HANOI LETTER: This is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia, despite the authoritarian regime
AUTUMN IN Hanoi transforms the city, taking away much of the heat that has baked the Vietnamese capital during the summer months, leaving pleasing golden sunshine behind which seems to put everyone in a good mood.
The city is celebrating its 1,000th birthday this year, and walking through streets shaped by domestic architecture as well as the French colonial style, the atmosphere is upbeat, with a powerful sense of potential.
The thousands of scooters and motorbikes thronging the streets of the Old Town do so while causing relatively few accidents. Most people are deferential and polite to each other in a way that is encouraging, as the traffic can appear daunting.
Half the population was born after hostilities ceased in the devastating conflict referred to here as the American war, and although that bloodshed, which ended in 1975, still comes up regularly in conversation, there is remarkably little bitterness in evidence.
The prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton”, which once housed captured US military, including former Republican presidential candidate John Cain, is now a tourist site. The museum there still has his flight suit on display.
When the real Hilton group opened a hotel in Hanoi in 1999, they were careful to call it the Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel.
Ties between Hanoi and Washington have never been closer since the end of the war. In August, the US and Vietnam conducted joint naval exercises in the South China Sea, a sign of ever warmer military ties between the two former enemies.
In the lobby of the Hotel Melia, a group of 15 US military officials, in Hanoi for unspecified reasons, gathers every evening in the lobby. Former US servicemen are treated with great respect in hotel lobbies during their visits to the sites where they fought terrible battles, while many of the South Vietnamese who fled the country after the fall of Saigon in 1975 are now welcomed back and encouraged to invest in the country.
One group of Rotarians from Seattle, staying in a downtown hotel, is making a visit to see the damage wrought by the notorious defoliant chemical Agent Orange.
Among their number is a former US soldier who was drafted to fight, while their guide is the son of a general in the South Vietnamese Army who fled the country in 1975 by boat and nearly perished before the vessel was escorted into a US military base in the Philippines.
This is a country on the move, and it is keen to take its place alongside the Thailands and Singapores in the pantheon of high-performance economies in dynamic southeast Asia.
Vietnam feels like China 20 years ago, with many infrastructural and logistical issues to consider, but teeming with potential, and it is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia.
The Asian Development Bank recently upgraded its outlook for the country, forecasting 6.7 per cent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) this year, and 7 per cent next year. The forecast tallies with that of the ruling Communist Party.
Vietnam has benefited from a perception among foreign investors that China, now emerging as the region’s industrial powerhouse, is getting expensive, and a belief that the Beijing leadership is biased towards domestic companies.
Organisers were aggressive in organising the country’s inaugural international film festival. The red carpet event was screened live on TV and featured top Hollywood director Philip Noyce and Hong Kong movie stars Daniel Wu and Nick Cheung, both huge here.
Last week Hanoi played host to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit of national leaders, underlining its regional and indeed global ambitions. But the ASEAN meeting also highlighted some of the ways that Vietnam, and other authoritarian governments in the region, still stick to old ways, especially on human rights.
Leaders of various southeast Asian countries were just arriving as Vietnamese courts sentenced three labour activists to up to nine years in jail and convicted several Catholic villagers in a dispute over a cemetery. A dissident was also arrested.
One blogger, Le Nguyen Huong Tra, who blogged under the pen name of Do Long Girl, was arrested for claiming a government official had done favours for a winner of the Miss Vietnam pageant and certain artists because they were his son’s lovers, local media reported.
Vietnam is currently staging a crackdown on political bloggers, activists and others, rights groups say. None of the 10-nation ASEAN grouping criticised Vietnam over these issues, as many are vulnerable themselves on human rights. The grouping includes Burma, Laos and Thailand.
However, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, attending the summit, said the US was “concerned” about the arrest and conviction of people for peaceful dissent, attacks on religious groups and about curbs on internet freedom.
“Vietnam has so much potential, and we believe that political reform and respect for human rights are an essential part of realising that potential,” she said.
