2007 Vietnam Report Card
By: Jackie Bong-Wright
Economic Milestones
The
year 2007 showered Vietnam with significant economic and political gains in the
international arena. Vietnam was admitted as the 150th member of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) at the beginning of the year after having begun
opening its economy to the world back in 1986. Led by exports of over $40 billion, Vietnam in 2007 has so far boasted a growth rate of 8.3%,
second only to China’s 10.7%.
According
to the World Investment Report 2007 of the UN Convention on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), Vietnam ranks 6th among 141 economies as one of the
best places to invest for its low production and labor costs. It follows China, India, the U.S., Russia, and Brazil.
Vietnam attracted $15 billion of foreign direct investments this
past year, with 53 countries and territories participating, among them Korea, British Virgin Islands,
Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and Hong
Kong. The three top investors in electronics, IT, and
telecommunications were from the U.S., Japan and Taiwan. Bi-lateral
trade between Vietnam and China has reached almost 10 billion at the end of this
year. Vietnam exports crude oil, coal, coffee, sea products, fruits
and vegetables to China, while China increased its exports of pharmaceutical products, machinery and
equipment, petroleum, cars, fertilizers and motorbike parts to Vietnam.
Last
May, 18 leading U.S. corporations, among them Boeing, Chevron, Exxon Mobil,
Time Warner, Ford, and General Electric, participated in a trade forum in
Vietnam to discuss business opportunities.
Others wanted to invest in infrastructure, financial services, information
technology, and education.
The
Vietnamese Embassy in the U.S. reported that “the country has fulfilled the Millennium
Development Goals (MDG), known as One UN Initiative, on poverty reduction and
gender equality. It has reduced the
poverty, attaining a per capita income of $726 -- double that number in 2000.
Currently, Vietnam ranks first in Asia
and 18th in the world for the number of women elected to the
National Assembly.”
Political Advances
In
another move forward, Communist Vietnam was elected to the 15-member UN Security Council in
October 2007. Ambassador Le Luong Minh will
act as Security Council president next year.
Thus, after having been isolated from 1979 to 1989 for invading
and then occupying Cambodia, Vietnam started down a more successful road. It joined the Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) in 1995 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC)
in 1998.
Since
the U.S. and Vietnam resumed diplomatic relations in 1995, top U.S. officials have visited Vietnam. Former President
George Bush, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, former Secretary of
State Madeline Albright, President and Mrs. Bill Clinton, former Secretary of
State Colin Powell, and President George W. Bush have come to shake hands with
Vietnamese officials.
In
addition, an average of over 300,000 tourists flock to Vietnam annually. And the
3 million Vietnamese living overseas send to their families up to $4 billion a
year in remittances. In a number of ways,
Vietnam appears to be a rising star.
Big Challenges Ahead in 2008
But challenges abound.
To integrate itself regionally and globally, Vietnam has had to step up efforts to regulate its financial
system, improve its relationships with former foes, and make new friends. A
legal and administrative framework meeting international standards needs to be put
in place. Transportation, telecommunication
services, and water and electricity delivery have to be improved. The country’s external debt of $17.2 billion
(32.5% of GDP) and its inflation rate of 9.5% have to be reduced. Special attention must be paid to intellectual
property and WTO commitments.
The
labor area is especially sensitive, and vocational training to meet the increasing
demand for high-quality workers has to be upgraded. With 8 million jobless Vietnamese, the Hanoi regime is following Yugoslavia’s old strategy of exporting laborers. That was not new -- Vietnam exported hundreds of thousands of workers to the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe as a form of war
payments after it unified the country in 1975.
By 2005, 500,000 had been sent to Asia,
Europe and the Middle East, and Vietnam has vowed to reach one million by 2010.
That system has caused corruption and resulted in the
sexual abuses and labor exploitation typical of human trafficking. The UN Resident Coordinator said that he was
ready to assist Vietnam in meeting its international commitment to enable Vietnamese with disabilities,
ethnic minorities, women and children “to enjoy their rights enshrined nearly
60 years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Vietnamese workers face hardships at home as well,
including low wages and horrific working
conditions as well as poor treatment from their own government and from foreign
employers. A recent wage increase,
ranging from $35 to $55 a month, left workers still unable to sustain a healthy
life. There is pressure to allow independent
labor unions to be formed.
Recently, American and international lawmakers have
protested the numerous arrests of political dissidents in Vietnam and intervened
to get four pro-democracy activists from overseas, members of the Viet Tan
Reform Party, released back to their countries of origin. The U.S. House of
Representatives has passed binding legislation that will tie U.S. foreign aid to Vietnam’s human rights record.
On
another front, religious freedom is still viewed by the government as a threat
to its power. Amnesty International
asserts that Vietnam continues to use criminal laws to harass believers,
particularly those from ethnic minority groups.
Leonard Leo of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says
that, although Vietnam allows religious worship, it has built a very large
fence around it. There have been long
delays in processing religious group applications for legal recognition, land confiscations
from ethnic protestants, and denial of medical and educational services to
religious families.
In
early December, Republican Congressman Chris Smith sponsored legislation to put
Vietnam back on the list of Countries of Particular Concern
(CPC) as a severe violator of religious freedom.
The latest conflict was last week’s territorial and political
clash with its big brother, China, which re-established full diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1991 after having tried to invade its northern region in 1979. Tensions with China erupted over the Spratly and Paracel Islands, an archipelago of over 100 small islands, in a
potentially oil-rich area of the South
China Sea. On December 2, the Chinese set up a
district-level administrative unit in the city of Sansha to manage the two islands under its jurisdiction and
claimed them as part of China’s Hunan province.
Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia, explains why numerous territorial disputes have occurred
in the past three decades among Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, China and Vietnam. They all
claim various parts of the South
China Sea islands. Regional rivalries add a strategic and
geo-political importance to the sea lanes.
In 1976, China invaded and captured the Paracel Islands from Vietnam and built military installations on some of the
islands, saying that they were only shelters for Chinese fishermen. The dispute has recently included small-arms
clashes between Vietnam and China. In addition,
several Vietnamese boats have been sunk and 70 sailors have died.
Oil
figures prominently. In 1968, the
Geology and Mineral Resources Ministry of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) estimated that the Spratly area holds oil and
natural gas reserves of 17.7 billion tons, as compared to the 13 billion tons
held by Kuwait, making it the world’s fourth largest reserve.
The area’s commercial fishing, moreover, is some of the
most productive in the world. In 1988, the
South China Sea accounted for eight percent of the total world
catch. The PRC says that the area contains
combined fishing, oil and gas resources worth one trillion dollars.
Finally,
the region is one of the busiest shipping lanes anywhere. Currently, more than half of the world’s
supertanker traffic, by tonnage, passes through the region’s water. Tanker traffic through the South China Sea is over three times greater than through the Suez Canal, and five times that of the Panama Canal. Twenty five percent of the world’s crude oil
passes through the South China
Sea, carrying Middle East oil to Japan and the western United States.
China has filled a power vacuum in the region since the end
of the Cold War, after the withdrawal of Soviet navy from Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, and the departure of the U.S. Navy from Subic Bay in the Philippines. Since then, China has spent billions expanding and modernizing its navy.
Last November, Beijing staged a naval exercise in the South China Sea near the Paracels.
If the conflict over the islands turns violent, it could present a grave
concern for the United States, which has agreements to defend countries in the
region.
According
to Carl Thayer of the Australian Defense Force Academy, “China was pursuing a
policy of creeping assertiveness in the region, which conflicts with Vietnam’s maritime strategy of maximizing the development of
its offshore resources by 2020.”
For
the first time, hundreds of Vietnamese in Vietnam, waving Communist flags, and Vietnamese overseas, waving
the heritage flag of the former Republic of Vietnam, both protested in front of Chinese embassies and consulates against China’s claim of sovereignty
over the two islands. Still bitter
enemies in most areas, the two groups of Vietnamese appear to have at least one
aim in common in demanding the return of the two islands to Vietnam.
The
Vietnamese communities, including students, veterans, former military groups
and human rights’ associations, in recent rallies, have called for a boycott of
Chinese products and the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
95 year-old Ba Tran lamented: “China has always tried to take over and control Vietnam, but now, they just want to devoure us alive bit by bit.”
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