Vietnam is Asia's 2nd fastest growing economy

Kurien Abraham / CNN-IBN


Investors say that Vietnam is a hybrid of China and India. It's proved its mettle in manufacturing and if India doesn't watch its back, it could do the same in services in the next five years.


http://www.ibnlive.com/news/vietnam-is-asi...my/43973-7.html

Why should one get angry because of such a comparison? We can agree and disagree with the analysis, but a Vietnamese should feel joyful to witness Vietnam and its people making great progress towards prosperity and happiness (eventually). I do not think Vietnam is a hybrid of the two, rather Vietnam seems to resemble China more. Services are tough for both China and Vietnam to tap in due to the language barrier. Most service-based economies rely heavily on the English speaking population such as Singapore, India, the Philippines etc. I remember Vietnam was trying to model Singapore in the late 80s and early 90s and it didn't work out really well. Vietnam is still far behind the projected goal (2007 at slightly above $500M) of $1B revenue in IT.
Given the raw talent of Vietnamese in science and engineering, this is pretty much a poor performance. There's ongoing effort of teaching English to the younger generations and there's already some excellent results. Many kids in elementary school can converse in English now. It will probably take another 5-10 years for these kids to join the work force. Until then Vietnam will remain rather less competitive in services though as of now, Vietnam is well known as the best place for web development outsourcing (I'm in the industry so I can justify this claim ).
Analysts are also concerned about service-based economies due to the fact that they can lose out thier competitiveness to emerging ones. Without a manufacturing base, thier economies can easily slow down or worse start to drop.

I need investors to say Vietnam is the hybrid of China, India, USA, and Europe.

Yeah. But I'd rather have Vietnam specialised in high value added services (India) than in polluting industries supported by slavery (China)

Where in India, only the most gifted actually can create products and money creating even a huger gap between the rich or the poor, or having polluting industries supported by slaveries (such as China, France (hello totally supported by Vietnam during its industrialization process, USA with its cheap labor from new immigrants, or England basically half of the entire world for its slavery) that trickled down to the poorest.

We can't avoid polluting (if we breathe, we are already polluting) - I am always worried when reports of new FDI's are not accompanied by reports of new and modern sewage treatment plants.

[quote name='blacklight' date='Jul 4 2007, 01:17 PM' post='3040433']


4 reasons why foreigners are interested in Vietnamese workforce:

- Cheap labour, no social protection, and no trade unions that really serves the workers
- No environmental rules and stringent requirement like in developped countries.
- Laws favouring the richest.
- Low taxes thanks to outrageously generous incentives.

Vietnam's workforce is 40 millions and 1 million works for FDI companies with 10% of those 1 million works for Nike.
Go figure.

You forget to mention that Vietnamese people are skillful and intelligent

and can make good products at good prices so people around the world

can get good products at reasonable prices.

I don't think Vietnamese especially skilful comparing to people with same education background, and I know about it since my sister is managing a manufacturing unit in Vietnam. Vietnamese workers are just somehow more odedient. Wages in Vietnam are extremely low, even lower than in China, according to official figures: everage pay for a chinese factory worker: US$100/month. VN: US$55/month.

I have confidence in the Vietnamese workers that they can produce the good products at reasonable prices.

However, the difficult part is the Vietnamese management are mediocre to average, which takes out a lots of productivity

of the worker.

It's relative to where you are. If you compare Vietnam to China, then yes, there might not be so much difference in skillfullness. However, to make it an interesting example, Vietnamese dominated the electronic assembly lines in Silicon Valley throughout the 80s and the 90s. Rumors went around that if all Vietnamese employees decided to go on a strike, the IT brain of the world would have to shut down as the computer industry relied on that work force heavily. The Bay area is a very diverse place. Why was there such a disparity in the industry? If you have tried to build an electronic board, you would know how much patience and skill you need to put in.

But nowadays, all the printed circuit and Integrated circuit I see are made in Taiwan, China...Cisco systems, the leader in Telecom built up its leadership on off shore manufacturing (China).

It's a pity that there are so few Vietnameses at management positions in US major companies. And the number of engineering graduate students in Stanford, Berkeley...is so low, compared to the presence of the Vietnamese community over there...

That's the result of globalization. Companies will go to wherever it makes the most business sense. In fact, Taiwan doesn't even make eletronic boards anymore, instead, they outsource the work to places with cheaper labor such as Vietnam and the Philippines etc. Again Vietnamese certainly possess some rather competitive skills and work ethnic. Ask yourself why these companies do not outsource the work to other countries in Africa or Central America (there're a few but not worth mentioning). The labor cost in these regions is also dirt cheap.




It's understandable that there are not a lot of Vietnamese from Stanford because most of us came to the US recently. Most do not have the economic foundation to send our children to private schools that require high tuition. As for public schools, what makes you think Vietnamese students in engineering major dónt represent the Vietnamese population well? In my upper-division computer science classes at Berkeley, there were around 20 Vietnamese students out of 100 plus heads. That makes up approximately 15-20% of the class size. Compared to Chinese population in the US, I think we represent just as well. Frankly, we do better than other Asian communities such as Filipinos (none that I 've met in these classes), Koreans (just a few souls), Japanese (a few) etc. I excluded Thais, Cambodians, Malaysians, Indonesians etc. as these communities are smaller than Vietnamese.
If you have a chance, check out UCLA dentistry classes. You'll be surprised to see how many Vietnamese last names on the list (this is brought up by my lovely Iranian dentist).
Having said all that, we can even do better if we have some sort of outreach programs that go out to the families that didn't have a strong emphasis in education in their past. We were pretty poor when we first came to the US, but we have been quickly moving up. US census data from the 80s up to now have shown that trend.

We'd do a lot better if each local Vietnamese community created its own academic support system for the kids. For example, there is at least one free Vietnamese tutoring center in San Jose, CA.

I agree that Vietnamese labor is considered skilled. In fact, foreign investors including the Japanese and the French do say so and put their money where their mouths are. Intel is investing in Vietnam and a number of high tech Taiwan outfits are following suit. Money talks, bull$hit walks.

Africans and central americans are generally lazy and poorly educated, but exceptions. Not to mention some shhortcomings in work ethics for africans. I'm not comparing those countries to VN. Concerning asian ethnics, we should consider Koreans, Chinese, Japansese and Indian,

I think that most Sanjose dwellers of VN descent can afford Stanford tuition, (considering the wealth they openly display when they travel VN) the leverage provided is worth it. As for Berkeley, unless I'm mistaken, VNmese are underpresented in graduate engineering/economics,finance/physics/maths courses.

I confirm that in medecine and pharmacy , we perform well but...Where are VNmese innovators in those fields. VNmese pharmacy graduates often finish up in medicine trade business. It is certainly very lucrative but it doen't give exposure on us.

I am a Stanford grad. does it count? As for management, it's called glass ceiling and not only it's a barrier to Vietnamese but for all other minority groups as well.

More good news. I find what's happening in Vietnam these days very exciting. I think things might open up for Viet-Americans who's willing to go to Vietnam to seek employment. It seems like there are going to be many employment opportunities for Viets who can speak English over there.

One main problem with Vietnam maybe industrial pollution. I hope Viet government officials learn from China and make sure foreign businesses do not ruin Vietnam's natural beauty.

Go Vietnam!

Good for you and for VN, but how many are you ? Sure that there are some barrier to VNmese accessing managing positions but Indians and Chineses seem to overcome it well, look at the members of the top managemt at Cisco, genentech and HP as a few most outspoken examples.

A lot of Vietnamese people are very talented and hard working. Investors are always trying to compare one country to another because thats what they do, trying to see where they can get the most value.
I mean a big part of why many overseas investors keep mentioning China and India is really the big population and the potential market it has.
Vietnam has a lot of potential, maybe the overseas Vietnamese can make some large investments for certain industries?

Investment in VN ? No ! The reason: VN officials distrust the overseas Vnmese, especially those who had connection with the former republican government. There is a constant threat having your assets expropriated or extorsions.

One thing is that Vietnamese professionals are not unified and help each others to advance their careers. We are too individualistic whereas the Chinese and Indians know how to network and help each others out.