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| 1979, Feb.–March |
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| China invaded the northern provinces of Vietnam (See March) to “punish” it. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but Vietnam fought off the Chinese attack. | 1 |
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| 1980, Dec |
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| A constitution was promulgated; it announced that Vietnam was at present a proletarian dictatorship “in transition to socialism.” | 2 |
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| 1981–85 |
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| The third five-year plan finally began to show efficacious results in the economy, but major problems remained in agriculture and industry. Increased autonomy in both sectors contributed to growth. | 3 |
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| 1986 |
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| Celebrating ten years of reunification, the Vietnamese Communist Party held its 6th Congress late in the year. Support was reaffirmed for construction of a Socialist state as laid out by Secretary-General Lê Duan, who had died that July. The country was in the throes of a serious inflation (1,000 percent). The congress recognized that it would take a “comparatively long period of time” to realize socialism. Calls were made for greater emphasis on the production of consumer goods and agriculture—and less on heavy industry—as well as developing the untapped capacity of private enterprise and for establishing economic ties with the international community. Nguyên Van Linh, who had lost out at the previous congress, was selected as secretary-general, and he launched a series of popular, bold reforms. | 4 |
| As of this time, 112 nations had established diplomatic relations with Vietnam or had decided to do so in the near future. | 5 |
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| 1987–88 |
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| New reform-minded officials were appointed with the aim of jump-starting the Vietnamese economic revival, a policy known as doi moi. Aside from government sponsorship of several large national power projects, centralized economic planning was curtailed; subsidies to national industries were abandoned to encourage the development of financial independence. | 6 |
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| 1988, Jan |
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| New laws on foreign investment allowed the establishment of joint Vietnamese-foreign enterprises and others based on 100 percent foreign capitalization. | 7 |
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| April |
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| New laws on national enterprises gradually eased restrictions on individual and private economic ventures. In order to boost rural production, a plan was put forward to divide all commune lands of the subsequent 15 years among the farming households and thus instill greater freedom of production through a contract system. As in China, comparable far-reaching reforms were not forthcoming in the political realm; the Communist Party still was completely in charge. The Linh regime did try to use mass communications to launch an attack on corruption in party and government bureaus; but the leadership feared that criticism from these sources might extend to the party leadership itself, so restrictions on speech were imposed late in 1988. | 8 |
| Despite major economic reforms, the Linh government proved unable to rebuild the economy. Both the continued cost of troops deployed to prop up the Cambodian government and the trade embargo imposed by the U.S. and other Western nations took their toll on the Vietnamese economy. | 9 |
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