One of the principal themes of Vietnamese history over the long-term has been the steady move to the south – nam tien – that has seen the Viet people progress down the narrow coastal strip from their centre in Hanoi and the Hong River plain to, ultimately, the Mekong Delta region at the southeastern tip of the continent of Asia. This is a process that has taken some two thousand years and has involved numerous advances and retreats.
Read the full review here.
My review of Tran Ky Phuong and Bruce Lockhart, eds., The Cham of Vietnam: History, Society and Art (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011) has been published in Slingshot, No.284 (September, 2012), pp.46-7.
As mentioned in the previous article, Vietnam is replete with attractive and good quality natural resources which have yet, in general, to be brought to market in a consistent and timely way with added value features. Coffee, for example, has become one of the principal exports, owing to climatic features and the coffee drinking culture in the country bequeathed in part by the period of French colonialism.
Read the full article here.
Vietnam is a rapidly industrializing country which is undergoing all of the creative destruction that such a process entails. This includes huge changes in society and economy. The mode of industrialization is through entry into the factory age: low labour cost competitiveness, export-oriented mass manufacturing relying on foreign investors to provide capital and know-how.
Those who want to educate themselves about business can learn about online business schooling from www.GuidetoOnlineSchools.com.
Read the full article here.
Author James Anderson, a faculty member at the University of North Carolina, introduces his topic suggesting that one of most important issues in the contemporary political economy, the impact of the rise of China, may have some light shed upon it by the study of an eleventh century Vietnamese rebel and his subsequent reception on both sides of the mountainous Sino-Vietnamese border. After all, the rebel, Nung Tri Cao (whose name should have a couple of accents it is not possible for me to recreate in html) existed in the conceptual and geographical space between two significant powers – the Chinese and Dai Viet thrones – and sought not just to create a state of his own but to legitimize himself and his efforts with respect to recognition from the Chinese emperor.
Read the full review here.
Read the full article here.
In his essay “Vietnam: Imperialism and Genocide,” the French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre considers the case for judging whether the US military forces (and by extension the US state as a whole) was guilty of committing genocide during its role in the Second Indochinese War (also known as the Amercian War in Vietnam or, in America itself, the Vietnam War). Sartre had been nominated as president of the International War Crimes Tribunal and this essay represented his justification that the American military had, in fact, committed genocide.
Read the full article here.
Tran Tu Binh (1907-67) was one of the most important revolutionary leaders of Vietnam in its struggle for freedom from the colonizing French and, then, the invading Americans and their allies. He was involved in the uprising in Hanoi in 1945 and, after the revolution, served in various high offices in the Communist regime. However, despite his glittering political and diplomatic career in the second half of his life, his most significant acts and the reason he became considered a hero is his role in the labour movement opposing exploitation in the rubber plantations, particularly at Phu Rieng. This he chronicled with some power in the book The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation.
Read the full article here.
I am off to Hanoi on Monday where I have been invited to speak at a conference to this topic:
Thailand’s Inadequate Response to the 2008 Economic Crisis: Implications for Vietnam and Other Countries Entering the East Asian Economic Model
Abstract
By entering the East Asian Economic Model (EAEM) in the 1950s, the Thai economy was committed to the export-oriented, import-substituting low labour-cost manufacturing paradigm that Vietnam and Cambodia have more recently embraced. The EAEM provides for some success in expanding employment in the manufacturing sector and promoting income generation for its workers and, overall, in promoting national economic development. However, this is a model that has effectiveness that is limited in time, since the very process of national economic development tends to increase incomes and, thereby, undermine the competitiveness on which the model overall is based. Hence, it is necessary for state governments to plan their exit from the EAEM and prepare the way for more value-added forms of production, entrance into the knowledge-based economy and so forth. This need to change is intensified in times of economic crisis, since such events can radically change the international terms of trade on which the EAEM relies, while also dampening demand for export goods. In a crisis such as that which began in 2008, therefore, it was necessary for the Thai government to take stock of its labour market planning functions, to review the transparency and adequacy of its inward investment regulations, to promote creative industries, to begin an inclusive national debate as to the nature of future development and similar activities. Unfortunately, the Thai government has by and large failed to take the opportunity to pursue these activities and has, instead, focused largely for political reasons on policies which attempt to prolong membership of the EAEM or which are, in economic terms, apparently irrational or at least unhelpful. This paper investigates the nature and scope of the Thai government’s response to the economic crisis and, from this, considers the implications for governments whose countries are in the early stages of the EAEM but still aware of the need to continual upgrading of the inputs (principally labour) that will make it successful.
I am told there will be a conference book of some sort but if anyone desperately wants a copy of the full paper, I expect I can let you have a copy.
Announcing: Walsh, John, “Street Vendors and the Dynamics of the Informal Economy: Evidence from Vung Tau, Vietnam,” Asian Social Science, Vol.6, No.11 (November 2010), pp.159-65, available online at:
http://journal.ccsenet.org/index.php/ass/article/viewFile/6672/5991
.
Abstract:
The role of the informal economy in promoting genuine economic development remains a contested one: optimists believe potential entrepreneurs are capable of supporting themselves and their families, perhaps with the assistance of interventions; pessimists, meanwhile, see such individuals as being subject to the forces of global capitalism with which they cannot contend and who must survive increasingly difficult housing, living and environmental conditions which threaten their security. Previous research of street vendors in Bangkok indicated some support for both points of view and this paper extends the research to Vung Tau in Vietnam, which is an oil industry centre and emerging tourist resort. To what extent are vendors able to upgrade their products and business models to take advantage of the new demands available and what difficulties do they face in their work? To date, they have not been able to take advantage of such opportunities.
Keywords:
Informal economy, Street vendors, Vietnam, tourism, Economic development
The role of the informal economy in promoting genuine economic development remains a contested one: optimists believe potential entrepreneurs are capable of supporting themselves and their families, perhaps with the assistance of interventions; pessimists, meanwhile, see such individuals as being subject to the forces of global capitalism with which they cannot contend and who must survive increasingly difficult housing, living and environmental conditions which threaten their security. Previous research of street vendors in Bangkok indicated some support for both points of view and this paper extends the research to Vung Tau in Vietnam, which is an oil industry centre and emerging tourist resort. To what extent are vendors able to upgrade their products and business models to take advantage of the new demands available and what difficulties do they face in their work? To date, they have not been able to take advantage of such opportunities.
Keywords:
Informal economy, Street vendors, Vietnam, tourism, Economic development
