Emerging from the shadows
The pace of change
For us, and for visitors returning to the country after a period of absence, Vietnam is changing at breakneck speed. The potential bottled up by the warand the restrictions that followed as the painful process of reunification and reconciliation proceeded, is now being unleashed.
In the cities, practically every street has a building site, slum dwellings are being demolished and replaced by modern high and low-rise dwellings, and new districts are being created in the suburbs to house the swelling urban population.
Country areas are being provided with a clean water supply, electricity and new services and facilities. Reservoirs are being built to ease water shortages and new coal and gas fuelled power stations are being opened.
Transport and communications are improving daily. Entertainment facilities are expanding, supermarkets are appearing, and tourism infrastructure is opening up new areas and locations to visitors.
No aspect of Vietnam’s daily life escapes attention, and no-one is unaffected by the changes that are taking place.
The social aspect
Change is never neutral – it always creates winners and losers. Our government treads a narrow path in balancing the benefits of change with the social disruption that it causes. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority make people understand the problems and support the measures introduced to deal with them.
Working together
Our nation has a long tradition of communalism. In the 21st century, communalism is manifested in ‘mass movements’ – national campaigns to overcome social problems such as poverty, drug abuse, pollution, health issues and so on. Involvement comes in many forms, attending meetings, donating money and goods and so on, but the main form is volunteering time to assist. The Ho Chi Minh Youth Union, the Women’s Union and other large national organizations can mobilize millions of people to assist in building bridges, working with handicapped people, cleaning up dirty beaches and a host of other activities.
Challenges and successes
Vietnam’s problems are shared by all developing counties. Each has its own approach, and each has its success and failures. No approach, system or model fits all – each country has a different context, so each has to find itsown way. By trial and error, and with help from our neighbors and the international community, we are learning lessons and working out solutions in ways that fit our national culture and beliefs.
Successes
We are now beginning to see the fruits of our labor. Poverty is falling, the economy is sound, industry is modernizing and tourism is expanding, for example. Vietnam has had several notable achievements in the health field – it led the world in containing SARS, is attracting international attention by treating tuberculosis successfully, and is well on the way controlling malaria.
The future
Despite our progress so far, we are only at the beginning of the road that leads to our eventual goal of “Independence, Freedom and Happiness” – a vision laid out by Ho Chi Minh in his Declaration of Independence in 1945. We have yet to come to terms with the major issues of wealth distribution, universal free health care, full employment and all the other conditions necessary for his dream to become our reality.
Every so often, the views and attitudes of Asian people in relation to their quality of life are surveyed. Overall, Vietnam is usually ranked somewhere in the middle (an achievement in itself considering the country’s starting point). However, in one category Vietnam is always at or near the top – optimism about the future. We know the going will be tough, but we’re determined to get there!
Life in Vietnam’s cities today
All Vietnam’s urban centers, and especially Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, would be almost unrecognizable to someone returning to the country after a five year or more absence.
More variety
Some things would stand out immediately. For example, in the city centers, the jumble of open shops spreading over the broken pavements, war-damaged buildings shored up or in ruins, and poky Vietnamese cafés and ‘bia hois’ have been replaced with smart new Western-style shop fronts displaying international products, supermarkets, neatly paved walkways, and restaurants and bars offering a huge range of menus from all over the world.
From bicycles to motorbikes to cars
 Our imaginary visitor would also be surprised by the traffic – not so much the volume (Vietnamese cities have always had busy roads), but by the number of motorbikes, buses and cars. In 1998, bicycles outnumbered motorbikes by at least a factor of three. Today, the positions are reversed. The growth in motorbike ownership has been exponential – so much so that local authorities, with government support, are limiting registrations and even stopping them altogether in the large cities.
Car ownership is also beginning to rise. Sales doubled last year, and luxury brands such as Mercedes, Lexus and BMW are becoming commonplace on city streets.
Public transport
The battered old buses, built on lorry chassis, belching smoke, and picking up passengers wherever they appeared, are now an endangered species. Most have been replaced by fleets of spruce new vehicles painted in bright colors and stopping at regular bus stops. Ridiculously cheap fares, clean comfortable seats, and timetables have made them very popular – both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are rapidly expanding their fleets to ease traffic congestion.
However, our imaginary visitor would be reassured by the noise. Although bicycle bells, and the hooters and thunder of antiquated lorries and buses, have been transformed into a cacophony of motorbike and car horns, the streets are a noisy as ever.
Fin de siecle for the ‘cyclo’
 In both cities, the famous Vietnamese ‘cyclo’, or bicycle taxi, ubiquitous by 1992, are dwindling to become tourist attractions, elbowed aside by the cheaper and quicker ‘xe om’ (motorbike taxi), and barred from main streets as a traffic hazard.
Modernization
Supermarkets have opened up, and are already beginning to eat into a market previously dominated by small shops. Roads are being re-laid, with new drains, pavements and ‘motorbike-friendly’ curbs. City authorities are beginning to experiment with turning some roads into pedestrian-only areas.
The decline of the street traders
Our visitor would soon notice that the number of women wearing a conical straw hat and carrying goods in baskets hung from a bamboo pole has dropped, and that there are far fewer pavement cafes. Faced with a situation of pedestrians being forced to walk in the road by parked motorbikes, street trading and other activities, the police force is now starting to enforce a long-standing (and completely ignored) regulation prohibiting blocking the pavement in some urban areas.
Something never change
However, our confused visitor would feel more at home upon noticing that plenty of Vietnamese people still wander across the road without looking and ride their bicycles on the wrong side of the road (Vietnamese pedestrians and cyclists still seem to believe that they are exempt from both traffic regulations and using their common-sense).
Modern arts in Vietnam today
Painting
With only a few exceptions, painting did not become a developed art form in Vietnam until the beginning of the last century, when the country was under French rule. The colonists established an art school in Hanoi with a curriculum heavily biased towards French art, and particularly expressionism, an influence that is still clearly be identifiable in Vietnameseworks today.
The ‘social realism’ period
The spread of communism, and the growing influence of the USSR, led to a period of social realism. During this period, the purpose of artistic expression was to further the revolution. By definition, other forms of art were counter-revolutionary. Thus, the soft images of derivative French Expressionism were replaced by graphic depictions of heroic peasants, Viet Minh soldiers, factory workers, and propaganda poster exhortations. The Fine Arts Museums in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have many examples of the genre.
Sculpture, architecture, film, theatre – all were directed along the social realism path, oblivious to artistic movements taking place elsewhere in the world.
Post ‘Doi moi’
With the advent of Doi moi, the open door policy, social realism was put to one side to make way for a flowering of suppressed Vietnamese artistic expression. Although much of the art in the mushrooming galleries of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City is highly derivative, a new Vietnamese art style is emerging.
A fusion of western styles and Vietnamese traditions expressed in a range of media as diverse as lacquer ware, furniture, silk painting, calligraphy and ceramic is increasingly apparent. Many Vietnamese artists now attract international attention and can command prices in the thousands of dollars for their artwork and sculpture.
Other artistic forms have yet to benefit from the Vietnamese renaissance. Publishing, public art, public performances and television are still tightly controlled.
The cinema
Film making has been a state enterprise since it began. Films were sponsored by the government on minimal budgets, usually around $US 60,000. Despite a lack of money, and primitive equipment, some Vietnamese films received international accolades, but even they failed to gain a popular audience in Vietnam.
Recently, a film breaking new ground received a license for distribution. Instead of a worthy, innocuous theme ‘Bar Girls’ portrayed the life of young women working in dance halls and dealt with contemporary issues such as prostitution and drug abuse. Box office receipts eclipsed those for Hollywood blockbusters, usually the cinema’s staple fare.
Recently, the government has allowed private cinema companies to operate, opening the way for a new film industry aimed at meeting public demands.
The youth generation
Vietnamese pop music is a curious blend of 'middle of the road' soft rock with highly sentimental lyrics, and is the mainstay of the ubiquitouskaraoke. Karaoke singing is highly popular: families and businesses often have their own machines. A wide range of Western pop is available on very cheap pirated CDs and DVDs. Some of the famous international girl and boy groups are popular, but there is no doubt that Vietnamese youth, and their parents, prefer the home-grown version.
There is little sign of the raunchiness associated with European and American tastes, nor any apparent desire to express a specific identity for youth through Western-style shock tactics and exhibitionism. The teenage rebellion has yet to happen in Vietnam – if it ever does!
Economic issues
Vietnam is a country in transition, steadily dismantling a monolithic centralized ‘command’ economy entirely made up of state monopolies protected by subsidies and tariff barriers. Some industries have already been exposed to the chill wind of competition. For example, Vinacoal, the state company exploiting the country’s vast coal reserves, now competes successfully in the open market following the removal of subsidies. After a painful period of restructuring involving a massive ‘shake-out’ of labor, exports are now buoyant.
Steady progress
The government has implemented a program of ‘cophanhoa’, a form of privatization akin to a management ‘buy-out’, and is encouraging other state companies to seek foreign investment through shareholding.
A small stock market has been established in Ho Chi Minh City trading shares within a limited band of price variation.
Progress in breaking up the state monopolies is slow for a number of reasons, notably the reluctance of managers to lose the security of state control, the massive investment needed to enable aging industries to compete and an understandable government reluctance to exacerbate an already high rate of unemployment.
Monetary stability
Growth has been high and reasonably steady over the last decade, and inflation has been brought under control. The Vietnamese Dong is a closed currency, pegged to the US dollar. The government has strongly resistedcalls to float the Dong, but the State Bank is slowly implementing measures to free up the banking system in preparation for monetary reform.
Controlling smuggling
Accurate economic data is hard to obtain. The official figure of income per head is almost certainly understated due to the extensive ‘moonlighting’, and a thriving black economy. Smuggling on a massive scale, mostly between Vietnam and China, distorts import and export figures. Informed guesswork suggests that between a quarter and a third of Vietnamese ‘imports’ may be entering the country illegally across its long, porous border with its mighty neighbor.
The border police are working hard, and have had some notable successes, but the length and terrain of the border makes effective control very difficult.
Labor-intensive agriculture
Vietnam continues to rely heavily upon agriculture. Most farming is at subsistence level and labor intensive – although 70% of the population still works in agriculture, the sector contributed only 25% of GDP in 1999, down from 40% in 1991. Industrial growth has averaged 13% over the same period.
Positive indicators
GDP overall is rising rapidly, from $33bn US in 1999 to $42bn US in 2001, and during the same period GDP per capita rose from $400 US to $503 US, a 34% increase. At the same time, inflation dropped from 4.3% to 2.4%.
Two major challenges
However, although rapid growth is undeniably raising standards of living at all levels, there is mounting concern about wealth distribution. The income of the wealthiest sector of the population is now eight times greater than that of the poorest, and the gap is widening. Furthermore, the speed of development is outpacing regulatory measures and procedures, opening the way for widespread corruption and fraud.
Positive measures
These two issues are probably the greatest challenge to the continuing success of ‘Doi moi’. The government is well aware of the scale of the problem, and is working hard to overhaul the personal and corporate taxstructure and make revenue collection more efficient.
The complexity of the procedures has made large-scale V.A.T fraud difficult to detect – they are being simplified. Each individual civil servant, local authority official, manager of a state company and Party member is now obliged to make an annual declaration of his or her income and assets.
Looking to the future
Vietnam is fully committed to ‘Doi moi’ and the development of a socialist system. We have recently become members of the Asian free trade group, and are joining the W.T.O. We recognize that our transition will not be easy: tariff barriers begin to drop in 2004, and some of our less efficient industries will suffer badly. Nevertheless, we are confident that we can overcome the challenges that face us now and in the next few years.
Vietnam’s problems
Population:
Viet Nam’s present population is around 84 million, about 87% of which is the majority ‘Kinh‘ group mostly living in low-lying areas, and the remaining 13% in fifty-three different ethnic groups living mainly in mountainous areas.
A population boom after the end of the war allowed Viet Nam’s population to climb rapidly. Increasing population density, pressure on ageing infrastructure and worsening environmental damage prompted a policy of applying disincentives to families with more than two children. Population growth is slowing, but the previous high rate has left a very young population (65% are under 25) with consequent serious strains on the education system and the labor market.
Poverty:
 Nearly three-quarters of Vietnam’s population were living in poverty in the mid-1980s. In the early nineties, the government committed itself to a systematic strategy to improve the situation: it has been remarkably successful. The 2006 United Nations 'Human Development Report' records that poverty is now under 17% and dropping rapidly, one of the sharpest declines in any other country on record.
Nevertheless, poverty is still common in rural areas, and increasing urban affluence has stimulated migration from poor rural provinces into the cities adding to the social problems there. Wages for low-skill jobs are minimal and unemployment is high and increasing as the country progressively adapts to the world market economy.
Population:
Most of the infrastructure in Vietnam was built during the colonial period, and is now in desperate need of replacement. Some of the rivers and lakes in urban areas are little more than open sewers, and levels of heavy metal and other industrial pollutants are well above safe levels in some areas.
Flora and fauna are not only threatened by pollution and habitat encroachment, but also by poaching and illegal logging, particularly in poor rural areas. National and local authorities are working hard to improve the situation, but the scale of investment required to solve such problems is currently beyond the country’s means.
Health:
Many of Vietnam’s hospitals are in antiquated colonial buildings. Equipment is basic, and medical staffs often lack necessary skills and experience. Patients have to pay for treatment and medication – poor people are exempted. However, a new employee medical national insurance scheme has been launched and is proving popular.
The proportion of live births and life expectancy are both rising, but Vietnam faces many health challenges. In particular, HIV/AIDS is increasing, fuelled by a growing drug abuse and unsafe sex. However, the country has scored some remarkable successes, notably being the first country in the world to eradicate an outbreak of SARS in the spring of 2003 and fowl flue in 2005.
Tradition:
In the past, Vietnam’s Confucian heritage has served the country well. However, some aspects of Confucian behavior are now putting a brake on progress and, in some cases, causing harm. In the workplace, a strict hierarchy of deference blocks initiative and innovation, and bureaucracy, red tape and low-level corruption abound. In schools, a rigid fact-based curriculum and didactic teaching stifles imagination and curiosity.
In the family, male dominance relegates women to menial tasks, limits their freedom and legitimates risky sexual behavior by men. On the positive site, Vietnam’s strong Confucian traditions have been a major factor in maintaining political stability during a period of rapid change, and have been a significant curb on some of the more pernicious excesses of globalization. | 
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