It's not clear how the money will go back and forth. He hopes to have a majority of the fund invested in Vietnam within a few years. With a 30-kilometre road running west from Hanoi through rice paddies and graveyards to nowhere. The government says it will take six years to build the basic infrastructure. Investors in software, electronics and biotechnology will hopefully follow.
Aid is limited and the hi-tech park is just one of the government's priorities.
Hanoi appears to be giving equal weight to building an ethnic-minority theme park in the same area. For now, about the only activity that can be described as hi-tech in Vietnam is subcontracting work for foreign software programmers. Firms from Silicon Valley and even Bangalore, India, are using Vietnamese programmers at about a dozen software-development companies. India's Tata Consultancy Services plans to develop a training centre in Hanoi with state-owned FPT, which is at the forefront of software development, computer sales and Internet services in Vietnam. Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap runs the company.