That not only discourages foreign investors, but keeps knowledge away from Vietnamese people who need it to do business. You can't catch up with Thailand when your Thai competitors have access to better information. There's a lot more. The state has many mouths to feed. Many a son or daughter of a high-ranking Communist Party official is being educated in either the former colonial master, France, or the former enemy, America.
Nobody is Vietnam's enemy anymore.
The war really is over. Some three-fourths of Vietnam's present 76 million people either weren't even born in 1975, or were children then. The good news is that top Vietnamese authorities under- stand what they must do to unleash the talents of their people. Everyone's talking the talk of market economics these days. After all, it is embarrassing that Vietnam compared to the likes of Burundi, Cambodia, and Laos instead of Thailand or Taiwan.