From: Christina_N._Tran.LAX1B@xerox.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [ARTICLE]VIETNAM IN THE '90s - PART III
Date: 9 Apr 92 03:28:21 GMT
Reply-To: Christina_N._Tran.LAX1B@xerox.com
Organization: N/A
Originator: daemon@media.mit.edu



Hello everyone,

A friend of mine showed me this article.  I found it interesting so i share it
with you...

/tn
--------------------
Posted without permission.

From magazine "Insight On the News" dated February 3, 1992.

VIETNAM IN THE '90s
HOPES FOR AN ECONOMIC MIRACLE
						by Stephen Brookes
(continued)

In fact, Japan-bashing is almost a full-time sport among non-Japanese
investors.
They complain that the Japanese have been pushing up rents to ludicrous levels
--
leasing unrenovated villas in Hanoi for as much as $30,000 a month, for example
--
and accuse them of taking advantage of the lack of business sophistication
among
the Vietnamese.

"This town is full of big-money cowboys," says investment adviser Gebbie.
"They'll
draw up a $25 million project for a new building, get a license from the
government
to use the land and then disappear.  They can't pull the financing together,
but they've
tied up the property.  So when somebody else comes along with a serious
proposal --
say, renovating a building on the site for $2 or $3 million -- the Vietnamese
will turn
it down.  Why should we do that, they ask, when these other guys want to invest
$25
million? So nothing gets built.  The cowboys scare the serious money away."

Oanh agrees.  "It's quite simple to check on peoples' credit ratings," he says.
"But most
of the leaders are quite green at the game.  They don't know how to do it, so
they sign
everything and anything, and it turns out to be a raw deal."

On broad, leafy Dien Bien Phu Avenue in Hanoi, just around the corner from the
gray
marble mausoleum that holds Ho Chi Minh's body, sits an elegant old villa
housing
Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  In a second-floor reception room
looking out
over what must be one of the only statues of Lenin left standing in the world,
Deputy
Minister for Foreign Affairs Le Mai is eager to discuss the American embargo.
As
head of the delegation that met in November with Richard Solomon, U.S.
secretary
of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, he seems optimistic that relations
will be
normalized soon.  "I told Mr. Solomon, you have the American road map, and I
have
the Vietnamese shortcut," he says, laughing.  "So let's put them both on the
table
and talk."

Normalizing relations with Washington has been at the center of Hanoi's foreign
policymaking for more than a year.  While the Vietnam War still seems close to
many
Americans, the Vietnamese have been through two border conflicts since then,
first
with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, then with China.  Americans are greeted
almost
everywhere in Vietnam with genuine warmth and interest.  Until the embargo is
lifted, economic recovery can never really take off.  "It was our initiative to
normalize
relations with the United States, you know," says Le Mai.  There are two
official
interpreters in the room, but as he speaks perfect English, they wait quietly,
listening.
"We know we are a small and humble country, so we should make the first step."

Signs of a shift in U.S. policy are multiplying.  Washington lifted its embargo
against
Cambodia on Jan. 4, and during a January visit to Hanoi Rep. Stephen Solarz,
the
New York Democrat who heads the Foreign affairs Subcommittee on Asian and
Pacific Affairs, said the embargo against Vietnam might be lifted this summer
or
fall.  While U.S. airlines are still forbidden to fly to Vietnam, Washington
lifted the
ban on U.S.-organized tours in mid-December.

There are also signs that America's allies are growing increasingly impatient
and
that international support for the embargo is crumbling.  Japan's influential
Ministry
of International Trade and Industry has indicated it is close to supporting
Japanese
investment in Vietnam, and grants and soft loans are flowing in from a number
of countries, including Australia, Italy and France.

"The embargo is like gunship diplomacy," says Le Mai.  "It's out-of-date and
doesn't
fit the international situation today, which is the world of interdependence.
That's
why all people in Southeast Asia would like to see U.S.-Vietnamese relations
normalized -- it would be beneficial to all."

some observers, like George Carver of the Center for Strategic and
International
Studies in Washington, are skeptical. "Vietnam is never going to be an economic
tiger, or anything but a basket case, unless it forswears Marxist ideology,
which is
 still the dogma of the country," he says.  "And there's a lot more in
normalizing
relations for them than there is for us.  So what's the rush?"

But to others, there's no more time to waste.  "The Japanese may not be the
largest
 investors now, but I guarantee you that one year after the embargo is lifted,
they'll
be No. 1", says investment adviser Matthews.  "Do we want a country like Japan,
which is our economic competitor, to gain an economic leverage by having access
to
cheap labor and a lot of natural resources?  Do we want them to have that
advantage
over us?  My answer to that is, no.  Definitely, no."

-----------------

Hanoi's Survival Kit:  A Free Market Plus A Little Glasnost
								by Stephen
Brooks

Opponents of the U.S. embargo on trade with Vietnam argue that isolating the
country to make it more democratic is counterproductive:  A free market
economy,
they say, leads to a free market in ideas and thence to political pluralism.
While
the government is still undeniably repressive -- some 47 political prisoners
are in
jail, according to the human rights group Asia Watch -- there are signs of
glasnost.

Only high government officials had access to foreign newspapers just a few
years
ago, for example, but now kids on the streets of Hanoi and Saigon openly hawk
copies of Time, the International Herald Tribune and the Bangkok Post (all
stamped
"airline copy"; they scavenge for them at the airport and bring them downtown
to sell).  Travel restrictions on foreigners have been almost completely
abolished,
and Vietnamese citizens are remarkably outspoken.  Private newspapers are
starting to appear that freely criticize government officials.

That's partly because the Communist Party has been moving quickly to forestall
its own obsolescence.  It still claims some 2 million members, although with
the
country's increasingly youthful population -- fully 60 percent are under age 30
-- the party's numbers are dwindling.  So party leaders have adopted an
increasingly
low-profile, pragmatic and flexible approach to politics.

"It looks, on the surface, like socialism and a market economy are
contradictory,"
explains Nguyen Son, the Communist Party's chief ideologue and spokesman in
Saigon.  "But that's wrong, mechanical perception.  The main objective of
socialism
in Vietnam is to make the country prosperous!"  Pausing for a moment, he adds,
"Of course, the market mechanism has had a negative impact in social terms:
Some people are getting rich, and others are getting poorer.  But we consider
it
the price we have to pay for development."

Meanwhile, political reform is under way.  In April, the country's National
Assembly
will meet to approve a new draft constitution that will formalize free market
reforms and streamline the government.  The new constitution reaffirms
one-party
rule, but basic rights under the old regime -- too housing, work, education and
medical care -- are being quietly shelved as unrealistic.  It also gives
citizens the
rights to travel freely overseas, invest money abroad and make direct contacts
with foreign firms.  Overall, says Son, it's designed to reduce party
interference in
the running of the country.

That doesn't mean, though, that democracy is the inevitable next step.  "If we
allowed people to set up new parties," warn Son darkly, "the parties from the
old regime would be revived, and U.S. dollars would pour in and buy the votes."

-------------------

(to be continued)
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