How Hanoi Hangs On

It is no secret that the South Vietnamese economy would collapse in a matter of weeks if U.S. support were withdrawn. Less widely recognized is the fact that, without considerable aid from the Soviet Union, China and other Communist countries, North Viet Nam would hardly be able to support its own 20 million people, much less prosecute a war that now embraces all of Indochina.

A new, confidential British government study on the North Vietnamese economy, which TIME obtained last week, shows that behind Hanoi's stubborn determination to persist in the war lies a startlingly fragile economy.

Bad Jokes. As the 31-page British report points out, North Viet Nam has encountered formidable economic difficulties that are caused only in part by the strains imposed by war. Much of the problem lies in poorly skilled and unmotivated workers. Though it has been nearly two years since the U.S. halted the air attacks on the North, Hanoi has not yet successfully revived its fledgling industry. Production goals have become a bad joke. Five-year plans proved to be such exercises in fiction that in 1968 Hanoi switched to one-year plans. Even so, targets remain elusive. Originally, Hanoi had announced plans for a 26% increase in light-industry output for 1969. When all the results were in, the real increase turned out to be 2.1%. Some machines were found to be in use only two to three hours a day, and workers were taking off after only four or six hours on the job.

The story in heavy industry is even less encouraging. At the big Hon Gai coal fields in Quang Ninh province, for example, production has slipped steadily since 1965, when it peaked at an annual output of 4,300,000 tons. Another bombing casualty? Not quite. The problem, as Premier Pham Van Dong put it in a recent speech, was labor's failure "to work with determination."

Hanoi's problems are compounded by the troubles that persist in agriculture. Fully 70% of North Viet Nam's agricultural work force is female, a reflection of the losses the country has suffered in nine years of war with the French and another nine years of fighting for control of South Viet Nam. The new strains of "miracle rice" that have brought self-sufficiency in food supply to many other Asian nations (TIME, July 13) have failed to take hold in North Viet Nam, partly because workers assigned to collective farms are unwilling to give the new strains the intensive care they require.

Party planners in Hanoi regularly criticize North Vietnamese farmers for "leisurely ways of working," but that is only part of the problem. The Japanese farmer, who has all sorts of machinery and chemicals at hand, turns out a quintal (about 220 Ibs.) of rice in less than two hours; in North Viet Nam, where even hand tools are in short supply, it takes 64 to 80 hours. Just to meet the minimum needs of its people. Hanoi must import 800,000 tons of rice and wheat flour a year.

Measure of Distress. After several futile attempts to stamp out black-marketeering in the collectives in Vinh Phuc province, Party Theoretician Truong Chinh lamented that "corruption still remains, just like weeds that grow and grow again." The surly dock workers of Haiphong have left tons of cargo to rot and rust on the piers. In the countryside, stubborn peasants joke about Hanoi's efforts to make the collectives work. The latest concerns the government-issued Nam Mot (Model 51) plow. The shoddy, easily broken plow, say the peasants, should really be named "Mot Nam"--meaning one season.

Support from Russia, China and other Communist allies was stepped up in 1965; since then, outside economic assistance, aside from the huge volume of military aid, has totaled at least $1 billion. The Soviets now ship North Viet Nam some 50.000 tons of supplies a month, and their engineers are working in Haiphong on an eightfold expansion of the harbor facilities. Hanoi has also received a hospital and trucks from Bulgaria, engineering equipment from Czechoslovakia, medical aid from East Germany, machinery and consumer goods from Hungary and economic aid from Poland. North Vietnamese get training in various skills in Russia, China and several East bloc countries. However, Hanoi submits the returned trainees to a lengthy and stifling reindoctrination course, which apparently blunts much of what they have learned about improved ways of running the economy.

A measure of Hanoi's own distress at the country's decaying economy is shown in the fact that it has revised one of Communism's oldest rubrics: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." The new principle, as expressed in Hanoi's State Plan for 1970, promises that "those who work much will receive much, those who work little will receive little, and those who are able to work but refuse to must be forced to work and live by the results of their labor."

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