And the young people with whom I talked were clearly interested in having closer ties with America. So I felt very good about that. I also was interested in all the changes that are occurring in the northern part of the country. I think there's clearly a lot of new investment going on in Hanoi, a lot of new businesses coming out, a lot of changes there that I think will tend to make the south and the north perhaps less different in terms of the economic lives and maybe the political outlooks of the people at least in the cities. Now, the only village that I went to was the one where the search for the pilot was going on.
People say that in Vietnam, it is still some distance between the potential and realization.
And I think they have a keen awareness that they have to make a lot of changes in order to keep creating jobs. I think they need 1.4 million new jobs every year. Then there was one young man who had a job in the party and others who had other jobs. The man who runs the city government in Ho Chi Minh City was quite proud of the fact that they had done a remarkable job of creating jobs in the private sector, that he had downsized the government, that poverty had been reduced by 70 percent and homelessness was reduced by 70 percent. So I think there are a lot of people there who have this feeling that if they go more to a private economy and they have more entrepreneurial spirit, that there will also be more personal freedom associated with it.