Could Vietnam become the next silicon valley

Yes, they want foreign investment enough to leave matters alone for the next 5 years... They plan for 7% growth per year for next 5 years also. So no changing riders mid-stream as the saying goes. Things are going along nicely so leave them alone.
Vietnam’s Communist Party Gives Old-Guard Leader a New 5-Year Term
By MIKE IVESJAN. 27, 2016
HANOI, Vietnam — The Communist Party of Vietnam has chosen the incumbent general secretary as the country’s top leader for a second five-year term, the official Vietnam News Agency reported Wednesday.

The reappointment of Nguyen Phu Trong, 71, could slow the pace of Vietnam’s shift to a more open, market-oriented economy, but it is unlikely to alter its strategic balance in relations with China and the United States, analysts said.

Mr. Trong is a leader of the party’s old guard, which was trained in Soviet-style economics and has long seen neighboring China, Vietnam’s top trading partner, as a critical strategic and ideological ally. Notably, Mr. Trong appeared reluctant to criticize China when it deployed an oil rig in disputed waters in 2014.
But his visit to the White House last July underlined a growing view among party elites that developing better relations with the United States is in Vietnam’s national interest, and an essential counterweight to China’s influence in the region. Mr. Trong steered Vietnam into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an American-led trade agreement among a dozen Pacific Rim nations that excludes China.

Vu Xuan Nguyet Hong, a former vice president of Vietnam’s Central Institute for Economic Management, said the party’s 19-member Politburo, which has more power than any single politician, was in broad agreement on the need for both domestic economic changes and better relations with the United States.

“The reforms and renovation toward the market economy will continue,” and Vietnam’s relations with the United States will improve steadily, she said.

But Mr. Trong’s reappointment will send the United States-friendly prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, a rival who had reportedly sought the general secretary job, into not-so-early retirement later this year.

As prime minister, Mr. Dung has overseen a wave of foreign investment and cultivated warm relations with top American officials, analysts said. He has also spoken out more forcefully than other party leaders against China’s assertive claims to territory in the South China Sea and won support from ordinary Vietnamese who believe the country needs to escape China’s orbit as a way of securing its economic independence.

When China towed a giant oil rig into contested waters of the South China Sea near Vietnam’s central coast in May 2014, anti-China demonstrations erupted in Vietnamese cities, and rare riots broke out in several industrial zones. The United States later eased a longstanding ban on lethal weapons sales to Vietnam, although Russia still supplies the vast majority of Vietnam’s military equipment.

Mr. Dung, 66, is technically barred from serving another term under party rules because he is over 65 and has already served two terms as prime minister. Mr. Trong is also ineligible because he is over the age limit, but the party has apparently granted him a special exemption, for a second time.

Several analysts predicted that the pace of Vietnam’s already sluggish economic liberalization may slow further after Mr. Dung retires this year, in part because he has a better understanding than Mr. Trong of how to communicate with foreign investors and has been more eager to shake off the party’s Marxist-Leninist ideological mantle.

Tuong Vu, a political scientist at the University of Oregon, said Mr. Trong would probably be more receptive to hard-line party apparatchiks who argue against opening the country’s state-dominated agricultural and service sectors to foreign competitors and against a draft law that would codify rights for nongovernmental associations in Vietnam.

Both changes are seen as critical to bringing Vietnam into compliance with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If approved by its member legislatures, that deal will require Vietnam to further open its economy to foreign competition and make concessions on labor rights, on intellectual property and in other areas.

“All factions agree on a need to have more trade and investment,” Professor Vu said in a telephone interview. “But the Trong faction would resist any concessions, whereas the Dung faction would try to make the gesture of reform to keep money coming in.”

Sami Kteily, executive chairman of PEB Steel, a construction company in Ho Chi Minh City, said the country’s membership in several recent trade agreements underlined its commitment to being an active member of the global economy.

“I think it will be business as usual,” he said. “Vietnam is a country of institutions and policies not determined by one person.”

Frederick Burke, managing partner for Vietnam at the American law firm Baker & McKenzie, said the smooth leadership transition at this week’s party congress was encouraging because it highlighted the country’s political stability and respect for the rule of law.

“For people who live here, that’s what you want,” he said. “You don’t want a virtual civil war going on.”

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A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2016, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: New Term for Leader in Vietnam. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

 

It's just a meaningless link bait title. Nobody would read the article otherwise.

I don't even see how they came up with the title. First off, it makes no logical sense. Vietnam could become the next Silicon Valley? The ENTIRE nation?

Check out this quote from the article.

"But if you're here in six months, you will see Saigon Silicon City right here. We will build high-rise buildings, and along the river we will have a landscape with a park, and also a golf course and tennis, all kinds of entertainment."

Aiming to create the world's next Silicon Valley is ambitious. But Mr Hieu, a Vietnamese-American investor and chairman of the project, is a believer.
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See what they did there? They made a leap from "you will see Saigon Silicon City here" to OMG! Vietnam is going to be the next Silicon Valley!!11!!

No, that's not what the guy said. They are building a tech hub which they are calling "Saigon Silicon City."

There will never be another Silicon Valley. Just like there will never be another Lebron James. Different places will do different things. Investors look for opportunities everywhere. If it looks like it can create a return on an investment, then someone will try it. Yes, there is risk, but there is always risk (that's why we call it fishing and not catching.)

 

From the few articles I've read about VietNam, there seems to be an intense bubbling up of serious interest by the "monied" in VN, as well as by a significant minority of their intellectual elite within their governance, to begin to "pony up" some of their capital "chips" onto the world's economic poker table.

VN has made many small steps over this past decade to get to this point, and I suspect they will continue to do so.

That old saying in the States, "Go West young man." may become in this day and age, "Go East young man."

nwlivewire

 

Nope, still the same. In the States you Go West to get to the East.

 

Yep. And there's money from the "West" heading to VN and Myanmar.

Once again, Europe and US Corporations are placing those initial small bets in these areas of SE Asia, which are currently outside of China's borders.

Methinks there may be some hedging of bets going on from here, along with the desire to get in/create a ground floor, where IF successful, will garner the greatest profits (ROI).

This could also create over time, a rebalancing of "power and influence" in this region on many different levels.

Much depends on the tempo of this game and whether these players are already "johnny come lately" as China holds a significant stack on this table.

But I suppose one may not really know this until one enters the game and plays a few hands.

Let's hope for the turn of a friendly card....

V/R,
nwlivewire

 

China is beginning to have labor problems also as the prices of goods and services in China rise the workers are demanding higher wages and also better working conditions. Whereas in Vietnam the manufacturers are paying measly wages and have horrible working conditions yet an almost unlimited amount of manual labor so their ROI is even higher. Bottom line is king! Plus many businesses are concerned about the housing crises China has right now which is much, much worse that the one America went through in 2007-8 that crippled the world economy. China is in even worse shape and looking like it will implode sooner that later.
Click on link below:
Toxic Loans Around the World Weigh on Global Growth

 

In my internet reading travels, which are very broadly ranged, I've come across several thought-provoking essays that take the position that China could implode due in part to the overbuilding of housing skyscrapers ("ghost cities"), internal/external problems with balance of internal/eternal trade agreements and loaner/debtor bonds/notes, internal regional conflicts of interest, and on and on. And that's just for starters, and just a few of the issues/variables as they relate to China's economic part of this very complex equation.

There are soooo many dynamically moving parts to a nation's internal/external "body", I know that my simplistic knowledge level is most inadequate to address China's overall health and their "State of The Union" (or dis-union).

But I have noticed several essays positing that a major re-adjustment of many of China's internal/external systems will be continuing to experience changes over these next two decades, due in part from these past three/four decades of rapid growth.

Whether these "growing pains" will or will not severely impact the world, or how the world will respond to China's "growing pains" remain to be seen.

In this regard, we do live in very interesting times.

V/R,
nwlivewire