Send article

Forty years after the fall of Saigon, a reflective Vietnam

Saigon — nearly no one calls it by its official name — has come a long way in forty years. In 1986, after years of socialist deprivation, the Communist Party announced doi moi, a series of reforms that loosened the state’s grip on the economy and created a system of “market-oriented socialism.” As Vietnam reopened to the world, foreign investment arrived. The economy boomed and many people were lifted out of poverty