In fact, the amount of people inhabiting the country was the main reason for the necessary and urgent economic adjustment. While in the 1950’s the population growth rate in Vietnam was only 1% per year, much lower than other countries in Southeast Asia, a large gap existed between supply and demand. Before industrialization policies were enacted, the agricultural production of food was not enough to meet the demands of the large population, thus forcing many into further impoverished conditions.
High population growth can be considered a positive and a negative asset to a developing economy. At one end, as discussed above, large amounts of people means that many will go without food and shelter, equating into a large level under the national poverty line and a high disease and death rate. Conversely, however, for a country making a move away from agricultural production and into the factories, many jobs will need to be filled, thus a large labor force is a positive. Since communism was based on population equality and the belief that no one should go hungry, the government was determined to utilize the population to its fullest potential, improve productivity, and generally move Vietnam from a developing country merely looked at as a contributor of resources, to a international trading partner. As we will see later, many of the problems that existed before communism surfaced in full force after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps more than anything else, the end of the Cold War, and the simultaneous fall of not just the Soviet Union but also of communism in many places worldwide, was a symbol of what was to come. For years, communism had been the model for political and economic development not just in the Soviet Union, but also among developing countries, primarily in the East.
