Urban crime and violence are up, but way more significant is the mounting unrest in the countryside, long the backbone of Vietnam's communist revolution. Last February, hundreds of peasants from Kim No, a village on the outskirts of Hanoi, openly battled security forces after local party officials sold off village land to a South Korean conglomerate planning to develop a golf course. According to reports from residents smuggled out of Vietnam, the officials pocketed the proceeds. But Reuters reported on Aug. 6 that 3,000 farmers from neighboring villages converged on the city of Thai Binh to protest new taxes and corruption by local officials. Thoi Bao and Xay Dung, two Vietnamese-language publications based in San Jose, Calif., reported that the farmers even arrested local party officials and razed their homes.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the protest movement has spread to three neighboring provinces.
Vietnam watchers attribute the unrest to worsening economic conditions in the rural areas. Farmers in one province near Thai Binh reportedly have to pay eight types of taxes to the central government and make six contributions to local officials. Meanwhile, the income gap between urban dwellers and rural residents is widening. Peasant discontent also stems from the way the government has implemented its agrarian reforms. In 1988, the government deactivated the country's inefficient state cooperatives and distributed lands to peasants to encourage production.