Vietnam Vietnam Today

Known to most as simply Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a Communist state, seasoned with a delightful splash of French civil law. The current president, Tr<n c L™£ng, was elected from among several candidates within the single party in the country—the Communist Party of Vietnam—first in September 1997 and then again in 2002 to serve a second five-year term. The cabinet is appointed by the president, and the members of the judicial branch, the Supreme People’s Court, are voted upon by the 448 members of the National Assembly. The real power, though, is held by the secretary-general of the Communist Party, N®ng Dc Månh, who was originally appointed in 2001 and re-elected in April 2006. The current president and his Prime Minister, Phan Vn Kh=i, are also both economically liberal, supporting the continuation of economic reform. However, the Politburo—the chief committee of the Communist Party—has worked (relatively unsuccessfully) to slow this process. Though there is no major organized political opposition group in the country, a few small groups, including the Free Vietnam Movement (FVM), have become increasingly active in promoting the move toward democracy.

Political organizations are not the only voice of dissent these days. Anti-government demonstrations erupted among the hill tribes in the Central Highlands in 2001 and have continued sporadically since. The problem is further complicated by the unjust treatment of Protestant minorities in the region . A November 2005 report to the United States Senate declared that ethnic Christians in the Northwest and Central Highlands “have continued to be beaten, detained, and pressured by local authorities to renounce their religion and cease religious gatherings.” These smaller religious groups are seen by the government as political dissenters, and, true to the socialist legacy, have been harshly suppressed. In general, human rights have not ranked among the current government’s priorities, and in 2002, several journalists came under attack for being a little too explicit in their disapproval of the administration.

But these issues are not going unnoticed. A series of protests in the Thái Bình and ·ng Nai provinces over local government corruption has prompted a call for the elimination of reprobate officials. The response is part of a nationwide effort to reduce corruption, widespread in the government and businesses. Large-scale prisoner absolution in 1998—including the early release of Professor Doan Viˆt Hoat, a prominent pro-democracy demonstrator—was another positive step toward human rights protection in Vietnam. But the same laws under which Doan Viêt Hoat and other peaceful political protestors were arrested continue to exist, and full-scale democracy and freedom of speech have yet to be realized in Vietnam. Human rights groups remain intent on keeping out foreign powers, carrying on a deep tradition of independence.

The education system in Vietnam provides free schooling to all children between the ages of six and sixteen, and the country currently boasts a 90.2% literacy rate for women and a 95% rate for men. The government also provides free health care through an extensive social security plan, but insufficient funds have rendered the nature of that health care occasionally less than ideal.

The Economy

Vietnam’s economy is growing quickly, and prospects for the future are bright. The economic crisis in Southeast Asia in the late 1990s led to a dip in the growth rate to 4%, but by 2003 it was back up to around 7%, and in 2006 it was above 8%. Because of both government corruption and globalization, the benefits of the recent growth have not reached the entire country, and the class divide has become more pronounced in recent years. The current GDP per capita remains around US$2800, and the unemployment rate, which reached a devastating 25% in 1995, had dropped to 5.75% by 2005.

A 2001 bilateral trade agreement between Vietnam and the US was a landmark for the Vietnamese economy. A year later, the country had the second-fastest growing economy in Asia, second only to China. Vietnam’s dominance of international rice markets provides some measure of economic stability: along with Thailand and India, it was one of the primary planners of the Council on Rice Trade Cooperation, which is designed to monitor international market prices.

Vietnam’s primary exports, aside from seafood and rice, are coffee, rubber, tea, clothing, and a bit of crude oil. Agriculture remains the largest sector of the economy, leaving industry and services to account for 37% of activity.

After a series of talks with the United States, Vietnam stands at the brink of acceptance into the World Trade Organization (WTO). WTO membership promises the full integration of Vietnam into the global economy, as well as specific benefits that could help Vietnamese textile and clothing industries. It also opens the country to foreign investment, promising increased economic growth, though perhaps ensuring an even greater permeation of Vietnamese society by Western culture.

Tourism

Vietnam’s tourist infrastructure is young, but it’s growing quickly. Dramatic mountains, world-class beaches, and mind-blowing food brought in 3.5 million tourists in 2005—18% more than in 2004. Vietnam recently opened tourist offices in France and Japan, and expanded those in China, Germany, and the US in order to broaden its tourist audience. As the number of annual visitors rises, so too does the need to improve Vietnam’s ailing infrastructure, but the country has been slow to respond. The next several years should see vast improvement in road conditions and transportation safety, electrical and drainage systems, and medical facility conditions.

Western tourists are generally well treated in Vietnam; the police leave them alone, and locals welcome their money. More tourism means a greater exposure for and knowledge of Vietnamese society, and it provides an income for many Vietnamese families. It also invites commercialism, which threatens to degrade the authenticity of Vietnam’s culture. Resort towns littering the country and shoreline, with open-tour buses to connect them, have helped to create a tourist-centered subculture that glosses over what’s real and what’s fascinating about Vietnam—its people. So by all means, go to Vietnam (it’s too good to pass up) but don’t miss out on the country’s most impressive resource.

The Aids Crisis

Until the summer of 2004, it was widely believed that the AIDS epidemic in Asia was relatively under control. But the infection rate has greatly increased in the past few years. Between 2002 and 2003, the infection rate increased 11% in Vietnam, though in June 2004, the US named Vietnam as the first Asian nation to receive part of its proposed five-year US$15 billion AIDS relief plan. Experts estimate that up to 265,000 people in Vietnam live with HIV.

This alarming number has almost everything to do with Vietnam’s prostitution and drug use problems. According to UNAIDS, the joint United Nations program on AIDS, HIV infection rates of 40% are “not unusual” among drug injectors in larger cities, and drug-injecting sex workers are less than half as likely to use condoms as their substance-free coworkers. Tragically, campaigns aimed against these “social evils” tend to drive them further underground and away from government regulation, making these problems even more difficult to solve.

With 5000-10,000 new cases each year, AIDS poses a major threat to Vietnam for a number of reasons, and silence on the issue remains a troubling trend. Two major sources of the problem are the widespread misconceptions about the disease and the dearth of educational programs to combat them. Use of condoms in Vietnam remains very uncommon. A strong stigma is attached to purchasing condoms in pharmacies, and a common belief prevails that condoms reduce virility. Moreover, the open discussion of sexuality is taboo, even within some of the more progressive families. Although official warnings against the dangers of HIV/AIDS are posted throughout Vietnam, the dangerous notion that the epidemic is a foreign, African, or homosexual problem has not yet waned. Traditionally, women have little say in sexual relationships, and with men scorning the use of precautionary measures like condoms, women are at a higher risk. Fortunately, the government has begun to implement new education programs, and in June 2004, Hà Nÿi christened its first  condom machine , a positive step toward effective proactive measures.

The Bird Flu Outbreak

In January 2004, Vietnam suffered an outbreak of avian influenza (more commonly known as bird flu) that killed six people, four of whom were children. Since then, Vietnam has lost several dozen more to one of the world’s most frightening new diseases. Though it generally afflicts only birds, avian influenza was first discovered as communicable to humans in 1997 in Hong Kong. Although transmission of the disease has so far required direct contact with infected birds or their droppings, there remains a frightening possibility of a human pandemic. For this to happen, though, one person would have to pick up both human and avian strains, and the two viruses would have to mutate into a form communicable to humans—a fairly unlikely but conceivable possibility.

Vietnam’s substantial poultry stock is a different story: many of the country’s farms have been subjected to mass culling to prevent the spread of the disease. Bird flu drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza exist in very limited supply, and scientists are still scrambling to understand exactly how avian flu effects the body as well as how to fight a potential outbreak.

Don’T Read This

Government censorship is one of the last old-fashioned Communist policies of the modern Vietnamese state, and Vietnamese press remains one of the most controlled in the world. In the advent of the uncontrollable, all-powerful  Internet, this practice has begun to face a daunting test—one that many hope will once and for all bring an end to restrictions on free speech. The Internet Center of Vietnam was founded by the government in 2003 to ensure that the Communist state is not undermined online, and the first batch of “cyber dissidents” are now receiving jail terms.

In May 2006, Amnesty International responded, launching a drive to end Internet censorship. Ironically, most Vietnamese won’t be able to access their site; human rights and politically dissident sites are off-limits, and Internet cafes are required to keep records of their clients’ web-surfing. This public Internet access, however, is taking the country by storm, and connection speeds and the number of online Vietnamese continue to skyrocket. Many predict that the government will soon be unable to control communications as thoroughly as in the past, unless it decides to risk a major international relations setback, should online restrictions make the country appear backward to the rest of the world.

But censorship does not end with the Internet. In 2004, responding to the increasingly eccentric physical appearances of Vietnamese performing artists, the government banned outlandish hairdos—including shaved heads and uncombed hair—that allegedly detract from a more conventional artistic tradition. The new rule appears not to be strictly enforced: in June 2004, a 67-year-old Vietnamese man made international headlines with his record-setting 20 feet of hair, which hadn’t been cut in 31 years. He claims that his last haircut made him ill.

Land Ho!

Boasting a healthy supply of natural gas, oil, and fish, the resource-rich Spratly Islands—a small archipelago of 100 islands in the South China Sea—have miraculously been claimed at least in part by most countries in the region. China, Taiwan, and Vietnam allege to own them in full, while the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia lay claim to several of the islands. Controversy has persisted since the 1930s, and military clashes even erupted in 1974. One of the aims of the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1992 was to resolve the issue through joint ownership and exploration, but relations remain strained, largely due to reports from Philippine authorities regarding Chinese military and economic activity in the area. Though Taiwan holds no official ownership rights to any of the islands, its government, too, has contributed to the chaos with the construction of a supposed bird-watching facility on one of Vietnam’s authorized islands in early 2004. Vietnam reacted by sending a tourist cruise ship out to the archipelago—a move that Malaysia had attempted a few years before—much to the anger and dismay of other countries. In 2005, however, national oil companies in Vietnam, China, and the Philippines signed a treaty that would allow for joint research of the area, and for now, at least, the tensions seem to have cooled.