| Communism, Jim, but not as we know it |
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| Written by Dr Eamonn Butler | |
| Friday, 05 October 2007 | |
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From time to time I get advertisements urging me to invest in various
places, and I bin them. But one caught my eye. It was talking about the
huge amount of investment now going into Vietnam. Many people remember only the images of a war-torn country; then the communism that engulfed it. But like China, it is undergoing a rapid transformation. There is infrastructure-building everywhere – power plants, telecoms systems, you name it. Industry Week recently reported that "In the last 2 years, Vietnam has invested some 10% of GDP into its infrastructure". And GDP, I'm told, is expected to grow by over 8.5% this year, and beyond. Sure, over half the population are still in agriculture, but that is changing as fast as the new buildings are rising. Trade with former enemy the United States opened up seven years ago. Last November, Vietnam became the World Trade Organization, and foreign investment there is growing fast. All that in turn has brought sharp reductions in poverty and big increases in wages. (However much people might criticize Nike's 'sweatshop wages', the fact is that its suppliers employ 130,000 people in Vietnam, and working for a Western company is a far better life than labouring in the sweltering fields, which is why people do it.) The place even has its own fledgling stock exchange. Wonderful things, trade and markets.
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