While economic freedom is declining around the world, Vietnam is bucking the general trend. The country still has a lot of work to do to join the ranks of economically free countries, but it is moving in the right direction. No other country of comparable size has made such strong gains in the Index of Economic Freedom in recent decades.

“Vietnam has been a development success story,” according to an April 2023 report from the World Bank. “Economic reforms since the launch of Đổi Mới in 1986, coupled with beneficial global trends, have helped propel Vietnam from being one of the world’s poorest nations to a middle-income economy in one generation. Between 2002 and 2022, GDP per capita increased 3.6 times, reaching almost US$3,700. Poverty rates (US$3.65/day, 2017 PPP) declined from 14 percent in 2010 to 3.8 in 2020.”