Vietnam S Industrialization Ambitions

Vietnam has officially admitted its failure to achieve industrialized economy status by 2020. This failure is partly due to its inability to grow a strong local manufacturing base and develop key strategic industries. The participation of Vingroup, the country’s largest private conglomerate, in the automotive industry has sparked new hopes for Vietnam’s industrialization drive. The company, through its subsidiary Vinfast, aims to become a leading automaker in Southeast Asia with an annual capacity of 500,000 units and a localization ratio of 60 per cent by 2025. Challenges that Vinfast faces include its unproven track record in the industry; the limited size of the national car market; the lack of infrastructure to support car usage in Vietnam; the intense competition from foreign brands; and its initial reliance on imported technologies and know-hows. However, Vinfast enjoys certain advantages in the domestic market, including the large potential of the Vietnamese automotive market; its freedom as a new automaker to define its business strategies without having to deal with legacy issues; Vingroup’s sound business and financial performance and its ecosystem; strong support from the Vietnamese government; and nationalist sentiments that will encourage certain Vietnamese customers to choose its products. If Vinfast is successful, it will boost Vietnam’s GDP growth and reinvent the country’s automotive industry. Its success will also contribute significantly to the realization of Vietnam’s industrialization ambitions and bring private actors into the centre stage of the economy. If the company fails, however, it will cause considerable problems for both Vingroup and the Vietnamese economy.

A much-needed behind-the-scenes survey of an emerging Asian power The eyes of the West have recently been trained on China and India, but Vietnam is rising fast among its Asian peers. A breathtaking period of social change has seen foreign investment bringing capitalism flooding into its nominally communist society, booming cities swallowing up smaller villages, and the lure of modern living tugging at the traditional networks of family and community. Yet beneath these sweeping developments lurks an authoritarian political system that complicates the nation’s apparent renaissance. In this engaging work, experienced journalist Bill Hayton looks at the costs of change in Vietnam and questions whether this rising Asian power is really heading toward capitalism and democracy. Based on vivid eyewitness accounts and pertinent case studies, Hayton’s book addresses a broad variety of issues in today’s Vietnam, including important shifts in international relations, the growth of civil society, economic developments and challenges, and the nation’s nascent democracy movement as well as its notorious internal security. His analysis of Vietnam’s “police state,” and its systematic mechanisms of social control, coercion, and surveillance, is fresh and particularly imperative when viewed alongside his portraits of urban and street life, cultural legacies, religion, the media, and the arts. With a firm sense of historical and cultural context, Hayton examines how these issues have emerged and where they will lead Vietnam in the next stage of its development.

This book inspects higher education reform in market-oriented socialist Vietnam, with a focus on newness narratives and enquiry. Engaging in dialogic conversations with global and regional forces and exploring convergences in the domains of policy, curriculum, research, pedagogy, and society, chapter authors analyse ideologies that have entered Vietnam’s educational landscape. Chapters include discussions of post-Soviet legacies, socialist thought, privatization, neoliberalism, global rankings, academic freedom, autonomy, and elitism, as well as the actors, discourses and practices through which they manifest. In so doing, authors’ commentaries juxtapose phenomena in Vietnam with other national contexts such as the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam, Japan, Australia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

This book is written as a tribute to Frederick Nixson’s extensive work on industrial development in the Global South, while seeking to actively engage with the latest arguments concerning development economics, together with changes in manufacturing and industrial policy that continue to shape the role of the Global South in the international economy, the impact of the increased concentration of global multinational corporations in that space, along with the rise of new financing tools and debt traps. The chapters pay homage to Fred’s broad view of the international development process and reflect his breadth of perception both theoretically and geographically. The book targets both the scholarly and policymaking audience.

This book, first published in 1999, analyses the history and major economic features of the Vietnamese reform process. The attempt to establish a post-reunification centrally planned economic system, a collectivised agriculture and a capital-intensive and inward-oriented industrial sector had largely failed, provoking the development of a parallel economy which turned out to be the nucleus of an emerging private sector. The book focuses on the reform of enterprises and the financial sector and gives an overall picture of the reform efforts in the areas of rural development, the social sectors and environmental policy, and assesses the further changes and reforms needed in the country.

Introduction -- The Lure and Challenges of the Automobile Industry -- Institutions, Politics and Developmental Divergence -- Thailand: Early opening and Export success -- The Philippines and Indonesia: Extensive Development Arrested and Delayed -- Korea: Successful Intensive Industrialization -- Malaysia: How Intensive Development Strategies Fail in the Absence of Appropriate Institutions -- China: Revamping socialist institutions for a market economy -- Taiwan: Balancing independent assembly, MNCs, and parts promotion in a small market -- Conclusion.

This 7-volume set of previously out-of-print titles examines both the war for liberation in Vietnam and its political and economic aftermath. The economic reforms that began to transform Vietnam from a planned economy to a partially market one are focused on in particular, as are the early days of revolutionary conflict.

With more than 58,000 casualties and 300,000 wounded, at a cost of more than $130 billion, the Vietnam War became one of the most divisive conflicts in American history. The scars left by the war can still be felt today, making it crucial that we have the facts about this watershed event. Vietnam War Almanac contains a chronological history of the war in Vietnam, with day-by-day listings of the war on the ground, in the air, and at sea; international and U.S. events; and a biographical dictionary of major military and civilian figures. It may be impossible to fully understand such a complicated and horrible struggle, but for the families of veterans and for historians, the thorough presentation here, along with its extensive bibliography and index, is an excellent place to start. Coverage here includes: • The Tet Offensive • Walter L. Cronkite • The Battle of Dien Bien Phu • Vo Nguyen Giap • Ngo Dinh Diem • The Battle of Ia Drang Valley • Robert S. McNamara • The Battle of Hamburger Hill • Abbie Hoffman • The Battle of An Loc • And much more President Nixon claimed that the war was “misreported then, and it is misremembered now.” This almanac will ensure that it is remembered correctly.