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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Vietnam
Index
By 1985 Vietnam possessed two satellite-ground stations
constructed with the assistance of the Soviet Union. The Lotus
One satellite communication station was located in Ha Nam Ninh
Province, 100 kilometers south of Hanoi, and served to integrate
Vietnam into the Soviet Intersputnik Communication Satellite
Organization. Construction began in January 1979 and was
completed in July 1980 in time for the Moscow Olympics. Lotus Two
was inaugurated near Ho Chi Minh City in April 1985 to broadcast
the ceremonies celebrating the tenth anniversary of the end of
the Second Indochina War. The system linked Moscow, Hanoi, and Ho
Chi Minh City, and the two stations were reportedly manned
entirely by Soviet personnel. A French telecommunications company
was installing a modern nationwide telephone system in 1987.
The installation of a national telephone system was symbolic
of Hanoi's acknowledge of the country's critical need to
formulate an integrated development plan that would tap the
country's economic potential on a national scale. It also
demonstrated the pragmatic character of a new generation of
leaders who rose to power in the mid-1980s and appeared more
willing than the nation's past leadership to risk economic and
political reform for the sake of modernization. Reforms
undertaken during this time were greeted by outside observers as
a promising sign that the nation's economy might be moving at
last out of its prolonged stagnation.
* * *
Information on Vietnam's economy can be found in Vietnamese
newspaper and journal articles translated and published by the
Foreign Broadcast Information Service and the Joint Publications
Research Service of the United States government. Additional
material is published by some of Vietnam's trading partners.
Primary among these is the Statistical Yearbook of the Comecon
Countries, published annually by the Soviet government.
Another valuable source that combines data with some analysis
is the Quarterly Economic Review of Indochina published by
the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Analytical articles are
most readily found in the Far Eastern Economic Review and
in the yearly summary issues published by Asian Survey.
(For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1987
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