Comparing China, Cuba, and Vietnam
Carmelo Mesa-Lago is the dean of Cuban studies abroad as the founder and editor for many years of the journal Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos. He has published numerous articles and books about the island mainly focused on its economy and is a retired economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh. From early on, he had a very significant influence among the scholars studying the Cuban reality abroad and within Cuba, particularly among Cuban economists with respect to his criticism of the official use of the island’s statistics several decades ago. My own works regarding Cuba have depended to a considerable degree on Mesa-Lago’s contributions to the study of the country over many years.
What Do Statistics Say about China, Vietnam, and Cuba?
Mesa-Lago points out that before the economic changes that Deng Xiaoping initiated in China in1978 and that Vietnam inaugurated with the new policies of Doi Moi (renovation or innovation) in 1986, these two countries were below Cuba in the great majority of socioeconomic and social welfare indices. Now, however, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the profound crisis that Venezuela is undergoing, which under the governments of Chávez and Máduro became the most important source of aid for the island, the situation has radically changed, with the two Asian countries scoring well above Cuba in most of these very same indices. In fact, Cuba is also going through a big crisis with the emigration of hundreds of thousands of people, the deterioration of access to consumer goods such as food and of public services such as electricity and garbage collection. For Mesa-Lago, the principal reason for these changes is that China and Vietnam, much more than Cuba, have allowed for the open functioning of private enterprise. According to the statistics presented in this volume under review, 96.7 percent of Vietnamese enterprises and 89.7 percent of the Chinese, are not the property of the state,1 while this is only the case for 21.9 percent of Cuban enterprises. At the same time, the proportion of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) owned and controlled by the state has declined to 37.3 percent in Vietnam and to 40 percent in China while in Cuba the state’s contribution to the GDP is 90.8 percent (51). As part of this reality, Mesa-Lago points out that Cuban non-state enterprises, in the countryside as well as in the cities, have been subjected to many restrictions, taxes, inspections, and changes in economic policy that have impeded their development (24).
In Cuba, only a small proportion of agriculture is in private hands while in Vietnam and China a large proportion is privately run. According to Mesa-Lago, this is the reason that China and Vietnam are self-sufficient in food production while Cuba must import the great majority of those products. Perhaps the most important problem of Cuban agriculture is that the reforms that have been carried out in Cuba have been accompanied, as we earlier indicated, by many obstacles created by the government, which have significantly contributed to a very low agricultural productivity. While 17 percent of the labor force works in agriculture, agriculture generates only 2.6 percent of the GDP (23). In terms of industrial production, China and Vietnam are respectively very advanced and advanced while Cuba is going through a deindustrialization process, including the almost total collapse of the sugar industry. This process has been accompanied by a large wave of new hotel construction while the number of tourists continues to decline. Exports have increased in the two Asian countries while they have decreased in Cuba. This is exactly the opposite of what has happened with inflation, which has decreased in China and Vietnam, while it has increased in Cuba (51).
In terms of the economic growth of the three countries between the years 2009 and 2020, i.e., before the pandemic, while China and Vietnam respectively grew 7.4 and 5.9 percent, Cuba only grew 0.9 percent in the same period.2 This should not be surprising because the rate of gross capital formation, which is a critical index of economic growth, constituted in 2019, 43.1 percent of the GDP in China, 26.8 percent in Vietnam, but only 11.5 percent in the case of Cuba (57). This decline of the Cuban economy does not seem to have affected the very high degree of literacy (still 100 percent), the same percentage as in Barbados and about the same as in Argentina and Uruguay (99 percent), according to statistics provided by Mesa-Lago and UNESCO. Nor does it appear to have been affected very much, perhaps paradoxically, by the poor physical state of schools and the substantial abandonment of their profession by Cuban teachers. This economic decline, together with the limited but real growth of private enterprise, has had a significant effect in the notable increase of inequality with an increase in the Gini coefficient estimated by the Cuban sociologist Mayra Espina Prieto as 0.407 compared with 0.357 in Vietnam and 0.385 in China (57). In the case of Cuba, the remittances sent by relatives in the United States and other countries have also played a very important role in the increase of inequality, especially if we consider that Cubans of African descent receive far fewer remittances than white Cubans.
Mesa-Lago provides very important data regarding Cuba’s health especially considering its importance in the positive image that the Cuban government has projected abroad. To begin with, Mesa-Lago points out that there are various health systems in Cuba. The largest one is the public system, but there are other generally superior health systems such as the one covering the armed forces, State Security, and high officials of the Communist Party. In addition, foreigners who pay for medical services with hard currencies such as dollars and euros have access to much better medical facilities and services (91).
In terms of the number of doctors for every ten thousand inhabitants, we find that Vietnam is in first place with an index number of 8.8 while it is 8.6 with Cuba and only 2.0 with China. It is exactly the opposite with the number of beds in hospitals, with China in first place with a 5.5 index number, Cuba in second place with 3.0, and Vietnam in the third place with 2.8 (115). With respect to the rate of infant mortality (for every 1,000 inhabitants) Cuba continues to be at the head of the three countries with a 5.0 rate followed by China with 5.6 and Vietnam with 13.9 (116-7).3 Nevertheless, several academic articles have questioned the validity of the data offered by the Cuban government arguing that they underestimate the number of infant deaths.4 At the same time, Cuba is way below the other two countries with respect to the rate of mortality post-partum of mothers, with an index of 176.3 (for every 100,000 births) while the index for Vietnam is 46.2 and China scores 17.8 (117). The Cuban rate of 176.3 is worse than the situation that existed in 1955 (before the triumph of the Cuban revolution) with a rate of 145.0 (116-17 and note 19 on p. 273).
It was with the Covid pandemic that the Cuban government had the biggest failure with its own people. It is estimated that in 2021, when the pandemic had already spread in the three countries, Cuba had the highest rate of excessive deaths (the internationally used criteria to measure Covid’s impact) with China with the lowest number, followed by Vietnam and Cuba in the third place with the highest average of 163, three times that of Vietnam’s rate and 82 times China’s rate (119).5 The principal reason for the high incidence of deaths caused by Covid in Cuba is that the government waited too long for the vaccine developed by Cuba to be ready for use in the country. While waiting for that development, Cuba rejected the aid offered by the World Health Organization (WHO), an organization with which Cuba has had good relations for many years.
At the same time, when Mesa-Lago examined the changes that had taken place in Cuba from 2008 to 2019, he found a very significant decline in the number of hospitals and available beds in the remaining hospitals and in the number of local medical centers, nurses, and technicians. The total number of doctors did not decrease because doctors had been converted into an export item (115). The Cuban state charges foreign countries for its medical services based on their capacity to pay, which includes some countries who obtain Cuban medical aid entirely free. But from the money paid by the recipient countries to the Cuban government, the Cuban doctors involved typically receive approximately 25 percent. As a result, the number of available doctors to attend their Cuban patients has been reduced as has been notably the case with family doctors, half of whom work outside the country, thereby creating a shortage of this service in the island. Even so, many Cuban doctors desire those jobs outside of the country for various reasons including the access to the consumer goods they can buy abroad.
Gender Equality
Mesa-Lago pays special attention to gender equality. In that context, the author takes note of the different proportions of the labor force made up of women in the three countries. Vietnam occupies first place with a 47.4 percent proportion, while China occupies second place with 43.5 percent and Cuba is in third place with 39.4 percent (138). Although the Cuban rate is somewhat lower than that of the other two countries, we must bear in mind that it is much higher than that of prerevolutionary Cuba where according to the 1953 census (the last census carried out before the 1959 Revolution) only 13.7 percent of women worked outside the home and among these women more than 25 percent were domestic workers.6 Cuba finds itself in second place in the number of weeks (18) with paid maternity leave granted by the state while Vietnam is in first place with 24 and China in third place with 14 to 23, a significant variation based on regional differences (138). At the same time, pensions have been a great problem given the high inflation that Cubans have had to endure during the last several years. Although Cuba has the highest coverage for men and women among the three countries (68 percent) compared with 45 percent for China and 28 percent for Vietnam, pensions in Cuba, compared to those in China and Vietnam, are not indexed for inflation (128, 138). As a result, the incidence of poverty in Cuba is more noticeable among old people than in the rest of the population. Finally, with respect to women, perhaps the most useful index is that of Gender Inequality, a combined measurement used by the Development Program of the United Nations to assess gender disparities in many countries. Cuba occupies third place under that index with a coefficient of 0.304, Vietnam is in second place with 0.296, and China is in first place with a 0.168 index (138).
To make sense of the great amount of data utilized in his book, Mesa-Lago tries to present a summary of his data according to various categories. For example, in social security the author selected fifty-one indices based on their importance and comparability. The ranking of these three countries, with the lowest numbers being the best, the first one is China with 1.57, Vietnam is second with 1.74, and Cuba is in third place with 2.20 (187). The situation is different in what Mesa-Lago calls social solidarity, which refers to equality of benefits and among different sectors of the population. In this area, which covers health, non-contributory social assistance, and pensions, Cuba occupies first place (1.50), Vietnam is in second place (1.79), and China is in the third place (2.25) (139).
Aside from the very informative comparisons of China, Vietnam, and Cuba, Mesa-Lago presents quite useful data with respect to various aspects of Cuban reality. The principal theme here concerns the economic blockade of the island that the United States established at the beginning of the decade of the sixties. There is no doubt that these abominable reprisals on the part of the U.S. empire were not motivated by the love of democracy and human rights, but to eliminate the threat of a country that had been, to various degrees, under U.S. control since 1898. Cuba was then establishing its independence from the U.S. empire and getting indispensable material support from and allying itself with another empire hostile to the United States. As Mesa-Lago recognizes, the U.S. embargo (or blockade), which was strengthened under Donald Trump, has lasted for more time and with greater strength in Cuba than in Vietnam and has resulted in more adverse effects for Cuba (20). Nevertheless, this affirmation needs to be qualified: although the economic impact of the measures adopted by Washington against Cuba for more than sixty years have undoubtedly been more damaging, Mesa-Lago points out that Vietnam suffered nine years of war against France (1946–1964) and twenty years of war against the United States (1955–1975) that devastated its society and economy and converted it into one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world.
With respect to China, the great damages caused in that country by the warlord conflicts after the establishment of the republic in 1911, the war against the Japanese invasion and occupation, and the war between the armies headed by Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong were disastrous in their effects. To these we have to add the incredibly costly policies of Mao Zedong. The so-called Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) that provoked an enormous famine with millions of victims, while the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) provoked the death of one to two million people. They were no less destructive than the atrocities (including the widespread use of napalm and the creation of “strategic hamlets”) carried out by French and U.S. imperialisms in Vietnam.
On the other hand, many Cubans were killed and injured during the Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961, aside from the victims of numerous terrorist attacks and sabotage carried out in Cuban territory by the CIA, and of course the large number of victims of Cuban government repression against non-violent dissidents. According to Mesa-Lago, while the Cuban government estimated in 2021 that the losses caused by the U.S. blockade amounted to $130 billion, these losses were partly compensated by the USSR, including subsidies through the higher prices that the USSR paid for Cuban products, in the amount of $65 billion from 1960 to 1990. Cuba also received from Venezuela $100 billion in the period 2005 to 2017. In addition to the contributions to Cuba by those two countries, the debt with other foreign countries such as China, Russia, Mexico, and the so-called Paris Club, was forgiven in the amount of $42 billion. Moreover, the very active economic relations with Canada and the European Union also partially compensated for the U.S. blockade (21–22). Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that these compensations have not remedied the structural effects of the blockade, as for example the U.S. government’s prohibition to invest in Cuba and its effects on the economic development of the country. Moreover, during the last several years, and for the foreseeable future, Venezuela has substantially curtailed its aid to Cuba, and no other country is currently playing that role. Russia, for example, has made many promises, but has not delivered much yet. In conclusion, there is no doubt that in a comparative context, the great loss of life and damage to Vietnam’s economy and society and the long history of China’s twentieth-century travails described above were more extensive than those affecting Cuba.
Should Vietnam and China be a Model for Cuba?
Many of the Cuban sympathizers of the two Asian systems ignore that they are not less antidemocratic and authoritarian than the Cuban regime. The independent human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed out in its World Report 2025 that the rise to power of a new leader in Vietnam after an intense internal struggle did not diminish the implacable repression of human rights carried out by that government. According to the HRW report, the Vietnamese authorities continue to forbid independent human rights organizations, as well as independent unions, religious groups, the mass media, and all organizations that operate outside the government’s direct control.
During the last year (2024) the Communist Party leader To Lam, who had been at the head of the notorious Ministry of Public Security, assumed the much more important position of general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party after an intense struggle during which he was able to replace in their positions five members of the Political Bureau of that party. Under the previous ministry headed by Lam, the police incarcerated many dissidents, a repression that continued through 2024, which was facilitated by the control that the government exercises over the criminal justice system that, as in Cuba, is neither impartial nor independent.7 Another HRW report said that Vietnam is providing false information with respect to union freedom in that country to obtain or maintain preferential tariffs in its international commercial activities. This report maintains that Vietnam does not allow independent unions to represent workers. The leaders and functionaries of the so-called Vietnamese Confederation of Workers are appointed by the Vietnamese government and at the level of the enterprises, almost all its leaders are appointed by their managements. In fact, in April of 2024, the Vietnamese police arrested Nguyen Van Binh, a high functionary of the Ministry of Labor, because he had advocated substantial labor reforms and more union autonomy.8 It is important to underline that the control that the Vietnamese state maintains over the working class and peasantry in that country—forbidding independent unions and associations—considerably facilitates the accumulation of capital by foreign and Vietnamese capital.
The Situation in China
China’s as well as Vietnam’s political and economic system descends from the totalitarian one-party state that Stalin established in the USSR, although of course with national adaptations. Given those common origins, it should not be surprising that the most important characteristics of Vietnam’s political system also apply to China such as the one-party state and the suppression of all independent political and union activities. Like in Cuba and Vietnam, there is only one central union organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). This organization is controlled by the state through the ruling Communist Party, the function of which is to maintain the discipline of the workers from above, thus facilitating their exploitation.
China has modernized to a substantial degree, and its standard of living has improved considerably, especially in the big cities. But the price that the working class and peasantry have paid for that “progress” has been truly extraordinary and probably worse than the early industrialization experience of advanced capitalist countries such as Great Britain. Among the many horrors suffered by the Chinese people we find the hukou system, which although it has been relaxed to a certain degree by local functionaries in some second- and third-rank cities, continues to be rigorously implemented in the largest cities such as Beijing. This system segregates immigrants who emigrated from rural zones, who are still registered as people who live in the countryside, thereby excluding them from urban social services that are superior with regards to housing, schools, childcare, and government subsidies. This system has played a very important role in the exploitation and oppression of those immigrants by domestic as well as foreign capital.
Unlike Vietnam, there has been a lot of resistance in China in the form of wildcat strikes among workers, and peasant protests against the expulsion from their lands to make way for the expansion of enterprises and urban areas. These social disturbances considerably increased toward the end of the nineties and beginning of the twenty-first century. During that epoch, tens of millions of public sector workers were fired and thrown into a labor market for which they were unprepared, provoking a subsistence crisis. The Chinese government admitted there were 87,000 protest incidents involving more than twenty-five people in 2005. Finally, there is a paradox that while on one hand China is an important producer of equipment for the protection of the environment, it has become the worst transmitter in the world of pollutants such as carbon dioxide in the last twenty years. Chinese industrialization has provoked a considerable contamination of air, land, and waters. Finally, we must not ignore the oppression endured by the minority nations such as in Tibet and Xinjiang recently extended to the important coastal city of Hong Kong.9
The Changes that Mesa-Lago Proposes for Cuba
Although this is not a book dedicated to developing solutions for the economic problems that Cuba confronts, it does outline certain proposals. Thus, for example, Mesa-Lago proposes: (1) the total legalization of PYMES (small- and medium-sized private enterprises), authorizing them to expand so they can absorb the surplus state labor force; (2) allowing private farmers and cooperatives to be truly autonomous, freeing them from their obligation to hand over to the state (at prices fixed by the latter) part of their production through the state institution of Acopio; (3) allowing Cubans living abroad to make investments in Cuba; (4) allowing private enterprises to make all decisions about where to invest and about what they can import and export independently from the state (199, 230).
From the point of view that favors a socialist and democratic exit for Cuban Communism, which prominently includes the notion of self-government for those who work in the city as well as in the countryside, this is not a program compatible with such a perspective, although there is a degree of overlap with Mesa-Lago’s proposals regarding agriculture. Small farmers must be left in peace and be allowed to grow and sell whatever they want without the impositions of Acopio, an agency that should be abolished. In this context, government intervention should be limited to certain questions such as the regulations concerned with the working conditions and health of producers and consumers, and of course the environment. Perhaps the most important thing to do in this context would be to institute a progressive income tax system to limit and avoid the uncontrollable growth of economic inequality in the countryside. These taxes would at the same time create an agricultural development fund to introduce modern forms of cultivation, especially those that protect the environment and diminish and eliminate the most onerous agricultural tasks and the high degree of physical deterioration that farmers and peasants commonly develop.
With respect to the right to freely import goods from abroad it is important to consider that a significant class differentiation already exists in Cuba that could easily result in a wave of imports such as automobiles (as has already began to occur under the current relaxation of import controls) and luxury items that would do very little to promote Cuban’s economic development. Under current social and political circumstances, citizens and economic entities should have the right to import articles from abroad, but especially if these involve the country’s scarce “strong” foreign currencies such as euros and dollars, there should be limitations on the importation of non-essential luxury goods to maximize the contribution of those imported articles to the general as well as to the individual welfare. By the same token, the state should have the right to prioritize the importation of capital equipment and related goods essential to economic development.
Concerning the small- and medium-sized enterprises, we must bear in mind that the Cuban government considers that a medium-sized enterprise includes any firm with up to one hundred employees. Surely, such a number implies a fully capitalist enterprise with a bureaucratic administrative hierarchy to administer it, which would have very serious consequences for the type of society that would develop after the death of the bureaucratic and one-party state “socialism.” Unfortunately, there has been no sign of the germs of a worker’s movement on the island oriented toward the creation of independent unions and therefore open to the possibility of a working-class control from below of the places they work in for a major part of their lives. The real discontent of Cuban workers of all kinds has instead manifested itself in a dramatic exodus abroad especially since 2022 and in street demonstrations to express their protest regarding the scarcity of basic consumer articles and the blackouts that have recently become a part of Cuban reality. This is a tradition that began on July 11, 2021, with large demonstrations throughout the country followed by more local ones in the following years, although both have been repressed by the government with hundreds of people sentenced to heavy prison terms.
Mesa-Lago’s Proposals for Health Care in Cuba
Unfortunately, Mesa-Lago makes certain recommendations without considering their social and political context and consequences. For example, Mesa-Lago recommends the operation of a private health system to “compete” with the public system (224–27). The experiences of other countries have clearly demonstrated that such a private system, given class inequalities, would have a middle- and upper-class clientele with the resources to obtain luxury treatment without waiting and other uncomfortable realities of a massive health system in a relatively poor country. An even more serious consequence of Mesa-Lago’s recommendations would be the decline in popular support for a public system that would inevitably become the system used by the poor and people with fewer material resources. This can be clearly seen in the United States where there is the Medicaid medical system for the poor and people with few material resources and the Medicare medical system for all people who are older than sixty-five independently of their economic means. It is because of that difference that the great majority of politicians are fearful of openly advocating benefit cuts in Medicare while repeatedly and openly trying to cut Medicaid benefits. Because Medicare is a program characterized by its universal coverage without any evaluation of the patient’s economic resources (no means testing) it has become a bit of a “sacred cow” that few dare to criticize publicly. Because of this feature of Medicare, attempts to reduce its benefits are usually full of hidden undisclosed deficiencies and subterfuges. This is true of the privatization of Medicare through the Medicare Advantage programs that in reality, but not openly, reduce benefits to its recipients.
Mesa-Lago himself confirms the validity of this critique when he cites the case of Vietnam. As he explains, there are long lines to obtain medical services in Vietnam’s public hospitals, while it is much easier to obtain medical attention in those privately owned. In fact, the private hospitals sponsored by foreign institutions (like French and Japanese hospitals) are the best and most expensive. On the other hand, poor families, children below the age of six, the disabled, and students have the right to receive free medical attention in public hospitals but are subject to the previously mentioned long waiting periods (92).
Mesa-Lago’s Proposal for the Age of Retirement
Mesa-Lago tends to treat the question of retirement as a purely economic if not actuarial problem, and certainly not as a social problem. In the case of China, although it is rapidly becoming a much richer country, Mesa-Lago recommends that pensions should be adjusted to the population’s life expectancy and that the government should develop incentives and encourage people to retire later in life. In addition, he argues that the norms for early retirement should be reinforced to avoid their “improper use” (206).
Three years ago, in January 2023, the issue of retirement captured international public attention when France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, increased the age of retirement from sixty-two to sixty-four. This governmental decision provoked large protest demonstrations and strikes in that country, as well as widespread public discussion about the necessity of retirement from a working-class and human point of view. In other words, life should not be limited to the many years of work, but also to the years to enjoy and pursue other interests while most people are still relatively healthy. That worthy goal merits the public subsidy to retirement funds if this becomes necessary to maintain the social gains obtained as the fruit of union and people’s struggles, instead of eroding them, even if this is done gradually. Healthcare, education, and a relatively early and dignified pension, among other activities, are worthy of public financing even beyond the funds specifically dedicated to those purposes, as in the case of pensions. Finally, we should consider that the defense of adequate pensions, public health, and public education may constitute a backstop wall in defense of public welfare if capitalism triumphs in Cuba, be it through present government institutions such as GAESA (the powerful economic wing of the Cuban armed forces that already controls most of Cuba’s economy) or through private capitalism.
In conclusion, Mesa-Lago’s new book is truly encyclopedic and very useful. Its exhaustive scope has obliged this reviewer to present a relatively small sample of its data in a selection inevitably influenced by his interests with respect to these three countries.
This is the English-language version of a two-part article that appeared in the Cuban dissident journal CubaXCuba on Sept. 3 and Sept. 4, 2025.
Notes
1. Nevertheless, a research center at Stanford University maintained that state property in China is very mixed with private property. According to one report published by the Center, firms that have invested in other firms represent approximately 80 percent of total capital in China’s economy. Within this 80 percent of the economy, the total capital for firms that have some degree of state investment has increased from 61 percent in 1999 to 85 percent in 2017. At the same time, the total capital of the firms that are the exclusive property of the state has declined from 41 percent in 1999 to 25 percent in 2017. “Reassessing the Role of State Ownership in China’s economy,” Stanford Center on China’s economy and Institutions (n.d.).
2. According to Cuban official sources Cuba’s GDP declined 1.1 percent in 2024 and 11 percent in the last 5 years. “Avanzar en la recuperación económica requiere de un cambio de enfoque en la gestión,” Granma, July 14, 2025, 1 and “Economía cubana ha decaído un 11 por ciento en los últimos 5 años,” Cuba Debate, July 14, 2025, 1.
3. According to figures released by Cuba’s Health Minister, José Angel Portal Miranda, Cuba’s infant mortality had surged to 8.2 deaths per 1000 live births in the first half of 2025, up from 7.4 during the same period in 2024. CEDA US-Cuba News Brief, July 18, 2025. Issue No. 800.
4. See the sources in support of that argument in Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Sergio Díaz-Briquets, “Healthcare in Cuba: Sustainability Challenges in an Ageing System,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 53, no. 1 (Feb. 2021), 133-59.
5. This comparison is partly based on the unreliable data provided by the Chinese authorities. After the government relaxed its very strong restrictions in Dec. of 2022, there was a veritable explosion of the virus. Researchers consider that the official rate of 83,500 deaths (before Feb. 9, 2023) is extremely low because it only counted the infected Chinese people who died in hospitals, without considering those who died at home. In addition, the government only counted those deaths due to a failure of the respiratory system, while it ignored those who were infected but died due to failures of the liver, kidneys or cardiac system. In conclusion, four groups of independent academics estimated that the number of Chinese people who died because of a Covid infection ranged from a million to a million and half people. James Glanz, Mara Hvistendahl and Agnes Chang. “How Deadly Was China’s Covid Wave?” New York Times, Feb. 15, 2023.
6. Samuel Farber, Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959. A Critical Assessment, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011, 187.
7. Human Rights Watch, News Release, “Vietnam: Repression Deepens Under New Leader. No Easing of Restrictions Under General Secretary To Lam,” Jan. 16, 2025.
8. Human Rights Watch, News Release, “Vietnam: False Claims on Labor Rights. Seeking US Trade Preferences, Hanoi insists Workers can Organize”, May 8, 2024.
9. Richard Smith, China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse, London, England: Pluto Press, 2020, and Eli Friedman, et al., China in Global Capitalism, Chicago: Haymarket, 2024.
Click here for Carmelo Mesa-Lago’s reply to this review.
Click here for Samuel Farber’s rejoinder.