North Vietnam's determination to seek a neutral course in domestic policy was revealed by two significant develop-
ments in the winter of 1959-1960. First was the growing skep- t i c i s m over the applicability t o Vietnam of the Chinese model of economic and social development. In September Premier
Pham Van Dong had publicly exposed t h i s skepticism when he enumerated various defects in the 1959 economic plan, singled
out for special c r i t i c i s m the excessive agricultural produc- tion goals which had been forced on the peasants, and pointedly asserted that "socialist ideology and enthusiasm cannot auto- matically make us skillful." Further admission of failure in North Vietnam's "leap forward" program appeared at-this time in the progressive reduction of the highly unrealistic goals of the Three Year Program (1958 to 1960). Most striking was the drastic scaling-down of the 1960'food target from the plan figure of 7.6 million tons to 5.5 million tons.