French and Japanese Economic Relations with Vietnam Since 1975

Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1999, compares the strategies of France and Japan in trying to win economic and political influence in the newly emerging Vietnam, which opened to the international community only after the Vietnamese Communist Party had started economic reforms in 1986. These reforms are aimed at transforming the country’s centrally-planned economy into a government-controlled market economy and at opening Vietnam to foreign capital, technology and know-how. This setting provides a unique opportunity for comparing the strategies of two nations from different continents in conducting their economic relations with a unified Vietnam.