The Asian Age
http://www.asianage.com/
16 December 2005
YaleGlobal Online
Vietnam Goes Global
- By Jordan Ryan
Hanoi, Dec 15: Nearly two decades after launching economic reforms, Vietnam
is well on its way to achieving Ho Chi Minh's nationalist dream of
independence and prosperity.
Well, right now Vietnam ranks 108 in the UN HDI. The Philippines is 84 and
Albania is 72 by comparison. If such countries can become prosperous, then
I am not sure what prosperity means.
Whenever it occurs, accession to WTO will stand as the crowning achievement
of Vietnam's reform program launched in 1986. The reforms, known locally as
doi moi or renovation, set in motion Vietnam's transition from a centrally
planned to a market economy, and opened the way for liberalization of trade
and inward investment policies.
Here's some more information on 'doi moi' prosperity:
The Independent (London), June 20, 1999, Sunday
THE MINE FIELDS; THEIR WORK IS DANGEROUS, BACK-BREAKING AND FILTHY - YET
THE MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN WHO WORK THIS COAL COAST ARE ENVIED BY THEIR
FELLOW VIETNAMESE.
By Raymond Whitaker
THE MOST popular tourist attraction in Vietnam is Ha Long (Descending
Dragon) Bay, dotted with more than a thousand limestone islands. Once, when
Vietnam was threatened by China, as it has been many times in the past few
thousand years, a dragon came down from heaven to repel a Chinese fleet,
then settled in the bay. There each of its scales became an island. Perhaps
its breath scorched the northern shore of Ha Long, creating the coal
deposits of the Cam Pha district which are the bay's other, far less
salubrious, means of earning foreign currency.
Against the same extraordinary setting that brings Western visitors - of
whom there are increasing numbers, now that Vietnam has embraced doi moi
(innovation and change) - local miners work in a 1.5sq km open-cast pit.
Many of the workers are women, though they are barred from the most
dangerous jobs. There are a few ancient pieces of Chinese or Russian heavy
machinery, but after the coal has been blasted from the seam most of the
work is done by hand: huge lumps are broken into manageable pieces with
hammers, then carried in baskets for grading before being taken to barges
moored in the bay.
The French colonial administration began mining the area in the 1930s, and
more than half a century's production has buried the beach 6ft deep in
slag. Even this, though, supplies a living for hundreds of families, who
comb the black mounds and sift the shallows for waste coal. ("They are
fishing," an embarrassed guide told one foreigner who asked what they were
doing.) Children as young as three help to gather the precious lumps into
baskets, which sell to middlemen for about 15p a load.
The underground mines are scarcely less primitive. Accidents are common - a
methane gas explosion killed 16 workers in January - and the damp
conditions breed parasitic hookworms. Dust and sulphur fumes cause
respiratory ailments; skeletal problems are common in the cramped
galleries. But the 25,000 workers in the coalfields of Cam Pha, which
produce 12 million tons of anthracite a year, are envied by most
Vietnamese. Their wages, starting at about pounds 36 a month, are double
the national average and almost five times the official salary of a
hospital doctor. Miners can afford to buy a small home, a motorcycle, a
colour television - all the things that people emerging from a subsistence
economy aspire to.
(clip)
Embracing globalization was traumatic for the Vietnamese Communist Party,
the founding principles of which were based on the Leninist thesis that
imperialism and capitalism were one and the same.
Who knows. If the USSR hadn't imploded, maybe Vietnam would have had
alternatives to the sweatshop model.
Like most western Marxists at the time, and indeed for many years
afterwards, they believed that the development of an indigenous, autonomous
capitalism was impossible in the former colonies.
Ha-ha-ha-ha! I haven't laughed this hard since watching Fawlty Towers.
Vietnam is an agro-export nation. If agro-export could lead to serious
capitalist development, then Latin America wouldn't be electing people like
Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales.
But history has been unkind to Lenin's theory of imperialism, not least in
Asia.
Interesting how people like Jordan Ryan (and Ulhas for that matter) keep
insisting on the need to remind us that Lenin is outdated. If that were the
case, there would be no need to keep doing it. After all, there is no need
to keep pointing out how obsolete Henry George is.
China emerged from its Maoist misadventures in the 1980s to develop its
own brand of rapid
capitalist development under Deng Xiao Ping.
And is now being torn apart by peasant rebellion.
Since 1989, Vietnam's economy has grown faster than any other country in the
world except for China and the African oil enclave of Equatorial Guinea.
Yes, growth. That old chestnut. What would we do without it. Whenever I
hear it, I tend to be reminded of all the penile enhancement spam I get--of
course I have no need of such things.
But the most imposing obstacles to continued success are home grown. In
contrast to China, Vietnam's ruling Communist Party is still wary of the
accumulation of economic power beyond the control of the state. The party's
new appetite for globalization has not yet brought about full acceptance of
domestic capitalism.
Maybe we can send NATO over to bomb them into submission, like we did in
Yugoslavia.
Jordan Ryan (Yale 1974) is the United Nations Resident Coordinator and
United Nations Development Programme Representative living in Hanoi,
Vietnam. He served for the United Nations in Vietnam from 1993-96 and again
from 2001 to date.
I am shocked. A UN Viceroy writing propaganda for capitalism. What is this
world coming to.
--
www.marxmail.org
