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Tallinn University's public lecture series Studia Generalia and the Asian Reserach Centre in Estonia (AUKE) present a lecture by one of the most quoted scientists in Vietnamese politics and economy, professor Adam Fforde of Victoria University, Australia.

Professor Fforde will hold a public lecture called "The Communist Party and Free-Market Economy in Contemporary Vietnam: How has capitalism emerged in Vietnam?" on Monday, January 26th at 16:00 in Room M213 of Tallinn University. The lecture is in English and everyone is invited.

Most analyses on Vietnam’s state, economy or society argue that in 1986, economic reforms labelled renovation (or doi moi in Vietnamese) were launched at the 6th National Congress of Communist Party of Vietnam, also comparing these to perestroika in the Soviet Union. In this talk, prof Adam Fforde will show how, differently from simplified beliefs, reforms driven by conscious policy were never intended by the Communist Party as it was not in the position to do so. There was commercialisation of state owned enterprises already before the launch of doi moi. Prof Fforde discusses the present economic crisis, the aggravating loss of authority of the Communist Party and the lessons learnt from the Soviet Union. 

Prof Adam Fforde is one of the most widely cited authors working oncontemporary Vietnam. He is a part-time Professorial Fellow in Economics at the Victorian Institute for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University. His PhD (1982) was about agricultural cooperatives in North-Vietnam and he was a student at Hanoi University in 1978-79. From 1983-87 he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and since then he has combined academic and consulting work related to Vietnam and to development issues more generally. As a development consultant, he has been involved in a number of consultancies in Vietnam which permitted a series of participatory observations of the realities of policy development and implementation.

He is now focusing on research into contemporary Vietnamese socio-economic history. His most recent book on Vietnam is Vietnamese State Industry and the Political Economy of Commercial Renaissance: Dragon's tooth or curate's egg? Oxford: Chandos 2007. A book on development, Coping with facts – a skeptic’s guide to the problem of development, was published in 2009 by Kumarian Press, and Understanding development economics – its challenge to development studies by Routledge last year. A book length manuscript – Reinventing development: managing diversity and complexity – is complete.

Studia Generalia is a series of public lectures delivered by the teachers, researchers and visiting lecturers of TU. Anyone who enters the University building can listen to what prominent thinkers have to say on current topics that affect society, and also participate in the discussion.