This is one of the few topics where I probably know more than the average internet person! I live in Vietnam -- I've been here for many years at this point. This is a pretty good summary of the current status quo. Related: last night I taking a Grab motorbike taxi home and the driver asked where I was from. I told him. "I love <country X>!" And then the non-sequitor, "I hate China! Especially the Chinese government."
But I think Noah needs to fine tune the call to action a bit. There's basically zero "grudge" in an American-Vietnamese politics that I've ever been able to detect. Trump labelled Vietnam a currency manipulator (Biden recently undid it) but that seemed more a vague "Asian countries, trade war, don't just stand there, do something" response than anything else.
America has put essentially zero official pressure on Vietnam for any human rights stuff. Just last week four people were sentenced to 10 years in prison for "anti-state propaganda" and I'm willing to bet you had no idea. Neither American embassy officials nor American press said anything about it.
So I guess I feel like it is just..."Keep doing what you're already doing". But I'd be curious to hear ideas for something more proactive than that. So here are a few random thoughts:
The US should become the #1 source for government grants/investments. (I think it is Japan, right now ... I don't actually know why Japan invests so much in Vietnam.)
The US should work harder to get its companies involved in infrastructure projects. This is hard because the US sucks at infrastructure. But the recent Hanoi metro was built by a Chinese company. That's the opposite of what you want if you're the US. Roads, airports, metros ... it is all being doing by Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and German companies. I can't think of a single US company doing anything with infrastructure.
The US has a lot of expertise being on the cutting edge of environmentalism. And not in a scolding "you're so bad, stop polluting" way. But in a "Yes, we also once set a polluted river on fire and had toxic dumps and cities didn't have clean water" way. The US is helping clean up Agent Orange and remove land mines but a) that's tied to the American War (and being done by the US military, AFAIK) and b) there's so much more that could be done. Even in Saigon basically no household drinks tap water. There's central water treatment but rusty pipes and rusty storage tanks means it is often contaminated by E. coli by the time it gets to the tap.
Food safety is a huge problem in Vietnam and the US has tons of expertise. Vietnam gets a ton of fruit & vegetable from China. Even though everyone doesn't trust it. America loves farm subsidies. Why not subsidize sending American fruit & vegetables to Vietnam and cut the dependence on Chinese imports?
I dunno how I forgot about this one: vaccine diplomacy. I'm pretty sure Australia has contributed more towards Vietnam's vaccination effort than the US has. For a single one of those aircraft carrier visits, you could probably vaccinate half the country.
Sure -- and I don't want to put too on this one point given the realities of American politics and the entire virus response.
But I had in mind things like: Vietnam has 4 or 5 home-grown vaccines in various stages of clinical trials. But testing them has been hard, in part, because Vietnam has so few cases. It seems like there's room for the US to step up, offer expertise, help speed up those trials and take advantage of the vaccine supply chain that Vietnam already has (and is essentially sitting idle just waiting for vaccines that it can produce). Or, the US could spend money to speed up the Vietnam supply chain. The answers don't (just) have to be "we'll help pay money for you to import the Johnson & Johnson vaccine once they've made enough of it".
We really should ship out all those AZ vaccines though. We aren't gonna use em and we know it. Break those do-not-export contracts and throw some money at AZ if they complain!
By the way the U.S. sucks at infrastructure, but Japan and Taiwan can do it well, and that helps bring Vietnam into the general alliance I think. What the U.S. does really well is university research, so I think cooperation and exchange should focus on that. Also the U.S. should encourage U.S. companies to do joint ventures with Vietnamese companies, to raise their technology level quickly.
Japan invests so much in Vietnam for a number of reasons. The growth of the country's economy is impressive, and Japanese investors like the partner they have with Vietnam's government (which has set long-range goals for development). Japan also hopes to attract more Vietnamese tourists to Japan (tourism is huge for the Japanese local economies). Japan also sells a number of products in Vietnam, such as cars. Finally, Japan hopes to address its infamous problems with an aging population and resulting labor shortage by bringing in young workers from Vietnam (and other Asian countries like the Phillipines). A Japanese person I know teaches Japanese to Vietnamese students so they can take office jobs in Japanese companies.
That's an understatement because Japan invested in Vietnam way ahead of the US. Japanese firms made landfall on Vietnam before 1995, in secret, to evade American sanctions over Vietnam. If you read the Enigma of Japanese power book, then you realize that Japan never ever has a centralized leadership for thousands of years. In the case of Vietnam, the rogue factions of Japanese socialists helped China and Vietnam in the beginning with technological transfers and other IP transfers. I would argue that Japanese socialists and leftists in Japan politics played a major role towards the development of Vietnam.
Since 2010, Japan suddenly boosted its investments in Vietnam because China threatens its maritime trade, and Japan doesn't want to lose out a close aide of China (Vietnam). By 2040, China will have the complete ability to blockade Japan economically and possibly militarily with the annexation of Taiwan. Japan needs Vietnam to pressure China on the matter, and the US also pushes Japan to do so since the CPV doesn't trust the Americans abit.
To that point, supposedly a few years ago one out of every ten new marriages in Japan now involved a foreign partner.
It's well known that Japanese men especially like to date and marry Fillipino women. Japanese women date and marry people from all over. One of my Japanese female friends married a man from Morocco. And I've had a few bosses who married Englishmen.
So the country is definitely changing in this regard. I think Noah had an article about this recently, actually.
From what I've seen, it's easier than before to get long-term, say five-year work visas in Japan. And the requirements for permanent residency changed recently, although I don't know the details and it seems more work needs to be done. For a lot of people the path to staying in Japan is marrying a Japanese person (I know many many Japan-foreigner couples like this).
Citizenship alone is not enough to attract long-term workers and business executives to Japan. The country must eliminate its xenophobic barriers and glass ceilings to foreigners. My Vietnamese friends complain how those Japanese oyajis keep making it hard for Vietnamese entrepreneurs to maintain their businesses and invest anywhere. These oyajis always fear foreigners being better than them and taking over the whole place. Thanks to Covid-19, my friends at least bought a lot of lands in Japan as those oyajis relaxed their bureaucratic oversight. My friends are currently co-owning an industrial park in Japan that manufactures "Made in Japan" stuffs for Vietnamese consumers, and they contribute to the local communities by hiring Japanese workers only.
I rather say that Sinophobia is rather a recent phenomenon catapulted by the 1979 border war which was instigated by the US in the first place - the US literally funded Khmer Rouge and encouraged China to invade Vietnam. Vietnamese populace has been largely brainwashed by the Southern media machines which are largely controlled by Southern liberals who want to side with the West. However, Southern liberals in Vietnam have completely lost power and will be evicted from Vietnam once the pandemic is over since the poor Covid-19 responses provided a valid excuse to politically strangle Southern liberals and business elites here.
The communists of Vietnam never ever forget the US for the war crimes and numerous episodes of backstabbing politics. More importantly, the CPV may not listen to the CPC all the time but they are resolutely loyal to Russia. The CPV is always friendly with the CPC because of socialism, obviously! Of course, Russians have allied with China against the West for years now, so the CPV obviously obliged to reap benefits from a rising Eurasia. The US can't steer Vietnam from China if it can't steer Vietnam from Russia and socialism.
Doing both these has failed for the US, so it was why President Trump decided not to do any more interference into Vietnamese affairs. This is the true reason why Vietnamese people madly love Trump, not because of his Sinophobia but his commitment towards national independence above global imperialism - basically, a Woodrow Wilson who actually practiced what he preached. Nevertheless, this was why President Trump lost the elections because the American elites can't stop endless war and don't want Trump to stop it. Like you said, the Biden administration continues the non-interference policy of the Trump era towards Vietnam, so you should expect the complete eradication of Vietnamese dissidents and civil societies within a decade.
>But the recent Hanoi metro was built by a Chinese company.
It was mired in the messy politics of PM Dung's era but it has long been completed. The problem lies in many ambiguities that PM Dung's administration failed to inform the Communist Party.
>That's the opposite of what you want if you're the US. Roads, airports, metros ... it is all being doing by Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and German companies. I can't think of a single US company doing anything with infrastructure.
The problem here again lies in the Communist Party of Vietnam. The US investors always want a fair share of profits that involved the privatization of state assets and liberalization of the national economy. Any of these is damaging against Vietnamese socialism, so the CPV routinely blocks American investments for this reason. Germany, Japan, China,... do not force their politics on Vietnam and conform to the local distribution of wealth within Vietnamese borders. Their profits stay in Vietnam and don't go anywhere!
>Even in Saigon basically no household drinks tap water. There's central water treatment but rusty pipes and rusty storage tanks means it is often contaminated by E. coli by the time it gets to the tap.
You should blame this problem on the pro-West liberals in the Southern administrations. The CPV refuses to direct the funds for the South much more because these liberals always attempt some color revolutions against the ruling Communists. The Southern Vietnam will enjoy stellar infrastructures once all of liberals in Southern administration cease to exist.
Yes, yes, the alliance makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider Japan's huge investment in the country (at times Japan has been the number one investor in Vietnam). Many many Vietnamese (including a good neighbor of mine) come to Japan for technical training/a college education.
'export-led development strategy that worked so well for South Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan.'
Did you mean to say Malaysia? Studwell kept using Malaysia as an example of how not to do industrial policy, albeit he believes better that than not doing IP at all.
Yep. Studwell was simply wrong. Malaysia failed at cars, but got its act together when it came to electronics and is now a major manufacturer/exporter, with a GDP almost at the level of fully developed countries.
Well, I think his thesis in general was right, but his pessimistic assessment of Malaysia was premature, and was based mainly on their failure in the auto industry.
Not sure I'd classify Malaysia a success. Maybe in relative terms. GDP /capita at $11k in exchange traded, 30k in ppp. Do you trust adjustments that large?
Having visited Vietnam, I couldn't agree more. And reading Embers of War what's the painful reminder of just how much Vietnam wanted to be friends with the US, but fell victim to our Cold War paranoia. They saw us as a natural ally. Ho Chi Minh wrote to every US president starting with Woodrow Wilson. His outreach to the US was so much greater than any ties to communism. We forced Vietnam to ally with Russia. What a big mistake to do the same thing now with China!
I seriously can't believe some of the arguments put forth here. So are you admitting that the human rights issue is selectively weaponized against the US's strategic foes and ignored for allies? Voices calling out Vietnamese human rights abuses should be simply ignored? Just like a blind eye is turned to the Saudis? Unbelievable. This is called hypocrisy and it is not a sustainable policy.
Furthermore, Noah seems ignorant of Vietnam's policy of not joining military alliances against other countries. Whatever the tension between China and Vietnam, they are neighbors and both countries know they are geographically wed to one another and must learn how to get along. This policy of no military alliances is well established and well known. They don't want to antagonize China for obvious reasons. They also want to maintain strategic arms' length from both super powers.
Washington's hopes to sign up Vietnam to its China containment strategy have gone no where. And this is an avenue that remains closed due to Vietnam's stringent policy to not gang up on any nation. No amount of wishful thinking will coopt the Vietnamese into a provocative posture against a neighbor.
I agree with you that Vietnam obviously doesn't want to antagonise China. America learned to its detriment that it can't act unilaterally against China. And it is learning right now that it has limits even with its staunchest allies against China (c.f. Japan's foot dragging re: Xinjiang). So no surprise that Vietnam is going to try to thread the needle (much as they did during the American War with China & USSR).
But I think you are overstating the inflexibility of the "no military alliances" policy. It doesn't really mean anything. It has a "mutual defence pact" with Laos (don't call it alliance!). Vietnam just signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the Malaysian Navy (don't call it an alliance!)
And most tellingly: the 2019 Viet Nam National Defence white paper (the first update in a decade) updated its "no alliances" policy to add:
"Depending on circumstances and specific conditions, Viet Nam will consider developing necessary, appropriate defence and military relations with other countries on the basis of respecting each other's independence, sovereignty, territorial unity and integrity as well as fundamental principles of international law, cooperation for mutual benefits and common interests of the region and international community."
Hard not to read that as laying the ground work for "military relations" (don't call it an alliance!) in the future should tensions continue to escalate with China.
all these defense pacts etc are contingent upon Vietnam being under attack. As long as there is no aggression against Vietnam, then there will be no reason to ally with other countries to defend themselves. What is clear is that the Vietnamese don't want a antagonise any other country. I dare say that they, too, want to participate in China's economic rise. They certainly don't want military conflict. Dare I say, if the US did not have a myriad of bases surrounding China in the region, the South China Sea issue would be resolved as well. Just as there is no longer a land border issue with China.
Presumably the Vietnamese are aware that you have to set up defense pacts prior to being under attack. No one will sell you fire insurance *after* your house catches on fire.
absolutely. But this is completely defensive and contingent upon being attacked. But they won't participate in containment policy against any other nation.
I found the emphasis on the word "alliance" in Noah's post a bit odd. The gist of the post is about improving relations with Vietnam and helping it become a stronger, more independent actor vis-a-vis China. That all seems wise. Signing a formal military alliance on the other hand seems like a blunt kind of action to take in a region in the world where the US will have to be adroit in its statecraft. Put simply, we want China to be successful *and* peaceful. Containing it with a set of rigid military relationships, a la NATO vs the Soviet Union, may be necessary some day, but doing so prematurely may push China into a hostile relationship we might otherwise have been able to avoid.
It's not hypocrisy, it's realism/pragmatism, and Noah already addressed your complaints when he wrote...
"And what about human rights? It’s true that Vietnam’s regime is still very repressive. But that was also true of South Korea and Taiwan when we allied with those countries during Cold War 1. And each of those countries eventually became free and democratic — even more so than the U.S., at this point. Their American alliances probably helped with that transition — since they were dependent on the U.S. for protection against external enemies, the dictators of South Korea and Taiwan couldn’t be too murderous or repressive."
Vietnam could easily drift in a more liberal direction like Taiwan and Korea, joining Japan and then as liberal democracies. Especially with more Vietnamese working/being educated outside the country and then bringing more liberal notions back home with them afterwards.
Japan and Korea are certainly not liberal democracies. Similar to Singapore. Whatever you want to call the political situations in these countries, they will always be guided by their Eastern values. Collectivism, community, family will always trump individualism. This may be China's ultimate trump card. These country's cultures are most like China's compared with the West. This is because their cultures are almost entirely derived from China, who is the Mother of East Asian civilisation. The disputes with Vietnam are territorial in the South China Sea. Were US bases not dotted around the Pacific, there various claimants would resolve these territorial issues among themselves. Otherwise I think that China and Vietnam will eventually grow closer together.
How are you defining "liberal democracy"? Japan and South Korea are democratic countries by any measure I'm aware of. Taiwan also. The notion that east Asian culture is inherently incompatible with democracy is extremely misguided imo.
Freedom House, for example, scores Japan as a 96 for civil liberties and political rights, whereas America only gets an 83. And other ranking systems have similar findings. It helps that Japan's Constitution is a modern document, whereas America's is an out-of-date relic from the days of slavery and "four-fifths a person."
Lack of large numbers of fundamentalist Christians and guns/sectarian militias are also major plusses for Japan.
Japanese culture and society is certainly East Asian. Japan is not Western. Any attempts to label them as such is simply wrong. Same with Korea. There are fundamental ways East Asian societies differ from Western one. Calling Japan liberal is not correct in my opinion.
Calling China the Mother of East Asian civilization is ridiculous. The nation of China as we know it today has only existed since the 20th Century, and it's still inferior to other Asian countries like Korea and Japan in many ways. Ancient China and modern China are obviously not the same thing.
You're also willfully ignoring how China has been influenced by other Asian countries (such as Chinese scholars who studied in Japan). You'd be better off reading about Qiu Jin/ 秋瑾 again than wasting time spreading your Chinese propaganda here.
The real trump card is you can drink the water and breath the air in places like Japan, Korea, and America, but still not in China. Let me know when the "Mother of East Asian civilization" stops poisoning her own children. 👍
Perhaps it is you who has been reading too much anti-china propaganda. The notion that the current government of China represents a split from the rest of Chinese history, or is somehow not the legitimate successor to previous Chinese governments is simply ridiculous. The nation of China as we know it has been in existence for centuries. China is still where all East Asian culture originated. Without China, you wouldn't have Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese culture. They are all heavily indebted to and completely dependent on Chinese culture. Only very recently have Japan and Korea been more advanced than China. Not so for the preponderance of history. At it seems that history is returning China to the top.
I actually like many things about China, and I hope to visit there someday (hopefully when evil Winnie the Pooh is gone).
But the Chinese propaganda one encounters on Internet is simply ridiculous. And it makes me feel sorry for Chinese people when I see them believing and spouting such nonsense. Not all Chinese people believe it, of course. I've met many Chinese people from Shanghai, for example, who know the true story about their country. It's why the CCP is so brittle and scared and lashing out at its neighbors. Because the Chinese government is afraid of its own people, it has to try and bully its neighbors to show strength (just like Russia).
More wishful thinking. As if the Chinese people are somehow not happy with what has happened over the last 4 decades. Please... you need to get a grip.
It's certainly true that Chinese are well adept at cutting through their own country's propaganda. It's also true that they don't buy Western media propaganda either. It's supreme irony that the West believes the Chinese are brainwashed, where its far more likely to be true the other way around.
The supposed brittleness of the Chinese and Russian governments is another piece of wishful propaganda that just isn't true. You really think the people of Shanghai want to swap Xi out for a Western leader? Or their system for a Western one? I think you're providing the comedy not me.
"So are you admitting that the human rights issue is selectively weaponized against the US's strategic foes and ignored for allies?"
What's to admit to? This has been common knowledge for over a century. "He may be a sonovabitch, but he's OUR sonovabitch" has been a guide to U.S. policy since before United Fruit farmed bananas in Costa Rica.
Fair enough. However, this approach really undermines the use of human rights as a containment tool. The hypocrisy of applying pressure to some for HR abuses and not others will eventually lose legitimacy. It already is in the current debate with China. Not only are China's HR abuses inflated significantly (sometimes outright fabrication), but in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Israel, flagrant HR abuses are ignored. And many people are becoming cynical of attempts to smear US enemies using human rights.
The cynicism you describe has been the case since at least the late 1970s. Every time the U.S. has used this approach since then, even our allies roll their eyes.
Jesus Christ, honestly, how can any person be this naive? Every single piece on global politics - particularly Asia - is tragically ignorant. Alliance with Vietnam? Seriously? Have you consulted an atlas?
First of all, public sympathies don't matter in geopolitics. That Vietnamese people may have greater fondness for USA is literally completely meaningless, because the reality of the matter is that Vietnam is bordering China and USA will never ever come to aid Vietnam in any conflict with the PRC. It's just a geographic reality. It doesn't matter how many aircraft carriers, submarines and nuclear warheads you have - it just won't happen.
Ultimately, China is going to buy Vietnam. Because of its proximity - both geographic and cultural - China can offer Vietnam everything while USA can offer very little. Tangible infrastructural investment is very easy to conduct by Chinese companies, which are just across the border and have experience that can be transplanted to Vietnam at a low cost overnight. US can't even build a decent railway at home, while the highways are crumbling.
Territorial disputes are a minor issue when you have a market of 1.4 billion people and a government willing to both finance and carry out critical investments in your country.
America may have given the world the smartphone, but China gave the world the cheap smartphone - which is why even consumer products dominate local market and created a fertile ground for modern technologies and many successful startups.
There's literally nothing the US can offer Vietnam. Accepting the country's exports? Seriously? Is that supposed to do it? Vietnamese have China just across the border, while Chinese investors are bringing in money to use Vietnam as a detour to American market already. Lots of Vietnamese exports are Chinese exports. Opening up to them even wider is not bringing Vietnam closer but allows Beijing to dodge any restrictions the US may be willing to put on the country - while aiding it to vassalize Vietnam in the process.
Seriously, do you even understand what's going on in Asia?
The "100 million people" argument is laughable too. Vietnamese economy is smaller than Singapore. It's not 15th century, it's not even early 20th century, masses of people don't matter and have no meaning other than cheap labor force that the US itself would find hard to employ there anyway for the reasons I mentioned above.
Vietnamese people are brave but they're not suicidal. What in the world would they possibly gain by allying themselves with America, which wouldn't even come to their aid in case of a war with China? Just look at the map, for crying out loud. USA can't even meaningfully defend Taiwan at this point and you're suggesting it should draw another country into a quasi-defense alliance?
This is why America lost Philippines too - even Duterte isn't so dumb not to understand that China is a stone's throw away and America is thousands of miles and its only interest is to contain Beijing.
Talking about economic cooperation across the Pacific is another lunacy. USA is not a totalitarian regime with vast ownership of state-enterprises and banks, dishing out favorable business deals for geopolitical leverage. American companies are private and they too have to hedge their risks. Most of them are not interested in going into uncertain markets, let alone provide investments that would meaningfully change the lives of the local population.
Which is also how the West lost Africa to China, having spent decades sending aid and building mines, but hardly providing the necessary infrastructure to support it, that the local economies could benefit from as well. China did - hence the roads, railways, airports, harbors that support the Chinese grand design of a string of pearls around the Indian Ocean. But China can go in and offer loans, infrastructural expertise, equipment and end to end execution. American companies won't do that - they will fly over and build a mine to get whatever they want out of it. They won't be doing anything else and US government does not have such capabilities either - neither financial nor executive to perform any such action or even offer multibillion dollar incentives to private enterprises to go in and do it on the taxpayers' dime. China does, which is why it can do things Europe and America can't. Even Japanese are better at it than the West.
You have no idea what you're talking about. There will never ever be Vietnamese alliance with the USA. There may be lukewarm, diplomatic sympathy to show China that the country has some alternatives - but that's about it.
>Territorial disputes are a minor issue when you have a market of 1.4 billion people and a government willing to both finance and carry out critical investments in your country.
China and Vietnam have resolved territorial issues with land borders and the Gulf of Tonkin. Meanwhile, the US failed to resolve Vietnam on anything except for the economics which the US multinational corporations resolved for the US government, not the other way around. The US still refuses to publicly acknowledge its war crimes in Vietnam as well as the effects of Agent Orange.
One problem. The classical liberal concept of "individual freedom" is delusional.
Marxists know that community cohesion fostered by rule of law (but not eg "Sharia law"; see former Islamist terrorism in Xinjiang) is necessary before freedom can be secured. China's youth are increasingly showing preference for their own system of government. Speaking of freedom, how's things in Minneapolis tonight?
I expect China to keep growing at a faster rate than the US, simply because intelligent public sector intervention in private sector free markets (aka "socialism with Chinese characteristics") is a superior development model to private self-interested "invisible hand" free markets with numerous examples of market failure (eg Texas not connected to the US grid, in an artic freeze...)
And China is bigger than the US and its allies put together. After 4000 years of continuous recorded history with a single language, China has no designs for "expansionism"; the BRI is an much needed global economic development model that the US was too self-interested to initiate, because it is more concerned to maintain global hegemony.
"China will overtake the US to become the world's largest economy by 2028, five years earlier than previously forecast, a report says.
The UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said China's "skilful" management of Covid-19 would boost its relative growth compared to the US and Europe in coming years."
What good is the largest economy if its people are still in poverty? China may well have the largest economy, because it'll have 1.43 billion or so. If China continues growing at a greater rate, then it will surpass the US in *per capita* GDP. Do you expect that to happen?
China subsidizes low-wage workers' necessities, unlike the 'sink or swim' free markets in the US. Per capita GDP could be half that of the the US and still produce better outcomes than the US where "You are living in poverty, your neighborhoods are like war zones , your schools and hospitals are broken.....":
DJ Trump, during his 2016 election campaign, re the US inner-city ghettos.
Donald Trump is indeed known for accurately describing things, and for never claiming things are terrible when they aren't.
Second - do we not have food stamps, eitc, medicaid, tanf, ssi, and all sorts of various and sundry welfare programs? If only we *were* a sink or swim country! But we most certainly are not.
You deny the reality of poverty in the ghettos? Guess why the incarceration rate for blacks is 6 times that of whites!
As for the dole ("sit-down money"), we both know it's a disaster for the morale of the recipients. That's why FDR proposed a "2nd Bill of Rights" in 1944 (google it), to guarantee above poverty participation in the economy. Read Kelton's latest best-seller "The Deficit Myth" to learn how government CAN achieve this. And the other piecemeal support programs also destroy morale, whereas subsidized housing, education (without accruing student debt) , health care, and transport costs do not. Note: anyone in China can pay for a high-speed train ticket, but the US --oh wait-- the US expects everyone to own a car, or spend hours on obsolete public transport.
But the fact you want a "sink or swim" economy tells me everything I need to know about your moral compass, typical of conservatives.
You basically want Vietnam to privatize, so the West can loot the country as it did with Eastern European countries after the fall of USSR. Today, Japan is also being looted by the West after the bubble collapse that led to the neo-liberalization and privatization of Japan under Koizumi era onward.
Noah, if you have a moment, perhaps you could take a look at my fairly extensive post response tucked away in the depths below and see if you think it's something with which you'd like to engage. Granted, not everyone warms to the challenge of developing policy frameworks. But you might :-) Mark Salter
"And each of those countries eventually became free and democratic — even more so than the U.S., at this point. Their American alliances probably helped with that transition"
I'd be very interested in reading more about what works and what doesn't in liberalizing a nation.
I find it hard to see how American alliances are a major contributor to liberalization when social movements have been instrumental in dismantling the countries' authoritarian systems. The Japanese New Left, the People Power Revolution, the Minjung Movement, the Reformasi, hell, maybe even the Sunflower Revolution. Unless Vietnam has a strong civil society that's instrumental in forming a strong liberal political culture (which I doubt so, coming off of anecdotes of local critics about how much the current system is supported by common Vietnamese), this "human rights" take comes off as disingenuous.
Good post. I'm reminded of an interview with the American diplomat John Paton Davies Jr.: "I think that we have handled China so badly, because China is the natural balance against Russia in Asia and Vietnam [laughs] is the natural balance against China in East Asia. We fought with both."
What you fail to consider is that Vietnam might not want an alliance with the USA. While they do want to hedge against China, they seem eager to keep channels open with their fellow Communists and with Russia. I can't see Vietnam getting any closer to the USA unless China makes a major provocation, like it did with India.
Interesting comparison between US policy toward Cuba and Vietnam. I grew up in Florida, not far from the Cuban community, and now live in southern California, not far from the very large Vietnamese community here. They're very different -- and not just in the obvious ways. It's interesting how much more flexible the local Vietnamese community is regarding US policy toward Vietnam, compared to the rigid opposition of the Cuban-American community to most efforts to improve relations with Cuba.
This is one of the few topics where I probably know more than the average internet person! I live in Vietnam -- I've been here for many years at this point. This is a pretty good summary of the current status quo. Related: last night I taking a Grab motorbike taxi home and the driver asked where I was from. I told him. "I love <country X>!" And then the non-sequitor, "I hate China! Especially the Chinese government."
But I think Noah needs to fine tune the call to action a bit. There's basically zero "grudge" in an American-Vietnamese politics that I've ever been able to detect. Trump labelled Vietnam a currency manipulator (Biden recently undid it) but that seemed more a vague "Asian countries, trade war, don't just stand there, do something" response than anything else.
America has put essentially zero official pressure on Vietnam for any human rights stuff. Just last week four people were sentenced to 10 years in prison for "anti-state propaganda" and I'm willing to bet you had no idea. Neither American embassy officials nor American press said anything about it.
So I guess I feel like it is just..."Keep doing what you're already doing". But I'd be curious to hear ideas for something more proactive than that. So here are a few random thoughts:
The US should become the #1 source for government grants/investments. (I think it is Japan, right now ... I don't actually know why Japan invests so much in Vietnam.)
The US should work harder to get its companies involved in infrastructure projects. This is hard because the US sucks at infrastructure. But the recent Hanoi metro was built by a Chinese company. That's the opposite of what you want if you're the US. Roads, airports, metros ... it is all being doing by Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and German companies. I can't think of a single US company doing anything with infrastructure.
The US has a lot of expertise being on the cutting edge of environmentalism. And not in a scolding "you're so bad, stop polluting" way. But in a "Yes, we also once set a polluted river on fire and had toxic dumps and cities didn't have clean water" way. The US is helping clean up Agent Orange and remove land mines but a) that's tied to the American War (and being done by the US military, AFAIK) and b) there's so much more that could be done. Even in Saigon basically no household drinks tap water. There's central water treatment but rusty pipes and rusty storage tanks means it is often contaminated by E. coli by the time it gets to the tap.
Food safety is a huge problem in Vietnam and the US has tons of expertise. Vietnam gets a ton of fruit & vegetable from China. Even though everyone doesn't trust it. America loves farm subsidies. Why not subsidize sending American fruit & vegetables to Vietnam and cut the dependence on Chinese imports?
I dunno how I forgot about this one: vaccine diplomacy. I'm pretty sure Australia has contributed more towards Vietnam's vaccination effort than the US has. For a single one of those aircraft carrier visits, you could probably vaccinate half the country.
This is coming, but our supply chain capacity is limited. I'd say this happens in the summer.
Sure -- and I don't want to put too on this one point given the realities of American politics and the entire virus response.
But I had in mind things like: Vietnam has 4 or 5 home-grown vaccines in various stages of clinical trials. But testing them has been hard, in part, because Vietnam has so few cases. It seems like there's room for the US to step up, offer expertise, help speed up those trials and take advantage of the vaccine supply chain that Vietnam already has (and is essentially sitting idle just waiting for vaccines that it can produce). Or, the US could spend money to speed up the Vietnam supply chain. The answers don't (just) have to be "we'll help pay money for you to import the Johnson & Johnson vaccine once they've made enough of it".
Yep. Going to write a post about this soon.
We really should ship out all those AZ vaccines though. We aren't gonna use em and we know it. Break those do-not-export contracts and throw some money at AZ if they complain!
Thanks! Great thoughts.
By the way the U.S. sucks at infrastructure, but Japan and Taiwan can do it well, and that helps bring Vietnam into the general alliance I think. What the U.S. does really well is university research, so I think cooperation and exchange should focus on that. Also the U.S. should encourage U.S. companies to do joint ventures with Vietnamese companies, to raise their technology level quickly.
Japan invests so much in Vietnam for a number of reasons. The growth of the country's economy is impressive, and Japanese investors like the partner they have with Vietnam's government (which has set long-range goals for development). Japan also hopes to attract more Vietnamese tourists to Japan (tourism is huge for the Japanese local economies). Japan also sells a number of products in Vietnam, such as cars. Finally, Japan hopes to address its infamous problems with an aging population and resulting labor shortage by bringing in young workers from Vietnam (and other Asian countries like the Phillipines). A Japanese person I know teaches Japanese to Vietnamese students so they can take office jobs in Japanese companies.
That's an understatement because Japan invested in Vietnam way ahead of the US. Japanese firms made landfall on Vietnam before 1995, in secret, to evade American sanctions over Vietnam. If you read the Enigma of Japanese power book, then you realize that Japan never ever has a centralized leadership for thousands of years. In the case of Vietnam, the rogue factions of Japanese socialists helped China and Vietnam in the beginning with technological transfers and other IP transfers. I would argue that Japanese socialists and leftists in Japan politics played a major role towards the development of Vietnam.
Since 2010, Japan suddenly boosted its investments in Vietnam because China threatens its maritime trade, and Japan doesn't want to lose out a close aide of China (Vietnam). By 2040, China will have the complete ability to blockade Japan economically and possibly militarily with the annexation of Taiwan. Japan needs Vietnam to pressure China on the matter, and the US also pushes Japan to do so since the CPV doesn't trust the Americans abit.
To that point, supposedly a few years ago one out of every ten new marriages in Japan now involved a foreign partner.
It's well known that Japanese men especially like to date and marry Fillipino women. Japanese women date and marry people from all over. One of my Japanese female friends married a man from Morocco. And I've had a few bosses who married Englishmen.
So the country is definitely changing in this regard. I think Noah had an article about this recently, actually.
From what I've seen, it's easier than before to get long-term, say five-year work visas in Japan. And the requirements for permanent residency changed recently, although I don't know the details and it seems more work needs to be done. For a lot of people the path to staying in Japan is marrying a Japanese person (I know many many Japan-foreigner couples like this).
Citizenship alone is not enough to attract long-term workers and business executives to Japan. The country must eliminate its xenophobic barriers and glass ceilings to foreigners. My Vietnamese friends complain how those Japanese oyajis keep making it hard for Vietnamese entrepreneurs to maintain their businesses and invest anywhere. These oyajis always fear foreigners being better than them and taking over the whole place. Thanks to Covid-19, my friends at least bought a lot of lands in Japan as those oyajis relaxed their bureaucratic oversight. My friends are currently co-owning an industrial park in Japan that manufactures "Made in Japan" stuffs for Vietnamese consumers, and they contribute to the local communities by hiring Japanese workers only.
I rather say that Sinophobia is rather a recent phenomenon catapulted by the 1979 border war which was instigated by the US in the first place - the US literally funded Khmer Rouge and encouraged China to invade Vietnam. Vietnamese populace has been largely brainwashed by the Southern media machines which are largely controlled by Southern liberals who want to side with the West. However, Southern liberals in Vietnam have completely lost power and will be evicted from Vietnam once the pandemic is over since the poor Covid-19 responses provided a valid excuse to politically strangle Southern liberals and business elites here.
The communists of Vietnam never ever forget the US for the war crimes and numerous episodes of backstabbing politics. More importantly, the CPV may not listen to the CPC all the time but they are resolutely loyal to Russia. The CPV is always friendly with the CPC because of socialism, obviously! Of course, Russians have allied with China against the West for years now, so the CPV obviously obliged to reap benefits from a rising Eurasia. The US can't steer Vietnam from China if it can't steer Vietnam from Russia and socialism.
Doing both these has failed for the US, so it was why President Trump decided not to do any more interference into Vietnamese affairs. This is the true reason why Vietnamese people madly love Trump, not because of his Sinophobia but his commitment towards national independence above global imperialism - basically, a Woodrow Wilson who actually practiced what he preached. Nevertheless, this was why President Trump lost the elections because the American elites can't stop endless war and don't want Trump to stop it. Like you said, the Biden administration continues the non-interference policy of the Trump era towards Vietnam, so you should expect the complete eradication of Vietnamese dissidents and civil societies within a decade.
>But the recent Hanoi metro was built by a Chinese company.
It was mired in the messy politics of PM Dung's era but it has long been completed. The problem lies in many ambiguities that PM Dung's administration failed to inform the Communist Party.
>That's the opposite of what you want if you're the US. Roads, airports, metros ... it is all being doing by Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and German companies. I can't think of a single US company doing anything with infrastructure.
The problem here again lies in the Communist Party of Vietnam. The US investors always want a fair share of profits that involved the privatization of state assets and liberalization of the national economy. Any of these is damaging against Vietnamese socialism, so the CPV routinely blocks American investments for this reason. Germany, Japan, China,... do not force their politics on Vietnam and conform to the local distribution of wealth within Vietnamese borders. Their profits stay in Vietnam and don't go anywhere!
>Even in Saigon basically no household drinks tap water. There's central water treatment but rusty pipes and rusty storage tanks means it is often contaminated by E. coli by the time it gets to the tap.
You should blame this problem on the pro-West liberals in the Southern administrations. The CPV refuses to direct the funds for the South much more because these liberals always attempt some color revolutions against the ruling Communists. The Southern Vietnam will enjoy stellar infrastructures once all of liberals in Southern administration cease to exist.
Yes, yes, the alliance makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider Japan's huge investment in the country (at times Japan has been the number one investor in Vietnam). Many many Vietnamese (including a good neighbor of mine) come to Japan for technical training/a college education.
'export-led development strategy that worked so well for South Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan.'
Did you mean to say Malaysia? Studwell kept using Malaysia as an example of how not to do industrial policy, albeit he believes better that than not doing IP at all.
Yep. Studwell was simply wrong. Malaysia failed at cars, but got its act together when it came to electronics and is now a major manufacturer/exporter, with a GDP almost at the level of fully developed countries.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-28/malaysia-reveals-immigration-critic-amy-wax-s-ignorance?sref=R8NfLgwS
Well, I think his thesis in general was right, but his pessimistic assessment of Malaysia was premature, and was based mainly on their failure in the auto industry.
Not sure I'd classify Malaysia a success. Maybe in relative terms. GDP /capita at $11k in exchange traded, 30k in ppp. Do you trust adjustments that large?
Having visited Vietnam, I couldn't agree more. And reading Embers of War what's the painful reminder of just how much Vietnam wanted to be friends with the US, but fell victim to our Cold War paranoia. They saw us as a natural ally. Ho Chi Minh wrote to every US president starting with Woodrow Wilson. His outreach to the US was so much greater than any ties to communism. We forced Vietnam to ally with Russia. What a big mistake to do the same thing now with China!
I seriously can't believe some of the arguments put forth here. So are you admitting that the human rights issue is selectively weaponized against the US's strategic foes and ignored for allies? Voices calling out Vietnamese human rights abuses should be simply ignored? Just like a blind eye is turned to the Saudis? Unbelievable. This is called hypocrisy and it is not a sustainable policy.
Furthermore, Noah seems ignorant of Vietnam's policy of not joining military alliances against other countries. Whatever the tension between China and Vietnam, they are neighbors and both countries know they are geographically wed to one another and must learn how to get along. This policy of no military alliances is well established and well known. They don't want to antagonize China for obvious reasons. They also want to maintain strategic arms' length from both super powers.
Washington's hopes to sign up Vietnam to its China containment strategy have gone no where. And this is an avenue that remains closed due to Vietnam's stringent policy to not gang up on any nation. No amount of wishful thinking will coopt the Vietnamese into a provocative posture against a neighbor.
I agree with you that Vietnam obviously doesn't want to antagonise China. America learned to its detriment that it can't act unilaterally against China. And it is learning right now that it has limits even with its staunchest allies against China (c.f. Japan's foot dragging re: Xinjiang). So no surprise that Vietnam is going to try to thread the needle (much as they did during the American War with China & USSR).
But I think you are overstating the inflexibility of the "no military alliances" policy. It doesn't really mean anything. It has a "mutual defence pact" with Laos (don't call it alliance!). Vietnam just signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the Malaysian Navy (don't call it an alliance!)
And most tellingly: the 2019 Viet Nam National Defence white paper (the first update in a decade) updated its "no alliances" policy to add:
"Depending on circumstances and specific conditions, Viet Nam will consider developing necessary, appropriate defence and military relations with other countries on the basis of respecting each other's independence, sovereignty, territorial unity and integrity as well as fundamental principles of international law, cooperation for mutual benefits and common interests of the region and international community."
Hard not to read that as laying the ground work for "military relations" (don't call it an alliance!) in the future should tensions continue to escalate with China.
all these defense pacts etc are contingent upon Vietnam being under attack. As long as there is no aggression against Vietnam, then there will be no reason to ally with other countries to defend themselves. What is clear is that the Vietnamese don't want a antagonise any other country. I dare say that they, too, want to participate in China's economic rise. They certainly don't want military conflict. Dare I say, if the US did not have a myriad of bases surrounding China in the region, the South China Sea issue would be resolved as well. Just as there is no longer a land border issue with China.
Presumably the Vietnamese are aware that you have to set up defense pacts prior to being under attack. No one will sell you fire insurance *after* your house catches on fire.
absolutely. But this is completely defensive and contingent upon being attacked. But they won't participate in containment policy against any other nation.
I found the emphasis on the word "alliance" in Noah's post a bit odd. The gist of the post is about improving relations with Vietnam and helping it become a stronger, more independent actor vis-a-vis China. That all seems wise. Signing a formal military alliance on the other hand seems like a blunt kind of action to take in a region in the world where the US will have to be adroit in its statecraft. Put simply, we want China to be successful *and* peaceful. Containing it with a set of rigid military relationships, a la NATO vs the Soviet Union, may be necessary some day, but doing so prematurely may push China into a hostile relationship we might otherwise have been able to avoid.
It's not hypocrisy, it's realism/pragmatism, and Noah already addressed your complaints when he wrote...
"And what about human rights? It’s true that Vietnam’s regime is still very repressive. But that was also true of South Korea and Taiwan when we allied with those countries during Cold War 1. And each of those countries eventually became free and democratic — even more so than the U.S., at this point. Their American alliances probably helped with that transition — since they were dependent on the U.S. for protection against external enemies, the dictators of South Korea and Taiwan couldn’t be too murderous or repressive."
Vietnam could easily drift in a more liberal direction like Taiwan and Korea, joining Japan and then as liberal democracies. Especially with more Vietnamese working/being educated outside the country and then bringing more liberal notions back home with them afterwards.
Japan and Korea are certainly not liberal democracies. Similar to Singapore. Whatever you want to call the political situations in these countries, they will always be guided by their Eastern values. Collectivism, community, family will always trump individualism. This may be China's ultimate trump card. These country's cultures are most like China's compared with the West. This is because their cultures are almost entirely derived from China, who is the Mother of East Asian civilisation. The disputes with Vietnam are territorial in the South China Sea. Were US bases not dotted around the Pacific, there various claimants would resolve these territorial issues among themselves. Otherwise I think that China and Vietnam will eventually grow closer together.
How are you defining "liberal democracy"? Japan and South Korea are democratic countries by any measure I'm aware of. Taiwan also. The notion that east Asian culture is inherently incompatible with democracy is extremely misguided imo.
Japan and South Korea may be democratic, but they are not Western nor liberal.
Freedom House, for example, scores Japan as a 96 for civil liberties and political rights, whereas America only gets an 83. And other ranking systems have similar findings. It helps that Japan's Constitution is a modern document, whereas America's is an out-of-date relic from the days of slavery and "four-fifths a person."
Lack of large numbers of fundamentalist Christians and guns/sectarian militias are also major plusses for Japan.
Japan is certainly classified as a liberal democracy--it's ranked higher for many freedoms and rights than America is!
I'm more worried about America slipping into civil war and/or autocracy than I am about Vietnam staying the way it is.
Japanese culture and society is certainly East Asian. Japan is not Western. Any attempts to label them as such is simply wrong. Same with Korea. There are fundamental ways East Asian societies differ from Western one. Calling Japan liberal is not correct in my opinion.
Calling China the Mother of East Asian civilization is ridiculous. The nation of China as we know it today has only existed since the 20th Century, and it's still inferior to other Asian countries like Korea and Japan in many ways. Ancient China and modern China are obviously not the same thing.
You're also willfully ignoring how China has been influenced by other Asian countries (such as Chinese scholars who studied in Japan). You'd be better off reading about Qiu Jin/ 秋瑾 again than wasting time spreading your Chinese propaganda here.
The real trump card is you can drink the water and breath the air in places like Japan, Korea, and America, but still not in China. Let me know when the "Mother of East Asian civilization" stops poisoning her own children. 👍
Perhaps it is you who has been reading too much anti-china propaganda. The notion that the current government of China represents a split from the rest of Chinese history, or is somehow not the legitimate successor to previous Chinese governments is simply ridiculous. The nation of China as we know it has been in existence for centuries. China is still where all East Asian culture originated. Without China, you wouldn't have Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese culture. They are all heavily indebted to and completely dependent on Chinese culture. Only very recently have Japan and Korea been more advanced than China. Not so for the preponderance of history. At it seems that history is returning China to the top.
Thanks for the comedy! 🤣🤣🤣
I actually like many things about China, and I hope to visit there someday (hopefully when evil Winnie the Pooh is gone).
But the Chinese propaganda one encounters on Internet is simply ridiculous. And it makes me feel sorry for Chinese people when I see them believing and spouting such nonsense. Not all Chinese people believe it, of course. I've met many Chinese people from Shanghai, for example, who know the true story about their country. It's why the CCP is so brittle and scared and lashing out at its neighbors. Because the Chinese government is afraid of its own people, it has to try and bully its neighbors to show strength (just like Russia).
More wishful thinking. As if the Chinese people are somehow not happy with what has happened over the last 4 decades. Please... you need to get a grip.
It's certainly true that Chinese are well adept at cutting through their own country's propaganda. It's also true that they don't buy Western media propaganda either. It's supreme irony that the West believes the Chinese are brainwashed, where its far more likely to be true the other way around.
The supposed brittleness of the Chinese and Russian governments is another piece of wishful propaganda that just isn't true. You really think the people of Shanghai want to swap Xi out for a Western leader? Or their system for a Western one? I think you're providing the comedy not me.
"So are you admitting that the human rights issue is selectively weaponized against the US's strategic foes and ignored for allies?"
What's to admit to? This has been common knowledge for over a century. "He may be a sonovabitch, but he's OUR sonovabitch" has been a guide to U.S. policy since before United Fruit farmed bananas in Costa Rica.
Most US foreign policy is ultimately just realpolitik, even when we try and dress it up as something more high-minded...
Fair enough. However, this approach really undermines the use of human rights as a containment tool. The hypocrisy of applying pressure to some for HR abuses and not others will eventually lose legitimacy. It already is in the current debate with China. Not only are China's HR abuses inflated significantly (sometimes outright fabrication), but in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Israel, flagrant HR abuses are ignored. And many people are becoming cynical of attempts to smear US enemies using human rights.
The cynicism you describe has been the case since at least the late 1970s. Every time the U.S. has used this approach since then, even our allies roll their eyes.
Welcome to world power politics.
Jesus Christ, honestly, how can any person be this naive? Every single piece on global politics - particularly Asia - is tragically ignorant. Alliance with Vietnam? Seriously? Have you consulted an atlas?
First of all, public sympathies don't matter in geopolitics. That Vietnamese people may have greater fondness for USA is literally completely meaningless, because the reality of the matter is that Vietnam is bordering China and USA will never ever come to aid Vietnam in any conflict with the PRC. It's just a geographic reality. It doesn't matter how many aircraft carriers, submarines and nuclear warheads you have - it just won't happen.
Ultimately, China is going to buy Vietnam. Because of its proximity - both geographic and cultural - China can offer Vietnam everything while USA can offer very little. Tangible infrastructural investment is very easy to conduct by Chinese companies, which are just across the border and have experience that can be transplanted to Vietnam at a low cost overnight. US can't even build a decent railway at home, while the highways are crumbling.
Territorial disputes are a minor issue when you have a market of 1.4 billion people and a government willing to both finance and carry out critical investments in your country.
America may have given the world the smartphone, but China gave the world the cheap smartphone - which is why even consumer products dominate local market and created a fertile ground for modern technologies and many successful startups.
There's literally nothing the US can offer Vietnam. Accepting the country's exports? Seriously? Is that supposed to do it? Vietnamese have China just across the border, while Chinese investors are bringing in money to use Vietnam as a detour to American market already. Lots of Vietnamese exports are Chinese exports. Opening up to them even wider is not bringing Vietnam closer but allows Beijing to dodge any restrictions the US may be willing to put on the country - while aiding it to vassalize Vietnam in the process.
Seriously, do you even understand what's going on in Asia?
The "100 million people" argument is laughable too. Vietnamese economy is smaller than Singapore. It's not 15th century, it's not even early 20th century, masses of people don't matter and have no meaning other than cheap labor force that the US itself would find hard to employ there anyway for the reasons I mentioned above.
Vietnamese people are brave but they're not suicidal. What in the world would they possibly gain by allying themselves with America, which wouldn't even come to their aid in case of a war with China? Just look at the map, for crying out loud. USA can't even meaningfully defend Taiwan at this point and you're suggesting it should draw another country into a quasi-defense alliance?
This is why America lost Philippines too - even Duterte isn't so dumb not to understand that China is a stone's throw away and America is thousands of miles and its only interest is to contain Beijing.
Talking about economic cooperation across the Pacific is another lunacy. USA is not a totalitarian regime with vast ownership of state-enterprises and banks, dishing out favorable business deals for geopolitical leverage. American companies are private and they too have to hedge their risks. Most of them are not interested in going into uncertain markets, let alone provide investments that would meaningfully change the lives of the local population.
Which is also how the West lost Africa to China, having spent decades sending aid and building mines, but hardly providing the necessary infrastructure to support it, that the local economies could benefit from as well. China did - hence the roads, railways, airports, harbors that support the Chinese grand design of a string of pearls around the Indian Ocean. But China can go in and offer loans, infrastructural expertise, equipment and end to end execution. American companies won't do that - they will fly over and build a mine to get whatever they want out of it. They won't be doing anything else and US government does not have such capabilities either - neither financial nor executive to perform any such action or even offer multibillion dollar incentives to private enterprises to go in and do it on the taxpayers' dime. China does, which is why it can do things Europe and America can't. Even Japanese are better at it than the West.
You have no idea what you're talking about. There will never ever be Vietnamese alliance with the USA. There may be lukewarm, diplomatic sympathy to show China that the country has some alternatives - but that's about it.
>Territorial disputes are a minor issue when you have a market of 1.4 billion people and a government willing to both finance and carry out critical investments in your country.
China and Vietnam have resolved territorial issues with land borders and the Gulf of Tonkin. Meanwhile, the US failed to resolve Vietnam on anything except for the economics which the US multinational corporations resolved for the US government, not the other way around. The US still refuses to publicly acknowledge its war crimes in Vietnam as well as the effects of Agent Orange.
One problem. The classical liberal concept of "individual freedom" is delusional.
Marxists know that community cohesion fostered by rule of law (but not eg "Sharia law"; see former Islamist terrorism in Xinjiang) is necessary before freedom can be secured. China's youth are increasingly showing preference for their own system of government. Speaking of freedom, how's things in Minneapolis tonight?
I expect China to keep growing at a faster rate than the US, simply because intelligent public sector intervention in private sector free markets (aka "socialism with Chinese characteristics") is a superior development model to private self-interested "invisible hand" free markets with numerous examples of market failure (eg Texas not connected to the US grid, in an artic freeze...)
And China is bigger than the US and its allies put together. After 4000 years of continuous recorded history with a single language, China has no designs for "expansionism"; the BRI is an much needed global economic development model that the US was too self-interested to initiate, because it is more concerned to maintain global hegemony.
How much you wanna bet on China growing? You believe it’s going to happen, so take my money.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55454146
"China will overtake the US to become the world's largest economy by 2028, five years earlier than previously forecast, a report says.
The UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said China's "skilful" management of Covid-19 would boost its relative growth compared to the US and Europe in coming years."
What good is the largest economy if its people are still in poverty? China may well have the largest economy, because it'll have 1.43 billion or so. If China continues growing at a greater rate, then it will surpass the US in *per capita* GDP. Do you expect that to happen?
China subsidizes low-wage workers' necessities, unlike the 'sink or swim' free markets in the US. Per capita GDP could be half that of the the US and still produce better outcomes than the US where "You are living in poverty, your neighborhoods are like war zones , your schools and hospitals are broken.....":
DJ Trump, during his 2016 election campaign, re the US inner-city ghettos.
Donald Trump is indeed known for accurately describing things, and for never claiming things are terrible when they aren't.
Second - do we not have food stamps, eitc, medicaid, tanf, ssi, and all sorts of various and sundry welfare programs? If only we *were* a sink or swim country! But we most certainly are not.
You deny the reality of poverty in the ghettos? Guess why the incarceration rate for blacks is 6 times that of whites!
As for the dole ("sit-down money"), we both know it's a disaster for the morale of the recipients. That's why FDR proposed a "2nd Bill of Rights" in 1944 (google it), to guarantee above poverty participation in the economy. Read Kelton's latest best-seller "The Deficit Myth" to learn how government CAN achieve this. And the other piecemeal support programs also destroy morale, whereas subsidized housing, education (without accruing student debt) , health care, and transport costs do not. Note: anyone in China can pay for a high-speed train ticket, but the US --oh wait-- the US expects everyone to own a car, or spend hours on obsolete public transport.
But the fact you want a "sink or swim" economy tells me everything I need to know about your moral compass, typical of conservatives.
I've been high on Vietnam for a while. They have the potential to punch way above their weight, much like Japan.
Absolutely right.
You basically want Vietnam to privatize, so the West can loot the country as it did with Eastern European countries after the fall of USSR. Today, Japan is also being looted by the West after the bubble collapse that led to the neo-liberalization and privatization of Japan under Koizumi era onward.
In what ways do you believe Japan is being looted by the West?
3 Tips For Better Confidence
•Talk about yourself nicely
•Overwhelm yourself with kind and kind words
•Don’t just act in such a way that the surroundings are satisfied
More On My Blog⤵
https://womanandlife.substack.com/p/get-the-self-confidence-killers-out
Noah, if you have a moment, perhaps you could take a look at my fairly extensive post response tucked away in the depths below and see if you think it's something with which you'd like to engage. Granted, not everyone warms to the challenge of developing policy frameworks. But you might :-) Mark Salter
"And each of those countries eventually became free and democratic — even more so than the U.S., at this point. Their American alliances probably helped with that transition"
I'd be very interested in reading more about what works and what doesn't in liberalizing a nation.
I find it hard to see how American alliances are a major contributor to liberalization when social movements have been instrumental in dismantling the countries' authoritarian systems. The Japanese New Left, the People Power Revolution, the Minjung Movement, the Reformasi, hell, maybe even the Sunflower Revolution. Unless Vietnam has a strong civil society that's instrumental in forming a strong liberal political culture (which I doubt so, coming off of anecdotes of local critics about how much the current system is supported by common Vietnamese), this "human rights" take comes off as disingenuous.
Good post. I'm reminded of an interview with the American diplomat John Paton Davies Jr.: "I think that we have handled China so badly, because China is the natural balance against Russia in Asia and Vietnam [laughs] is the natural balance against China in East Asia. We fought with both."
What you fail to consider is that Vietnam might not want an alliance with the USA. While they do want to hedge against China, they seem eager to keep channels open with their fellow Communists and with Russia. I can't see Vietnam getting any closer to the USA unless China makes a major provocation, like it did with India.
Interesting comparison between US policy toward Cuba and Vietnam. I grew up in Florida, not far from the Cuban community, and now live in southern California, not far from the very large Vietnamese community here. They're very different -- and not just in the obvious ways. It's interesting how much more flexible the local Vietnamese community is regarding US policy toward Vietnam, compared to the rigid opposition of the Cuban-American community to most efforts to improve relations with Cuba.