The government usually moves the old residents to new plots of land and pays cash compensation worth several years' income from their lost shop or rice field. But the new location is often less desirable, and the cash settlement falls far short of the price the government charges the new user. It has been eight years since the government split up village cooperatives and restored family farming, and farmers now think of the land as theirs. They want to reap the windfall. An unusually critical article in The Saigon Times, a weekly magazine, suggested the government should have the right to force relocation only for community services or national defense, not for commercial development.
Land is purchased dirt-cheap and sold at high prices.
It is not surprising at all that some people are becoming superbillionaires. Others, seeing foreign businessmen look over a piece of property, move in as squatters, hoping for an undeserved share in the compensation package. Officials abuse the system, too. The Hanoi city government recently implicated nearly 200 officials in illegal land deals, mostly with rich and powerful Vietnamese who wanted to build private houses. One solution would be to privatize land and let the market sort out all the problems.