Neil Loughlin. <i>The Politics of Coercion: State and Regime Making in Cambodia</i>

the stage of "authoritarian consolidation" seems to be mistaken for a previous period (pp.324-325).Duy Trinh's chapter on the political protection in Vietnam's and China's anti-corruption campaigns also offers weak arguments as it employs weak proxies for what it aims to measure.In particular, instead of collecting stories about officials' personal ties to VCP chief Nguyen Phu Trong, the author assumes that if-and only if-a person was born in the same province, worked at the same organization, or went to the same university as the VCP chief, he or she had relevant informal connections to Trong (p.352).Overall, although the book does not explicitly address the "Vietnam in transition" narrative and although some chapters habitually adopt this narrative, the picture that emerges from the volume is far from aligned with this narrative.In this picture, rather than transitioning toward a market economy and democracy, Vietnam gets stuck in hard authoritarianism and crony capitalism and will tend to stay there as long as this combination serves the interests of the ruling Communist Party.What the book does not discuss, but can be inferred from Chapter 5's findings, is that Vietnam's economy may get another chance to take off when the China boom comes to an end and the global supply chains are rearranged as a result of the US-China rivalry.This moment may be coming soon.The Dragon's Underbelly is an excellent contribution to the literature on Vietnam's politics and economy.It also provides thought-provoking case studies for the discussion of economic development and societal modernization.Most important, it helps to debunk powerful myths about Vietnam and about the path to development.