The Economist's Take on Viet Nam

 

Asia | Strong tailwind, no rudder

Few countries are better placed 

than Vietnam to get rich

Yet political paralysis could slow it down


Jan 23rd 2024 | HANOI


Abrief but revealing panic struck Vietnam this month. On January 12th the country’s 79-year-old leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, failed to meet the visiting president of Indonesia. Mr Trong’s name was removed from the official schedule without explanation. Rumours spread that he was dead. For three days noodle shops raged with speculation about who his successor might be. Would it be someone corrupt? Or more pro-China? The ruling Communist Party, a secretive bunch, revealed nothing.

Then, on January 15th, official media showed a frail Mr Trong attending a humdrum session of the legislature in Hanoi, as if to holler “I’m not dead!” like a Monty Python plague victim. The public may never know whether it was sickness or something else that made the Communist Party chief disappear from view. But it was unsurprising that his absence should scupper a meeting with a global leader. Everyone wants to be Vietnam’s friend these days.

This is partly for geopolitical reasons. Vietnam, a country of 100m, has shrewdly positioned itself halfway between China and America, prompting both superpowers to woo it. In 2023 Vietnam was the only country honoured with state visits from both Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. In September it upgraded its relationship with America to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, putting it on the same level as Russia and China.

Although Vietnam’s ruling party has much in common with China’s, ordinary Vietnamese are deeply suspicious of their giant, bullying neighbour. China unlawfully claims parts of the South China Sea that belong to Vietnam; its ships harass Vietnamese fishermen. An Asian Barometer poll found that only 25% of Vietnamese have a positive view of China, whereas 85% have a positive view of America. The Biden administration, eager to deter Chinese expansion, has supplied Vietnam with coastguard ships to protect its waters. America would love to offer more help, but Vietnam rules out a formal alliance.

The country’s growing geopolitical relevance is based on its strong economic performance, as well as geography. When Vietnam started opening up in the mid-1980s, annual income per head was half that of Kenya. On the back of pragmatic and increasingly pro-business policies, it has since grown sixfold to $3,700. Today, the government’s ambition to turn Vietnam into a rich country by 2045 is plausible. Economically, Vietnam has probably never faced a more benign global environment.

Geopolitics is driving investment towards it, as America seeks to decouple from China and private firms of all nationalities sense which way the wind is blowing. Most manufacturers cannot simply pull out of China. But to mitigate the cost of current and future trade barriers, they can hedge their bets by making things elsewhere as well (a strategy known as “China + 1”). Many also hope to reduce their exposure to arbitrary policies in China—memories of its painful zero-covid lockdowns remain fresh. “The pandemic…showed us we were too concentrated in China,” notes a foreign manufacturer in Ho Chi Minh city.



image: the economist

Firms that export to the West are shifting production to Vietnam. Brands such as Samsung and Apple are making gadgets there. Suppliers, including Chinese ones, are clustering around them. “Our customers insisted we move to Vietnam [for geopolitical reasons],” says the boss of an electronics firm. “But we were already thinking about it, since labour costs in China were rising and young Chinese no longer want to work in factories.” In the first three quarters of 2023 inflows of foreign direct investment to Vietnam as a share of gdp were twice as large as in Indonesia, the Philippines or Thailand, reckons clsa, a bank (see chart).

If the world keeps fragmenting into rival trading blocs, the global economy could be seriously damaged, reckons the imf. And given the high share of Chinese components in many products labelled “Made in Vietnam”, it is unclear how much America is really reducing its dependence on China by moving supply chains there. But so far the shift has been good for Vietnam.

gdp growth has been bumpy: it slumped during the pandemic, bounced back to 8% in 2022, fell to 4.7% in 2023 amid a credit crisis, and is expected to recover to 5.8% this year. Still, Vietnam is well placed to keep attracting investment, argues Tony Nafte of clsa. It is more open to commerce than its South-East Asian peers. Trade in 2022 was equivalent to a whopping 186% of its gdp, versus 45% in Indonesia, 72% in the Philippines and 134% in Thailand.


image: the economist


Vietnam’s plentiful, young manufacturing workers are diligent, reasonably well educated and half as expensive as those in Chinese coastal areas. Vietnam, unlike Indonesia and the Philippines at times, has no problem with Islamist terrorism, notes a factory boss. It offers fat incentives to foreign investors, both explicit (tax breaks, cheap land) and de facto (high-tech workers were among the first to get covid vaccines). And although it is a one-party state like China, it is friendlier. Expatriates in Beijing complain of a climate of fear; those in Vietnam seem relaxed.

Yet the country has a big political problem: its government is paralysed by indecision. Mr Trong must step down by 2026. As the panic over his rumoured demise reminded everyone, his succession is unclear. Not knowing who they will have to please in a couple of years, officials are reluctant to make major decisions.

A “blazing furnace” crackdown on corruption, lit by Mr Trong, has made them even jumpier. Hundreds have been arrested, and last year the president (who is number three in the hierarchy) was forced to resign. Lesser officials have been loth to approve big projects in case they turn out to be tainted. In the coming reshuffle, any whiff of scandal could be used to wreck their careers, or worse. So the safest thing, many have concluded, is to do nothing.

Consider energy. Vietnam has done a fine job of connecting homes to the grid (nearly 100% of rural ones have electricity, up from 14% in 1993). But as industry grows, so does demand for power. The supply can be unreliable: power cuts last year were “terrible”, says a manufacturing boss.

And foreign investors increasingly want to tell customers and shareholders that they use clean energy. Here, Vietnam is struggling. It depends heavily on coal, which makes the air in Hanoi worse than Shanghai’s. A push to install more solar panels has helped a bit, but a promise to hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 looks fanciful unless the country harvests the wind off its blustery, 3,000km-long coast.

That may happen, but it is taking ages. The process for granting approvals to survey the seabed for suitable spots is “extremely slow”, complains a wind-power executive, adding that officials are “cautious on making any decisions now”. Little of the legal framework for erecting turbines or selling power to the grid is clear, he sighs. The relevant ministries barely talk to each other, and everything must go through the state-owned power supplier, evn, which is as nimble as Jabba the Hutt. Environmentalists gripe that vested interests (ie, bigwigs who have invested in coal) are blocking the country’s energy transition. Some of those environmentalists have been jailed, typically for “tax fraud”.

Some in the ruling party, such as the prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, understand how gravely Vietnam is imperilled by global warming. The delta of the Mekong river, which covers much of south-western Vietnam, is sinking even as sea levels rise, meaning the sea could ultimately swallow it.

Pragmatic officials argue that if Vietnam wants to be an industrial powerhouse it should bet on the clean technologies of the future, not the dirty ones that much of the world is trying to scrap. Hence the government’s implicit backing of VinFast, the ambitious but loss-making electric-vehicle arm of its biggest private conglomerate. But faster reform is needed if Vietnam is to meet its climate pledges or prepare for a warmer world.

Vietnam is heavily dependent on trade, and the global business environment is changing fast, so policymakers need to keep up. Sometimes, they do not. Vietnam’s policy of giving tax breaks to foreign investors, for example, has become less of an inducement since the oecd, a club of rich countries, agreed to apply a global minimum corporate-tax rate of 15%. Multinationals that pay little or nothing in Vietnam may be hit with higher charges elsewhere, warns the manager of a foreign manufacturer in Ho Chi Minh city.

Rather than offer tax breaks the government should simplify the rules, he says. “The opportunities are enormous but red tape is the biggest problem,” agrees Bruno Jaspaert, the boss of Deep C, an industrial zone in the city of Haiphong. Rules are often contradictory; some projects need the approval of a dozen ministries. More infrastructure would help. Public transport is still poor, so traffic in big cities is slow.

Despite the crackdown, corruption still hurts business. One foreign entrepreneur grumbles about having to play by two sets of rules: the formal ones, such as paying taxes and ensuring his warehouse doesn’t catch fire, and the informal ones, such as paying off local officials so they don’t hogtie him with inspections.

Vietnam has risen from dire poverty to modest prosperity in a single generation. But it needs to keep on reforming. Geopolitical winds can change. Rivals can grow more competitive. Vietnam is greying fast: its working-age population will shrink after 2038, by one estimate. And its citizens may tire of their ruling party if living standards do not keep rising rapidly. Regimes, like leaders, do not last forever. 

https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/01/23/few-countries-are-better-placed-than-vietnam-to-get-rich

Research and Education to End the War


Antiwar Research and Education


April 10, 2024     


Watch on youtube by clicking here    https://youtu.be/LrS2z3jFT1k


When US intervention in Indochina became controversial, the media, established academics , Congress and government officials had a shared narrative of supporting democracy against agression from Hanoi, an instrument of Communist masters in Moscow and Beijing.

As opposition grew among students, peace organizations and the religious community, a different narrative emerged about how and why the war was being fought.  Teach-ins opened the door and an intellectual infrastructure followed based on contrarian scholars and political polemics.  

A serious rebuttal to conventional wisdom was featured in the New York Review of Books and a new specialized publication Viet Report (1964-1968) founded by the late Carol Brightman and John McDermott.  Dissidents within the academic community created the Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars (1968-1979).Young independent researchers published persuasive studies under the auspicies of the Indochina Resource Center (1971-1976) in Washington that had a two way link with increasingly sympathetic Representatives, Senators and their staff.  

The Quaker led American Friends Service Committee added a research and education component to its nationwide peace activism and humanitarian assistance in-country, National Action Research into the Military Industrial Complex (NARMIC).   (1969-1980s)

In this webinar we will learn from former members of these projects about how they came about, their personal experience, the contribution to the antiwar movement and the impact on public opinion and Congressional debate


Linda Yarr, moderator, Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars, George Washington University

Beverley Gologorsky, editor of Viet Report, novelist, essayist

Martha Winnacker, Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, University of California

David Marr Indochina Resource Center, Australian National University

Bill Goodfellow, Indochina Resource Center, Center for International Policy

Le Anh Tu Packard, National Action Research into the Military Industrial Complex, Moody’s Analytics




Linda J Yarr is Research Professor of International Affairs and Director of Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia (PISA) at George Washington University, as well as a Research Affiliate of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the journal Critical Asian Studies, successor to the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars published by The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. She has written articles, book chapters and reviews on Vietnam and Southeast Asia. As a student in France during the war in Vietnam, she was a member of the Paris American Committee to Stop the War. She holds a master’s degree from Cornell University, an advanced degree in international relations from Sciences Po in Paris, and a B.A. from D’Youville College (now University). 


Beverly Golodorsky was managing editor and editor of Viet Report and Leviathan in collaboration with Carol Brightman.  She is the author of four acclaimed novels:  “The Things We Do To Make It Home”, "Stop Here", "Everybody Has a Story" and "Can You See the Wind".  Her novel “The Angle Of Falling Light,” will be published 2025.   Recent essays include “1960s Turmoil,” in "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from all Sides", editor, Christian G. Appy;  “In the Whirlwind” in the anthology "The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women’s True-Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out, or Faded Away", editors, Jenny Offil & Elissa Schappell; and “In The Shadow of War,” published in TomDispatch, Huffington Post, Salon, The Nation, et al.. Gologorsky’s contribution to feminism noted in “Feminists Who Changed America” Ed. Barbara Love.  Op-Ed Columns in      Newsweek, Los Angeles Times.  Hackney Literary Award for short story “Could Be Siberia”; Skyline Magazine publication of short story, “Not Calcutta”;  Four cable television scripts on children and health for American Baby Magazine Show.  Reviewed Books for:  New York Times Book Review,    Women’s Review of Books, The Nation Magazine


Martha Winnacker joined the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) as a first-year graduate student in the spring of 1968, just weeks after CCAS was formed. She was active in the Berkeley chapter until 1970, when she and her husband Paul left Berkeley to spend a year-and-a-half at the East Asian Seminar at the Free University of Berlin, where radical students and junior faculty had secured a controlling vote in the selection of new faculty, appearing to model the transformation we hoped to see in American academic institutions. The Winnackers then moved on to Tokyo, where they were active in the CCAS chapter and Martha volunteered as an English-language editor at Ampo, an international journal published in English by Japanese in solidarity with peace movements throughout Asia. Returning to the United States in the final weeks of the Vietnam War in 1975, she reconnected with CCAS in Berkeley and began volunteering at the Indochina Resource Center, eventually becoming part of its postwar staff. 

She did not return to graduate school but remained connected to CCAS and its journal, the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, still publishing as Critical Asian Studies. She serves on the board of directors for the journal. In her professional life, Martha played a facilitating rather than an expert role, serving as an editor of the Southeast Asia Chronicle from 1977 to 1984, editor of the California Historical Society’s California History journal from 1985-1988, and as a grants administrator for the University of California’s Pacific Rim Research Program from 1989-1996. New opportunities within UC’s central administration led her to work on copyright, research publication policy, and digital communications policy.

 In 2000, she entered law school, intending to specialize in intellectual property but finding other interests. After graduating and passing the California Bar exam in 2003, she clerked on the Alaska Court of Appeals in 2003-2004 and worked as an attorney for public defender legal aid agencies from 2005 through 2007. She returned to UC as executive director for the UC-wide Academic Senate from 2008 to 2014. Since her retirement in 2014, she has volunteered as an attorney with groups working on reform of the criminal justice and child welfare systems in California and as a Master Gardener. 


David Marr studied at Dartmouth College (BA), before joining the US Marine Corps as an intelligence officer. Marr learned Vietnamese in the US, then was assigned to Vietnam in 1962.[3] He married there in April 1963, and was reassigned to marine Intelligence in Hawaii a month later. After leaving the Marines in 1964 he sought to understand the roots of Vietnamese patriotism as a graduate student at UC Berkeley (PhD 1968). He taught at University of California, Berkeley and as assistant professor at Cornell University, 1969–72, while becoming increasingly engaged in documenting the case for withdrawing from Viet Nam, notably as co-director of the Indochina Resource Center (Washington and Berkeley), 1971-5. In 1975 he moved to Australia with his family, in research positions as Fellow, Senior Fellow and finally Professor at the Research School of Pacific (and Asian) Studies, Australian National University in Canberra. He has also been editor of Vietnam Today. He is currently Emeritus Professor and Visiting Fellow, School of Culture, History & Language at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.  (copied from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Marr)


Bill Goodfellow is the director of the Afghanistan Peace Campaign. He is a veteran peace activist and non-profit organization executive. He was one of the founders of the Center for International Policy (CIP) in 1975 and was the executive director from 1985 to 2017. He oversaw all of CIP’s programs and fundraising and was the organization’s CEO. 

He was the coordinator of the Afghanistan Study Group, which backed a negotiated political settlement in Afghanistan. He has testified before congressional committees and published op-ed articles in most major U.S. newspapers. 

In the 1980s, Goodfellow promoted negotiations to end the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He worked closely with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and championed the Central American peace process in the United States. He attended all the Central American summit meetings and was in Guatemala City for the signing of the Esquipulas Peace Accord in August 1987.

From 1973 to 1975, Goodfellow was an associate at the Indochina Resource Center, an NGO in Washington staffed by academics and activists who produced scholarly research for the anti-Vietnam War movement. He spent the last six months of the war in Indochina and was evacuated from both Cambodia and Vietnam in the spring of 1975.



Le Anh Tu Packard joined NARMIC (National Action Research into the Military Industrial Complex), a project of the American Friends Service Committee, in 1971. NARMIC researchers drew on defense industry publications, publications of the U.S. military, Department of Defense Congressional testimony, Congressional committee reports, interviews with Vietnam veterans, Western press reports, reports by Quaker staff in Vietnam, and South Vietnamese newspapers to produce educational materials for use by peace activists. These include: the Automated Battlefield and Postwar War slide shows and accompanying Documentation; publications such as Aid to Thieu, The Third Force in South Vietnam, South Vietnam’s Political Prisoners. NARMIC also worked with the Indochina Resource Center, Project Air War, the Vietnam Resource Center, and international peace activists to prepare briefing books for Congress to challenge U.S. aid programs in Vietnam and thwarted U.S. efforts to channel World Bank aid to the Saigon regime in violation of the Paris Peace Agreement.

After the war ended, Tu went on to study economics at Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University. She worked for Wharton Econometrics, Chase Econometrics, and the WEFA Group. In the early 1990s Tu provided consulting services to the United Nations, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and academic institutions on capacity building projects and multi-country studies to study the effects of globalization. In 2005 she joined Economy.com (Moody’s Analytics) where she played a lead role in improving the baseline and scenario forecasting process, developed proprietary measures of sovereign risk and fiscal space, edited the flagship Precis Macro publication, and wrote articles on international economic issues. She retired from Moody’s Analytics in 2017 and participates in community efforts to support local biodiversity by providing free native seeds and native plants to residents.


Resources

"Carol Brightman, 80, Dies; Profiled a Notable Writer and a Notable Band"   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/books/carol-brightman-dead.html

The University at war (Part 1 of 3)  Carol Brightman (editor of Viet Report magazine), Mike Klare (associate editor of Viet Report magazine), Mike Locker (lecturer), and Paul Rockwell discuss the role of American Universities in the Vietnam War. Universities are involved with actual military operations in Vietnam by applying social sciences and technological research which were used for propaganda and technologies.   https://archive.org/details/pra-BB1739A

The University at war (Part 2 of 3)   https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bb1739b

The University at war (Part 3 of 3)   https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/node/23571


On behalf of NARMIC, Arthur Kanegis testified at the The Winter Soldier hearing with doctor Burt Pfeiffer

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hn3csn2o188q3xx/Arthur%27s%20Winter%20Soldier%20testimony.rtf?dl=0        

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yzcrfinfzg3j1jy/Arthur%27s%20Winter%20Soldier%20Part%202.rtf?dl=0

 or

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_11_Weapons.html


Pete Seeger, Bring Them Home  click here   https://youtu.be/LYfUlGORKkw


***************************

Chat

Ken Brociner   Since neither of these two organizations have yet been mentioned (as of 7:00 EST), I'd like to give a shout -out to the Indochina Peace Campaign and the United Campaign to Stop Funding the War (if I got the name right).    

paul shannon  to  Hosts and panelists : yes AFSC is putting out excellent research on weapons makers making the arms being used to destroy Gaza. A fantastic source of information

Michael Klare : The Forum on the Arms Trade provides detailed info on US arms trade

John McAuliff : Indochina Peace Campaign and the United Campaign to Stop Funding the War will be the topic of another webinar

Jay Wilber : Strong ties with the German student and antiwar movement... SDS with "SDS..."

Earl Martin  to  Hosts and panelists : Thanks to all of you.  So many good memories, good learnings.  That era is still alive in our spirits asd we are active with local and national efforts weekly on the war in Gaza.

Tom Grunfeld  to  Hosts and panelists : 1975-1996 the Third Indochina War to punish VN for winning the war.

From Jay Wilber : Still a POW-MIA flag at City Hall in Cambridge! And a chair in the entry! No politician dares to be the first to propose finally taking it away, evidently!

Tom Grunfeld  to  Hosts and panelists : The flags are in every post office in my area.

Lady Borton : We tend to forget that Việt Nam first had peace in 1990. Between 1975 and 1989, Việt Nam had war on two fronts -- Cambodia and China, with the US involvement in politically backing the Khmer Rouge and the Chinese.

Jay Wilber : Hugh Thompson in the house.

Earl Martin : Warm appreciation to all of you for your powerful, heartfelt work for peace in Vietnam over the years!

paul shannon : In Quang Mai the Bartons and Quinn-Judges provided invaluable information — roger and jackie chagnon

Earl Martin : In Quang Ngai we felt clearly that the Saigon forces were trying to expand territory after the peace accords.  We documented that on the ground.

Jay Wilber : We have very ruthless ruling elites.

Alex Knopp : Thank you for joining everyone!

Nguyet Nguyen : Thank you!

Nguyet Nguyen : Take care everyone.

Susan Cushman  to  Hosts and panelists : Thank you for the informative presentation.

***********************

Q & A

* Ken Brociner   What re-considerations, if any, have you arrived at - in regard to the North Vietnamese - since the end of the war?

* Jay Wilber  Is there a NARMIC equivalent today? If not, anyone considering re-establishing something similar?

* Jay Wilber   I hope something will be said about Ngo Vinh Long (perhaps he's attending?) and his publication, and how he was later perilously attacked at an appearance at Harvard.    

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1981/5/8/investigate-the-attack-pbto-the-editors/

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2022/10/25/bangor/umaine-ngo-vinh-long-obit-xoasq1i29i/

[Long passed away October 12, 2022.]    

Just realized that. 

"Remembering Ngô Vĩnh Long, Renowned Scholar of Vietnam and Antiwar Activist"                by An Thùy Nguyễn & Douglas Allen https://web.archive.org/web/20230217064951/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14672715.2023.2167220

*Alex Knopp   One of the useful resource formats first developed by NARMIC in 1969 or 1970 was the then (!) high-tech “slideshow,” which enabled both the delivery of much information and a live-person delivery using a predrafted script. This combined hard informatin with live discussion— sort of a power point for the 1970’s! Later in the Indochine Peace Campaign we devleoped the same type of slideshow about the war that was drafted originally by Tom Hayden. I recall giving the IPS show to dozens of audiences for IPC in Philadelphia where I worked with John McAuliff, Jack Malinowski and many others.

My mother Honey Knopp helped start NARMIC with Stewart Meacham and Anne Flitcraft at AFSC and she was always very proud of its contributions.

*  Jay Wilber  The role of the (disenchanted) establishment and antiwar journalism in the establishment media (Cronkite, etc...) in moving toward an end to the war

*  An Nguyen  Thank you all for your wonderful talks and, of course, for your contribution to ending the war in Vietnam. I have two questions for Tu Packard. Bill Goodfellow, and David Marr regarding your work and research for NARMIC and IRC, respectively. 

1. You described some of the sources that you consulted in writing your reports, which was very helpful. My question is: Did you - and to what extent - rely on sources provided by Vietnamese people or groups in South Vietnam (besides Thời Báo Gà)? Who were some of these people and/or groups?

2. Over the past 2 decades, there has been a new wave of Vietnam-centric revisionist histories, represented by works such as “Hanoi’s War,” that blames most of the wartime violence and aggression, as well as the failure of the Paris Peace Agreements, on Hanoi. In other words, it was Hanoi, rather than Saigon and the U.S., that first violated the Peace Agreements and was determined to win by force. Based on the research you did, especially on the 1973-1975 period, do you think there is veracity to those claims?

*  David Hawk   For  Martha, What did the inclusion of “critical theory” bring to the analysis of imperialism in Asia?

* Jay Wilber   Campaigning here in Cambridge against Elbit, an Israeli weapons company.

* John Kim   Did any of you study the costs of US war in Indochina?  Total costs--both here  and abroad.

*  Alex Knopp   Peggy Duff had been the main staff person for the “Tribune” movement of the left-wing section of the British Labour Party in the 1950’s and 60’s, supporting first the campaign for Nucear Disarmament and the Alderson Marches and later the anti-Vietnam War movdement that pressured Harold Wilson to keep British troops out of the Vietnam War. The name of this movement’s publication was “The Tribune.” Her most prominent insurgent left member of Parliament was Tony Benn.

* Doug Allen   During the 60s, 70s, etc., didn’t  msny in CCAS and others present pay some attention and express solidarity with anti-imperialist and liberation movements in South Africa, Central and South America, and elsewhere?

* Doug Allen   It seemed that Vietnamese sources were not emphasized sufficiently.

* Jay Wilber   What are participants' views on the historiography attributing military escalation by Vietnam liberation forces to the domination of Le Duan?