Author: Suiwah Leung, ANU
A new generation of leadership is expected to emerge from the 11th national congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party in January 2011. Both the President and the Secretary-General of the Vietnamese Communist Party are expected to be stepping down, and a question mark hovers over the re-appointment of the current Prime Minister, Mr Nguyen Tan Dung.
After leading the country into the WTO, amongst other market-oriented reforms, Mr Dung’s personal standing within the Party has been tarnished in recent months by the near-collapse of the large state-owned shipbuilding conglomerate, Vinashin. Read more…
Author: Vu Minh Khuong, NUS
In her recent article ‘Vietnam – the next BRIC?‘, Suiwah Leung pointed to macroeconomic instability as a major obstacle for Vietnam as it seeks realise its economic potential. This point is valid. Vietnam’s macroeconomic instability has significantly weakened the country’s economic competitiveness and performance. And Vietnam’s macroeconomic instability is not only short-term turbulence but rather a significant system-wide problem caused by the country’s deficiency in fundamental development concepts and a lack of strategic effort to build good governance.
Evidence of the seriousness of Vietnam’s macroeconomic instability and its adverse effect on the country’s performance abounds. Read more…
Author: Ron Huisken, ANU
The first meeting of Defence Ministers from ASEAN, plus the US, China, Russia, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, was held in Hanoi on October 12. Judging from the exceedingly anodyne joint declaration, ASEAN was content with the fact of the meeting. And that is not unreasonable. Getting these 18 defence ministers together is no small feat: Collectively, they ‘command’ defence resources comparable to the members of NATO, and unlike NATO, there is no past war or crisis or common threat to drive them together.
The ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) is itself a recent creation. Read more…
Author: Suiwah Leung, ANU
With an estimated GDP growth of 5.3 per cent in 2009 and a forecasted growth rate by the ADB of 6.7 per cent for 2010, Vietnam has not only survived the GFC in better shape than countries of comparable size in Asia, but has joined the ranks of middle-income countries by having its per capita GDP in excess of USD 1,000. This is certainly a remarkable achievement in two decades of economic reforms. With the leadership setting its sights on having Vietnam develop into an industrialised market economy by 2020, there are expectations in some quarters that foreign investors will again find Vietnam a very attractive investment destination after Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).
Vietnam is no stranger to foreign investors. During the last two decades, the country has had an average FDI/GDP ratio of 5.9 per cent; the highest among many ASEAN countries during their respective periods of rapid growth from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s. Read more…
Author: Ron Huisken, ANU
In the international arena, the shortest distance between two points is rarely a straight line. A particularly good example is the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM).
The first ADMM took place in 2006. It will meet next in Hanoi later this month in a new ASEAN+8 format. The eight being Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States. East Asia may have over-indulged in forum-creation, but, even so, this development merits more recognition than it has received. Read more…
Author: Bill Hayton, BBC News
Fulbright scholar and celebrity lawyer Le Cong Dinh is to remain in prison in Vietnam. Recently, the Appeals Court in Ho Chi Minh City upheld his five-year sentence for ‘trying to overthrow the state’ and returned Dinh and his two co-accused to their cells. The fate of this man – who famously defended his country’s catfish farmers against US trade restrictions; was deputy head of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association; briefed international legal delegations; and married a former Miss Vietnam – has now clearly defined the limits of political activity the ruling Communist Party (CPV) will tolerate.
The Party was prepared to ignore Dinh so long as he remained an outspoken voice calling for legal reform. Read more…
Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS
As Graham Greene hunched over his desk perched on the wisened teak floors of Hanoi’s Metropole Hotel knitting together the silky threads of naiveté and intrigue to craft his masterful tale of Alden Pyle and Thomas Fowler, he unwittingly foretold a key element of modern Vietnamese politics: what you see is not what you get. Unlike many of its Southeast Asian neighbours, Vietnam has the capacity to keep its politics behind closed doors.
Vietnam is in the middle of the most intense part of its political cycle—the socialist corollary to the last four months of US elections—the lead-up to the Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV) 11th National Party Congress (NPC), which will take place in late January and early February 2011. Read more…
Author: Vu Minh Khuong, National University of Singapore
Since unprecedented economic reforms began in 1986, Vietnam has transformed itself from a country on the verge of economic collapse and isolation into one of the most open and fastest-growing economies in the world. Enabling the country’s rapid GDP growth, averaging 7.5 per cent between 1990 and 2008, is its robust integration into the world economy, with an average trade growth rate exceeding 20 per cent over the same period.
In 2008, Vietnam was more integrated than most its Asian peers in both trade and FDI measures. Vietnam’s impressive economic performance has been driven by its three major strengths.
Read more…
Author: Long S. Le, University of Houston
Since the doi moi (‘renovation’) reforms, the Vietnamese Government surprisingly is able to confront the fact that corruption can have detrimental effect on many aspects of economic development, such as reducing GDP growth rates and greater income inequality.
In fact, the government recently had to respond to foreign aid donors’ concern over calculation return on investment, when Japan in December 2008 briefly suspended low-interests loans of about $1.1 billion annually to Vietnam, amid a corruption investigation. Read more…
