What happened
The Sixth Congress of December 1986 adopted the renovation course: de-collectivization of farming, price liberalization, legal private business, and openness to foreign investment — while one-party rule was kept in place.
Background
The turn followed a decade of postwar economic crisis. Collectivized agriculture was failing, inflation was running in the hundreds of percent, and the loss of Soviet-bloc support was looming.
Consequences
Vietnam became one of the world’s top rice exporters within years. The US embargo ended in 1994 and relations were normalized in 1995, the year Vietnam also joined ASEAN; WTO accession followed in 2007. By World Bank accounts, decades of high growth brought a steep decline in poverty. The course is often compared with China’s reform and opening, and it laid the ground for today’s manufacturing-and-trade economy.