Only in the inner city of Hanoi is there a great tradition of starting up firms. This is why thousands try to move ever- closer to the congested center of the capital to find jobs and to earn a living these days-cramming the city full of motorcycles (often used as taxis) and load-laden pedestrian peddlers under an air-polluted sky.
In short, in Hanoi and in the other big cities of Vietnam, the Chinese model of economic development is being followed-leaving many people living on the fringe as have-nots--with little qualification and few connections to lift themselves much further up the ladder on the human development scale.
Partially, the underdevelopment of the political economy of Vietnam is the result of its current and prior development models. One of the disconcerting parts of the current Communist China Capitalistic model is that the haves grow wealthier while the poorest laborers stay at the margins of modern-job-employability in a globalizing marketplace.
Even more worrisome is that democracy and representative access to government are in retrograde. In short, democratic reform and access is needed but the current regime is not budging.
AMERICANS AND VIETNAM TODAY
As I drove out past the large multinational companies in their compounds at the edge of Hanoi on my way back to the airport on the last day of my excursion, I recollected what one disheartened Vietnamese had recently told me.
I had been told with a simple sigh, "If I stand in the street and demand democracy, justice or fair access without a bribe, I will be put in jail. It's that simple."
That comment made it clear to me that for the current generation of people in Vietnam, "America is no longer seen as the enemy at all in this country. The enemy in Vietnam for the majority of Vietnamese are the usual suspects-i.e. those in government and those with the most political economic power in the country."
LET'S GO VIETNAM
Here is a list of the reasons I call all Americans to commit themselves to going to Vietnam at least once in their lifetime:
(1) In general, despite the fact that the American military tried to bomb the Vietnamese people back into the stone-age in the 1960s and 1970s, the Vietnamese seem to hold few obvious grudges against Americans visiting their land.
(2) Americans who fought the communists in the old days should go and support modern Vietnamese who need international support in reforming their country and government today.
(3) We need to give moral support, financial support or both. As tourists we can leave money where we want to along the way. As possible investors or future donators to charities we can begin to make important connections. [However, if we tour with socially conscious organizations that give back to the planet and local communities, as Green Sapa and other organizations do, we can be more efficient with our financial support. Conversely, we can make purchases of groups that help the disabled.]
(4) Most importantly, once we have met the varied Vietnamese peoples face-to-face, we can put away some of our cultural baggage about the current war on terror [and cultural clash myths] which claim that such cultural wars go on forever, i.e. cultures continue to fear, hate and attack each other forever. Maybe we can then more quickly pull out of Iraq with confidence and know that some day we will have better relations with the Arabs there in the Middle East-- just as we have good relations with the Japanese and Germans today.
(5) Finally, we owe the Vietnamese our hand in friendship. We, in fact, did a lot to destroy all of the prior Vietnamese colonial infrastructure through bombings and through continued isolation through 1995. We owe them much more than we have provided to date. [The Vietnamese showed America that God had not destined it to rule the planet single handedly. This is one reason why, after signing the peace accords with North Vietnam in 1972, our nation managed to have the discipline to stay out of major wars for nearly 20 years--and out of lengthy--wars for over 30 years.]
In addition, I hope that by traveling to Vietnam, all Americans will learn to take time and rediscover more accurately America's own historical relationship to South East Asia. We can learn so much about ourselves and others.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
