Preface

In the months prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we (Brook Taylor from New Zealand and Sam Korsmoe from the United States) launched a research project about the future of Vietnam. Collectively, we have been living, working in, and studying Vietnam for more than fifty-seven years. We have read about and, more importantly, participated in the ‘Vietnam Growth Story’ that has spanned the past three decades. Despite this long-term growth trend, there are few published works that explains how and why Vietnam has grown and developed. As a result, the ‘Vietnam Growth Story’ is not easily understood even by those who live and work in the country. We believed the time was right for a new and comprehensive look at Vietnam and where it is heading. We had a basic question we wanted to answer: ‘Is Vietnam undergoing a flash of development that will eventually die out or are the foundations for longterm, equitable growth now being poured?’ This is an exceptionally difficult question, but the results of our research into it are within the pages of this book.

We began our research journey at about the same time that the COVID-19 virus began its deadly journey across the world. This meant we were forced to adjust our research methods several times as travel restrictions and lockdowns impacted our ability to schedule interviews and conduct other types of field research. The first adjustment began in March 2020 due to what we call ‘COVID I,’ which Vietnam handled well compared to most countries worldwide. The second adjustment started about a year later, in May 2021, and by mid-2022 had largely played itself out. We call this ‘COVID II’ and it featured the much more contagious Delta variant of COVID-19. It also included the Omicron variant, which was less deadly but spread more rapidly despite many people having already been vaccinated. These two variants hit Vietnam as viciously as COVID I hit the rest of the world. Although tragic and for the most part over, COVID I and COVID II provided additional insight into how equipped Vietnam was to overcome a new and major challenge of the modern world. It also showed Vietnamese leaders’ pragmatic nature, which was most clearly revealed with the government’s decision to ‘live with COVID’ rather than to try and pursue a zero COVID strategy. The pandemic became another means to test the hypothesis, and we have included that analysis in this book.

We have extensive experience of living and working in Vietnam, but we are not epidemiologists adept at understanding diseases, nor are we economists working for multilateral institutions or journalists working for any media organization. Part of the challenge when writing a book about Vietnam’s economic and social development is the plethora of pundits who throw out sound-bite theories and models of what Vietnam is doing. Vietnam, say the pundits, is following ‘the China model,’ ‘the authoritarian model,’ ‘the free trade and investment model,’ ‘the preserve-the-Party model,’ and ‘the Poster Boy for the World Bank model,’ among others. We feel these explanations are often agenda-driven and do not adequately explain what has happened and what is happening in the country. We had no agenda other than to try and explain what we thought had been happening over the past 25–30 years that we have been living and working in Vietnam. More importantly, we wanted to try and understand the future. Above all, we wanted to get a sense of what Vietnam will be like in the decades from 2020 to 2050.

How can such a research goal be obtained amid a global pandemic, especially as it is not only about COVID-19? Geopolitics, climate change, new technologies, growing nationalist movements in many countries, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and potentially a Cold War between China and the United States in which Vietnam might be asked to choose sides, has complicated this research quest. Although we had no agenda, we did have to create a road map to study and then report on the future of Vietnam.

Our means of doing this was to test a hypothesis. The hypothesis had two parts. Part 1 asked whether Vietnam is, was, or will be a ‘Tiger Economy.’ We developed specific metrics to define, measure, and then test this question. Part 2 then asked whether Vietnam will grow and develop in the same way that South Korea and Taiwan did when they were ‘Tiger Economies’ in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries survived and thrived in their respective postwar, postcolonial environments, and within a period of fifty years became rich and joined the list of wealthy nations.

We recognize that the environment of South Korea and Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s is not entirely comparable to Vietnam in the twenty-first century. There are many differences and making a direct comparison is foolhardy. We did not attempt to, and never could, make an apples-to-apples comparison, but we felt it was appropriate that our hypothesis contain a basic and compelling question: ‘Can Vietnam do the same thing? Can it grow and develop from 2020 to 2050 in a similar way to how South Korea and Taiwan grew from 1980 to 2000?’

Why not compare Vietnam to its Southeast Asian neighbors, or perhaps to some other emerging market country in the world, such as contemporary China which is also transitioning from a command economy to a market economy, or to Japan of the 1950s and 1960s which offers a good example of a postwar, rags-to-riches success story? There are two main reasons we selected South Korea and Taiwan as the comparative case study countries for this book. The first is a cultural argument and the second a historical argument based on the 1980s and 1990s successes of these Tiger Economy countries and how they have become high-income nations today. We expand on these two issues in Chapter 1.

This book comprises twelve chapters, and within one of those chapters are six case studies. We begin with our hypothesis and defend the merits of this approach. We then cover some of the key events from Vietnamese history, followed by an analysis of the cultural roots of this history. We focus on the Doi Moi (‘renovation’) policies of the late 1980s and 1990s, which set the stage for the first steps of Vietnam’s opening to the world and established the foundation for what we call ‘the point of no return’ in the mid-2000s. This was when Vietnam committed itself to free trade as its primary means to grow and develop its economy. This step culminated with Vietnam’s entry into the World Trade Organization, on January 1, 2007.

Chapters 1–6 serve as the foundation for our research. We then explore the core questions involved with the hypothesis. First is the definition of a ‘Tiger Economy’ and whether Vietnam is one. We then introduce some of the key reasons why South Korea and Taiwan were Tiger Economies in the 1980s and 1990s and how they were able to leverage those advantages to break out of the Middle-Income Trap and join the ranks of high-income nations by 2000. The leaders of those countries had several ‘tools’ that they effectively leveraged to help their countries achieve success. In Chapter 9 we examine the additional ‘tools’ (we call them ‘cards’ in this book) that Vietnam has and assess how they will contribute to Vietnam’s growth from 2020 to 2050. The six case studies that follow in Chapter 10 offer evidence of the Vietnamese cards in action: education, technology, public works, agriculture, sports, tourism, cuisine, and social issues like the role of women. Each topic is part of a trend in Vietnam that might facilitate Vietnam’s replication of the success of South Korea and Taiwan of the 1980s and 1990s.

In Chapters 11 and 12 we look to the future. We project Vietnam’s growth from 2020 to 2050. We consider what can go wrong and what kinds of issues Vietnam’s leaders, investors, partners, and citizens should be aware of in the 2020s and 2030s that might alter, prevent, or delay current growth trends. We wrote this book with a broad readership in mind, initially with a focus on students, foreign investors, NGOs, government workers, and overseas Vietnamese. As the book and its themes matured, we realized that it would also be an important resource for local Vietnamese who wanted to better understand their own country’s long-term potential. Whether Vietnam replicates the South Korea and Taiwan experience or not, coming close will still provide a compelling story that is worth documenting.

The Vietnam of today is a young country. The median age of Vietnamese is around thirty-two years. The country has only experienced peace and independence since 1990, even though it was unified after the end of the American War in April 1975. Due to the hardship and poverty that many Vietnamese had to endure during the French and American war years, the first decade after liberation, and before Doi Moi, it is not surprising that they do not often contemplate the country’s long-term path. For this reason, we hope this book gives Vietnamese, and anyone else seeking to understand Vietnam, a greater appreciation of the country’s potential and the key drivers contributing to its growth story and its success.