There has been economic growth recently, primarily due to a grudging introduction of capitalism. Vietnam now has the worst of all economic worlds: Communist totalitarianism and industrial sweatshops.
My daughter visited Vietnam recently. South Vietnam is a beautiful place and is developing a tourist industry. Most of the visitors are German. At the time she was there, the government was busy cracking down on rebellious villages, something not seen on the local news in Vietnam or the U.S.
After 1975 and for the next 10 years, Vietnam was a communist prison camp, a tropical Gulag according to my wife who grew up there.
There's a whole catalog of horror stories: midnight house searches; land appropriations (my MIL lost 200 hectares of farmland); rice rationing (in Vietnam!?!?!); abductions (my FIL stayed in a monastery for nearly 10 years to avoid "reeducation"); etc.
The country was going straight down the toilet until 1989, when "do moi" capitalism was introduced.
The Hanoi Stalinsts and their supporters in the South are, fortunately, very susceptible to the charms of the U.S. dollar, so I have ongoing hope that capitalism will eventually prevail.