By Patricia H. Kushlis
Why did the US fight the Vietnam War?
According to Jon Boudreau in a report in The San Jose Mercury News on October 29, Intel has just inaugurated its largest semiconductor manufacturing plant in an outlying District of Ho Chi Minh City. This huge $5 billion plant - when fully operational - will double the company’s worldwide testing and assembly capacities. It will immediately begin to produce microchips for mobile devices and laptops. Down the road, Intel’s Ho Chi Minh City plant will also be able to produce microprocessors.
Vietnam’s downside? educational infrastructure and corruption
Lack of top quality educational institutions and a trained workforce vie with the draw of cheap labor and a Communist government that seeks foreign investment – but apparently preferably not from its neighbor to the north.
Vietnam is poor. Its per capita income is $2,900 – about half of China’s – so wages are lower but its population is also known to be smart, young, hard working and surprisingly pro-American.
The country is also among the most corrupt in the world. It ranks 120 out of 180 countries on the 2010 Transparency International corruption index – a slight improvement over 2009. It is also controlled by the Communist Party – a stodgy authoritarian organization (helps explain the corruption ranking) but also one that has finally embraced the post- Mao Chinese Communist Party’s economic model. This model is best described in Deng Xiaoping’s words as he rescued China from Mao Zedong’s disastrous economic, social and cultural experiments and launched China on the economic modernization path it continues today: “It does not matter,” said Deng then, if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.”
Not the behemoth of China or India
Vietnam will never become the new China or the new India. It is neither a geographic nor demographic behemoth - but this medium sized, Southeast Asian coastal country is large and important enough to play a key role in the search for international economic diversification, a quest both multinational companies and western governments have embarked upon to help see that no single Asian country controls the world’s means of production, its strategic resources, sea lanes – or for that matter – those of its neighbors.
Hewlett-Packard began recruiting software engineers for its new $18 million plant also located in HCMC. The Japanese have concluded a deal “to build two civil nuclear reactors for Vietnam and to cooperate with the Vietnamese on the exploration and refining of rare earth minerals,” the latter according to The Financial Times on November 1, 2010.
New Japanese infrastructure investments
The two reactors are to be located in Vietnam’s southern Ninh Thuan province. The Japanese decision to support exploration and refining of rare earth minerals in Vietnam is likely a direct response to China’s decision to halt - then slow - its export of these minerals as a result of the flare up of a nasty dispute between the Chinese and Japanese over the Senkaku (Japanese) or Daiyou (Chinese) islands in the East China Sea not long ago.
Since rare earth minerals are used in the production of cell phones, wind turbines, car batteries and radar systems and the Chinese now produce 97% of those minerals, the Japanese decision to support Vietnamese exploration and production is a clear indication that Japan sees greater cooperation with Vietnam in its own economic and strategic interest.
Education needed
If Vietnam is to move forward, it will also need to upgrade its educational system. Can the development of these institutions be far behind? Intel, for its part, is supporting various educational initiatives and, according to The Mercury News report, has already helped train 87,000 teachers in Vietnam. The country is still too poor to export students to wealthy countries the way China has - hoping some will return with requisite skills and know-how. But hyphenated Vietnamese have been returning to the country of their roots – some to stay, others to invest and more visit.
The US-Vietnam Dialog Partnership
The Obama administration has quietly strengthened American ties by increasing military cooperation through a dialogue partnership which focuses on humanitarian, search and rescue, disaster relief and language training.
This past summer, 15 years since diplomatic relations were reestablished between the US and Vietnam, US military ships – the USS John S. McCain and a hospital ship paid port visits to central Vietnam. The US and Vietnam – as well as several other affected ASEAN countries - are troubled by recent Chinese activities in the long disputed Spratly Islands. The Vietnamese have long been at odds with the Chinese over Chinese encroachment into Southeast Asia and onto Vietnamese territory (disputed or not) in particular.
Whether economic motives on the part of US-related multinational companies or strategic concerns of the US government, it’s clear that the enmity between the US and Vietnam is on the wane. How far the friendship will progress will likely depend on future unforeseen circumstances. In the meantime, western and Japanese companies and governments received a wake-up call this summer from questionable Chinese behavior in both strategic and economic spheres that suggests putting all one’s eggs in a single basket is not the way to go.
This all brings me back to the question with which I began: Why did the US fight in the Vietnam War anyway?