will the South survive...
...By my own rough estimate, if the Republic can last three or four more years, past the 1976 national election and the coming offensive (which may already be underway), its long-term survival will be fairly well assured...
...And as for the Catholic demonstrations, these have been small outside of Saigon, that is, outside the influence of the "Westernized- Opposition...
...As for fish, although the world market price is rising, the actual export sales of the South Vietnamese are falling due to decreased allotments of fuel available to trawlers...
...Several bishops have publicly announced their support for Thanh including, recently, the archbishop of Saigon...
...The peasant, though he knows of gasoline, probably doesn't use it, and just to explain to him the meaning of "luxury consumption" would be an awesome task...
...These, of course, remain utterly outside the authority of the Republican government and, officially, still insist upon the political conquest of Vietnam...
...Once an estimated half of these applications are accepted, the standard and now proven method for founding new villages will again be f(illowcd on a nationwide scale: representai iyes from the applicants will be asked to help the government choose the land...
...but the achievc-ment ought to be put in historical perspective...
...Their complaints are based entirely on the issue of corruption, in particular on a famous list of "Six Points," compiled by Thanh, which spell out specific charges of malfeasance against President Thieu and his executive subalterns...
...Americans attend carefully, as they should, to the doleful rhetoric of the opposition parties, but often without recollecting that less than a generation ago legal opposition in the South was (and still is in the North) out of the question...
...A handful of corporations (primarily for, electronics and appliance assembly) have accepted this offer, but if foreign businesses have not yet responded in droves, it is because they still worry about the security of their investment...
...But the Shell technicians still have no reason to believe that these pockets will be any more profitable than the marginal yield of, say, Burma or Malaysia...
...According to Dan, the government still has nearly 3,000,000 applicants for reset-dement from out-of-camp families, most of whom were probably never refugees to begin with...
...and finally permanent houses will be built while cultivation begins...
...But there is no question that the LDHB program is working in the government's favor by offering sites where the villages can be more easily protected by ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam...
...Not long ago, the government tried to lessen a seriousbalance of payments deficit by a prohibitive 400 percent increase in gasoline pric es...
...who will no doubt wait until the health of the Republic has reached some sort of nadir before launching their formidable offensive...
...The consequences today are singular...
...Oil is yet another splendorous dream for the future of the South, although it probably will not be, as a few government officials have rashly predicted, the economic salvation of the nation...
...They are known as the "Opposition," and if President 'Met, personifies all that the government performs and symbolizes, then the word "Opposi- tion,- frequently heard...
...Of course, this development hasn't been smooth going, nor has Thieu's Democratic Party restrained itself from some awfully malodorous political tactics...
...In the midst of war, you must act and make not the good choice but the best choice...
...they were the catalyst that finally pushed Thieu to grant elections in 1967 and a National Assembly in 1968...
...Civil liberties in South Vietnam are reasonably well protected by a respected and closely-knit community of lawyers...
...The elected Presidentcommands the armed forces through the chiefs of staff, but if the legislature is dissatisfied with the executive all it can do, theoretically, is throw out the Prime Minister, who is chosen by the President and who is supposed to carry out all nonmilitary policy...
...As an inevitable result, South Vietnam over the last four years has slipped into a serious depression, marked by increasing unemployment and inflation, decreasing wage rates, and a worsening balance of trade...
...They just want an end to corruption...
...The Opposition also remembers well the 1967 trial of Deputy Tran Ngoc Csau, Secretary of the Lower House, which was, they say, a coverup for Communists discovered working high in "'lieu's administration, or the imprisonment of several Saigon Demonstration leaders...
...Today a truly Vietnamese government is succeeding largely because its policies, designed not for "victory" but for the peculiar political and economic interests of its people, can at last compete in popularity with the reactionary traditionalism of the Communists...
...Perhaps the Republic would have fallen without massive U.S...
...such as Mrs...
...Large-scale development of a lumber industry will never be possible so long as the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) control or contest the forests...
...it is made up of two houses, the "Senate" (60 seats) whose members are elected by province for six-year terms, and the "Lower House- (159 seats) whose members are elected by district for two-year terms...
...This is not forced relocation," Dan carefully explained to me, making sure that I did not confuse his present efforts with the "strategic hamlet" scheme implemented on and off during the sixties...
...They are keenly aware that any lengthy interregnum of government power would play lethally into Communist hands...
...The South Vietnamese people of course desire wealth, but they aren't willing to change much in the pursuit of wealth...
...This is a good thing, since quite a few Vietnamese daily exercise this freedom to the limit...
...And as long as I am scanning the spectrum of Opposition forces, from legitimate to illegitimate, I ought to mention finally the political arms of the Communists—their party, the NLF, in the cities, and their government, the PRG, in the country...
...What is rarely credited to Thieu is that during the years of his presidency—and unremitting war—he has cultivated and cautiously overseen the growth of legitimate, opposition party politics in the South...
...5. The Thieu Regime The present administration of Nguyen Van Thieu is, despite recent demonstartions and Thieu's promise not to run for a third term, one of the most encouraging signs for the future of this unfortunate nation...
...What hampers the Opposition most is the brute fact ofwar...
...and Taiwanese scientists on "miracle" grains...
...Certainly many agents of foreign business are sending mixed reports back home, complaining about needless and arbitrary harassment from government bureaucracies...
...It is no accident, for example, that the members of the Ministry of Trade and Industry average about twenty-five years of age or that most of them are alumni of American universities...
...So far, the Assembly has not forced Thieu to back down on any crucial issue...
...They possess several distinctly un-Vietnamese traits—flexibility, innovation, and a desire to imitate—all of whic) make them good businessmen...
...When and if it is found in quantities that would justify production, the government will receive a cut of the profits and workers a new job market...
...In the understatement of his broken French, Thanh assures those who talk with him that "I have nothing against Thieu personally, or the government," and his organization insists that it is vehemently anti-Communist...
...Government efforts to reduce unnecessary consumption, though certainly justified, rile the marketers who depend upon volume turnover of goods for their existence...
...To reverse the South's •disastrous pseudoindustrialization, the government is trying to rebuild Vietnam's agricultural base, thereby creating jobs directly or indirectly in rural areas...
...Thieu has brought nearly eight years of stability to the national government, and stability is, for the typical Vietnamese, an essential characteristic of good government...
...It still operates in jumps and starts...
...these, along with seismic surveys, indicate that some oil lies in pockets under shallow water about 100 miles off the Delta shoreline...
...Loyal Democrats still recall the time during the 1972 Offensive when Thieu flew in by helicopter to the beleaguered town of An Loc and exhorted his troops amid falling rockets...
...Thieu has not stopped trying to suppress us...
...The compromise, as always, is between skyrocketing inflation if the budget is too much on the deficit side and even worse unemployment if the government does not spend freely enough...
...Thanh's efforts are stirring up the ordinarily loyal and unpolitical Catholics, and though the turnout for his demonstrations in the smaller towns is still unimpressive, in Saigon tens of thousands of Catholics fill the streets at his bidding...
...This is especially true of the demonstrative and unpredictable Buddhist Opposition, whose history of antagonism to Saigon regimes has been a long, bloody, and surprisingly successful series of revolts...
...The Republican government knows this, and therefore some of its seemingly backward policies are really a result of rapid economic progress being traded for political stability...
...The former might take place on a large scale within five years...
...The institutions of government enjoy increasing popular respect and show every sign of long-term success...
...First, it seems almost embarrassingly clear that the Republic's present success has been achieved in many respects because of, rather than in spite of, the American withdrawal...
...After all, if any airfield in Vietnam can be hit by a night-time rocket volley, there is not much chance that the government can guarantee protection to shiny new refineries...
...If he is not charismatic, he is—unlike the dapper Kyhard-working...
...street lights and sidewalks in disrepair, and rows of rickety stalls set up by jobless families eager to sell just one of a few paltry items...
...But only someday...
...More importantly, it will be at least ten years before any company can be producing in significant quantities...
...The Catholic Opposition has recently and dramatically risen to prominence through the tireless energy of an aging, soft-spoken priest, Father Tran Huu Thanh of South Vietnam's Redemptorist Church...
...It is a credit to the Ministry's sense of vision that it is at least eager for foreign investments, even if so far investors haven't been exactly pounding at the door...
...One day, they say, all Vietnamese will voluntarily switch their allegiance to the PRG, and until then the PRG must "defend- itself_ It is known that the Communists have their own secret "provisional" functionaries in every city and village in South Vietnam...
...And the French did not remedy this bias very effectively...
...Over the short run, the government is using every artificial stimulant at its disposal to keep the economy on its feet...
...American firms would, no doubt, much rather deal with the Cholonites and let mingle the somewhat amoral longing for a dollar, than to chafe under the more rigid sobriety of the Vietnamese character...
...The reasons that people become adherents of the Opposition are about as wide and varied as the word "Opposition" suggests...
...What might foreign corporations be interested in...
...More fish can be exported if oil prices are lowered, but this last condition seems unlikely anywhere in the near future...
...Ow Opposition can range from obliiio_dy moderate to scathingly radical...
...The layout of the villages themselves must of military necessity follow a compact design, with houses and gardens close together and the fields surrounding...
...If Thieu is not a people's hero, neither is he, like Diem and Nhu in their last years, the epitome of the aloof, Western-styled autocrat...
...The classic Confucian model of society puts the trader on the bottom rung—below administrators, warriors, and even peasants...
...And most of the Opposition's strength appears in disputes outside the formal political framework, especially since political issues to the Vietnamese mingle inseparably with broader cultural and religious values...
...Not only does French culture itself suspect industry, but the French colonialists, though they did offer upward-bound Vietnamese a hand in governing, kept commercial management exclusively to themselves...
...What is worse, the urban unemployed are also unemployable—since, without industry, there was no genuine economic reason for them to he urban in the first place...
...It seems to be an open secret that in the late sixties Democrats occasionally used bribery to get important resolutions through the Assembly and possessed "signed resignations- of their own members so that they would always vote the party line...
...A quarter of the likely seabed has been "sold" already for $30 million outright, and the price is rising...
...Among the Buddhists, spiritual enthusiasm seems incapable of reenacting the fervid sixties...
...Taking Thanh at his word, Thieu has released since October 1974 repeated assurances that "I punish severely corruption" and has undertaken the much-publicized dismissal of generals, province chiefs, and cabinet ministers...
...The government has been helped by a welcome reduction of enemy activity in the bounteous Delta area...
...Effective as they are, their political program is thinner than air...
...Opposition moderates detest slovenly administration and venal officials, but they fear the NVA troops even more...
...Members of the Assembly, most of whom have a legal background, recently demonstrated their peculiarly French-American concern for an absolute arbiter of due process by insisting upon the election of a Supreme Court...
...The depression is quite a hit milder there, and the Vietnamese peasant, whose wants are seldom greater than his meager needs, finds his standard of living basically unchanged...
...The institution of political Nit-tics in a democratic framework is a first for Vietnam...
...The Buddhists are apolitical as a matter of principle...
...There, after discussion, debate, and even (1 am told) thrown ashtrays, resolutions are either approved or defeated...
...The latter would be a godsend to an economy already geared to services, but again the problem remains the war, and the improbability of generating sufficient publicity and good will to make upper-middle-class Westerners forsake Bali Hai for the turquoise waters of Nha Trang...
...The Cholon Chinese, perhaps because they want to afford the accessories that go nicely with Western clothes, keep up lively trade despite the depression which surrounds them...
...The Catholics are making a few tentative efforts to form their own "Liberal Party," but acting en masse their formidable political influence is felt not in the Assembly, but in the streets and in government offices...
...While the economy is setting itself once more upon the firm foundation of agriculture and on the gradual but certain development of industry, there is a danger that worsening depression will break the people's patience...
...You do not have to be all that Western in outlook to oppose such monstrous behavior...
...Buddhist leaders, however activist, refuse to attach themselves to political parties for fear (a not unreasonable fear) of being rendered impure and unholy...
...Finally, there are the plans of the Communist military command...
...About two-thirds of these stayed in government camps, where they received little more than one pound of rice per person per day and endured atrocious living conditions...
...Second, nothing is so uselessly academic as to study the flaws of the Republican government without considering Vietnam's extraordinary history or possible political alternatives...
...Most potential investors, moreover, still express misgivings about the long-range stability of the Republic's economic policies...
...Several of the small parties in the Assembly, for example, the Cao Dai or the Hoa Hao, represent coherent religious groups which over the years have accepted an uneasy alliance with the Thieu regime and which now simply want to protect their own interests...
...Downtown Saigon is strewn with the markings of unexpected austerity: large, abandoned buildings...
...Eventually the NVA will be unable to afford its current strength in the South, and (as has already happened in the lower Delta) the VC and PRG will reach, province by province, a modu.v rivendi with the decentralized government administration...
...Shell-City Services consortium...
...In the Assembly, the Opposition controls, at most, one third of the seats...
...Next to rice, South Vietnam's two largest industries are timber and fish, neither of which shows encouraging prospects right now...
...If the government is concerned with political trouble horn of economic discontent, it doesn't worry about the countryside...
...leaders are several thousand Buddhist monks and nuns, members of the United Buddhist Congregation, attached to pagodas and universities throughout South Vietnam...
...Less rice is being destroyed in scorched-earth campaigns and less is being sold on black markets to agents for Communist soldiers...
...So there is significant political opposition to Thieu and the Democrats, but its strength ought not to be exaggerated...
...They know that in the North free speech and press are out of the question, political opposition is not only illegal but purges have been carried out against opponents involving hundreds of thousands of victims, the practice of any religion is being successfully eliminated by prohibiting the education of clergy or monks, intellectual freedom is so utterly extinguished that the Vietnamese language itself is kept "pure" from new words, courts of law are directed by Party officials according to no written code and "law" is not even taught at the University of Hanoi, and the Party leadership willfully feeds the nation's GNP to war while the peasants suffer dreadful poverty...
...The problem is how to prevent a series of immediate crises from forcing the Republic's collapse...
...Upper-class, governing South Vietnamese, probably better versed in Western culture than Americans through their impeccable knowledge of French language and history, are strangely inept in economic affairs...
...Most South Vietnamese have chosen the Thieu regime—however corrupt its generals or rigged its elections—which will defend them, ease them gently into the twentieth century, and otherwise leave them alone...
...There are historical reasons for this...
...As yet, the latter conditions do not exist...
...Even if they do force Thieu to step down, it will be clear that their purpose has been to "demonstrate" their disapproval of Thieu's misdeeds—not their disapproval of the government as such...
...Even in the Assembly...
...Ngo Ba Tsans...
...There is always an outside possibility, of course, that oil could someday be South Vietnam's major export...
...In politics, South Vietnamese wonder whether the most conspicuous forms of corruption (graft in military personnel payments, market manipulation by large importers, and illegal payments to ministry officials and province chiefs) can be halted within the emerging parliamentary system, or whether one or more coups will install a string of "strongmen" and erase the stability wrought by Thieu...
...We are following President Roosevelt's directions," I was told by Nguyen Dang Khoi, Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, shrewdly picking an example I would appreciate...
...As far as I could determine, freedom of press and of speech has flourished, although the recent shutdown of five Saigon newspapers is an ominous sign...
...Presently, the government is setting up "free zones" near the coast where foreign industry can set up shop tariff-free in return for using an agreed-upon percentage of Vietnamese labor and management...
...They are "against" what is—and in a period of war and severe economic distress it can be expected that many people are against what is—for no particular reason...
...Moreover, the yield of rice per hectare of land is rising dramatically, thanks to years of work by U.S...
...unemployment, it is felt, leads to political trouble faster than inflation...
...Unskilled labor here is dismally cheap (from $.80/day, compared to $2.00 /day in Taiwan or $3.00/day in Hong Kong) and rising wages in the industrial nations make it seem cheaper still...
...13ut the program will not end here...
...Obviously," I was told by one radical opposition leader, "by abrogating the original Political Party Law of 1969...
...However much the semifeudal instincts of the South Vietnamese may resent the rule of anynational government, most can guess the consequences, should their own Republic fall, of North Vietnam's sought-after "reunification...
...To walk from Saigon into Cholon is to leave quiet, shaded streets, hollow-looking buildings, and slow-pedaling bicycles, and enter suddenly into a bustling, miniature Hong Kong...
...They know especially that the only test run for Hanoi's NLF in a Southern city occurred in February 1968, in Hue, where Communist leaders during their two-week occupation did nothing significant except execute the city's thousand leading citizens...
...The few that remain open today, he observes, offer temporary shelter only to recent refugees of current fighting...
...1,000,000) just west of Saigon, are a living reminder of how much a nation's economy is shaped not by its resources, but by the character of its people...
...So the national government is certainly not perfect democracy, nor does it yet facilitate a smooth interaction of interest groups...
...It is a hidden web, it is the "other government...
...reduce to two profitable options: (1) exportation of a very pure grade of silica for glass production, and (2) tourism...
...Just two test-drillings have been made so far by a U.S...
...If self-sufficiency is achieved, it will be due in part to resettlement, which is still the government's most energetically pursued social-economic program...
...Needless to say, the pinch was felt in the cities...
...President Thieu, himself a Catholic convert, doubtless looks upon this movement as the single greatest threat to his power...
...Then too, there are Vietnam's beautiful, endless, bleach-white beaches—which, economically...
Vol. 8 • April 1975 • No. 7
