Half-way from rags to riches
Apr 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Vietnam has made a remarkable recovery from war and penury, says Peter Collins (interviewed here). But can it change enough to join the rich world?
Eyevine
Correction to this article
KNEES and knuckles scraping the ground, the visitors struggle to keep up with the tour guide who is briskly leading the way through the labyrinth of claustrophobic burrows dug into the hard earth. The legendary Cu Chi tunnels, from which the Viet Cong launched waves of surprise attacks on the Americans during the Vietnam war, are now a popular tourist attraction (pictured above). Visitors from all over the world arrive daily at the site near the city that used to be called Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the Communists took the south in 1975.
Alongside the wreckage of an abandoned M41 tank another friendly guide demonstrates a dozen types of improvised booby-traps with sharp spikes that were set in and around the tunnels to maim pursuing American soldiers. The Vietnamese not only welcome the tourist dollars Cu Chi brings in, but are also rather proud of it. They feel it demonstrates their ingenuity, adaptability, perseverance and, above all, their determination to resist much stronger foreign invaders, as the country has done many times down the centuries.
These days Vietnam also has plenty of other things to be proud of. In the 1980s Ho Chi Minh's successors as party leaders damaged the war-ravaged economy even more by attempting to introduce real communism, collectivising land ownership and repressing private business. This caused the country to slide to the brink of famine. The collapse soon afterwards of its cold-war sponsor, the Soviet Union, added to the country's deep isolation and cut off the flow of roubles that had kept its economy going. Neighbouring countries were inundated with desperate Vietnamese “boat people”.
Since then the country has been transformed by almost two decades of rapid but equitable growth, in which Vietnam has flung open its doors to the outside world and liberalised its economy. Over the past decade annual growth has averaged 7.5%. Young, prosperous and confident Vietnamese throng downtown Ho Chi Minh City's smart Dong Khoi street with its designer shops. The quality of life is high for a country that until recently was so poor, and its larger cities have retained some of their colonial charm, though choking traffic and constant construction work are beginning to take their toll.
An agricultural miracle has turned a country of 85m once barely able to feed itself into one of the world's main providers of farm produce. Vietnam has also become a big exporter of clothes, shoes and furniture, soon to be joined by microchips when Intel opens its $1 billion factory outside Ho Chi Minh City. Imports of machinery are soaring. Exports plus imports equal 160% of GDP, making the economy one of the world's most open.
All this has kept government revenues buoyant despite cuts in import tariffs. The recent introduction of company taxes is also helping to fill the government's coffers. Spending on public services has surged, yet public debt, at an acceptable 43% of GDP, has remained fairly stable.
Having made peace with its former foes, Vietnam hosted Presidents Bush, Putin and Hu at the Asia-Pacific summit in 2006 and joined the World Trade Organisation in 2007. This year it has one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council.
Vietnam's Communists conceded economic defeat 22 years ago, in the depths of a crisis, and brought in market-based reforms called doi moi (renewal), similar to those Deng Xiaoping had introduced in China a few years earlier. As in China, it took time for the effects to show up, but over the past few years economic liberalisation has been fostering rapid, poverty-reducing growth.
The World Bank's representative in Vietnam, Ajay Chhibber, calls Vietnam a “poster child” of the benefits of market-oriented reforms. Not only does it comply with the catechism of the “Washington Consensus”—free enterprise, free trade, sensible state finances and so on—but it also ticks all the boxes for the Millennium Development Goals, the UN's anti-poverty blueprint. The proportion of households with electricity has doubled since the early 1990s, to 94%. Almost all children now attend primary school and benefit from at least basic literacy.
Vietnam no longer really needs the multilateral organisations' aid. Multilateral and bilateral donors together have promised the country $5.4 billion in loans and grants this year, but with so much foreign investment pouring in, Vietnam's currency reserves increased by almost double that figure last year. At least the aid donors have learned from the mid-1990s, when excessive praise discouraged Vietnam from continuing to reform, prompting an exodus of investors. Now the tone in private meetings with officials is much franker, says a diplomat who attends them.
Vietnam has become the darling of foreign investors and multinationals. Firms that draw up a “China-plus-one” strategy for new factories in case things go awry in China itself often make Vietnam the plus-one. Wage costs remain well below those in southern China and productivity is growing faster, albeit from a lower base. When the UN Conference on Trade and Development asked multinationals where they planned to invest this year and next, Vietnam, at number six, was the only South-East Asian country in the top ten.
The government's programme of selling stakes in publicly owned firms and exposing them to market discipline has recently gathered pace. At the same time the switch from a command economy to free competition has allowed the Vietnamese people's entrepreneurialism to flourish. Almost every household now seems to be running a micro-business on the side, and a slew of ambitious larger firms is coming to the stockmarket.
Much of the praise now being showered anew on the country is deserved. The government is well on course for its target of turning Vietnam into a middle-income country by 2010. Its longer-term aim, of becoming a modern industrial nation by 2020, does not seem unrealistic.
But from now on the going may get tougher. As Mr Chhibber notes, few countries escape the “middle-income trap” as they become richer. They tend to lose their reformist zeal and see their growth fizzle. A study in 2006 by the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences concluded that further reductions in poverty will require higher growth rates than in the past because the remaining poor are well below the poverty line, whereas many of those who recently crossed it did not have far to go.
The stench of corruption
The Communist Party leadership openly admits that the Vietnamese public is fed up with the endemic corruption at all levels of public life, from lowly traffic policemen and clerks to the most senior people in ministries. In 2006, just before the party's five-yearly congress, the transport minister resigned and several officials were arrested over a scandal in which millions of dollars of foreign aid were gambled on the outcome of football matches. The leadership insists it is doing its best to clean up, but a lot remains to be done.
Almost as bad as the corruption is the glacial speed of legislative and bureaucratic processes. Proposed laws have to pass through all sorts of hoops before taking effect, with endless rounds of consultations to build consensus. The dividing line between the Communist Party, the government and the courts is not always clear. The justice system is rudimentary. Lawyers have no formal access to past case files, so they find it hard to use precedent in legal argument.
The government is part-way through a huge project to slim the bureaucracy and streamline official procedures. It recently cut the number of ministries from 28 to 22. Yet for the moment the bureaucratic logjam is stopping the country building the roads, power stations and other public works it needs to maintain its growth rate. Nguyen Tan Dung, the prime minister, says that if growth is to continue at its current rate, the country's electricity-generating capacity needs to double by 2010. That seems a tall order, to put it mildly.
Soaring car-ownership is leaving the country's underdeveloped roads increasingly gridlocked. In an admirably liberal attempt to limit price distortions as oil surged above $100 a barrel, the government slashed fuel subsidies in February. But one effect will be to stoke inflation, already worryingly high at 19.4% in March. Bank lending surged by 38% last year as firms and individuals borrowed to speculate on shares and property.
The government is finding it much harder to manage an economy made up of myriad private companies, banks and investors than to issue instructions to a limited number of state institutions, especially as the public sector is currently suffering a drain of talent to private firms that are able to offer much higher pay.
What could go wrong
All this leaves Vietnam's continued economic development exposed to a number of risks:
• Rising inflation—which is hurting low earners in particular—and a growing shortage of affordable housing could create a new urban underclass among unskilled workers who have left the land for the cities. Combined with rising resentment at official corruption and the increasing visibility of Vietnam's new rich, this could cause social friction and bring strikes and protests, chipping away at the political stability that has underpinned Vietnam's strong growth and investment.
• Trade liberalisation and increased domestic competition will benefit some firms and farmers but hurt others—especially inefficient state enterprises. These could join forces and press the government to halt or even reverse the reforms.
• The slumping stockmarket or perhaps a property crash could cause a big firm or bank to fail. Given the country's weak and untested bankruptcy laws and financial regulators, the authorities may find it hard to deal with that kind of calamity.
• Natural disasters, from bird flu to floods, could cause chaos.
• The economy could come up against the limits of its creaking infrastructure and the shortage of people with higher skills. Jammed roads, power blackouts and the inability to fill managerial and professional jobs could all bring Vietnam's growth rate crashing down.
Vietnam has set itself such demanding standards that even if some combination of these factors did no more than push annual growth below 5%, it would be seen as a serious setback. The foreign minister, Pham Gia Khiem, notes that Vietnam's current growth of around 8-9% is lower than that in Asia's richest economies at the same stage in their development.
Despite the risks ahead, Vietnam has already provided the world with an admirable model for overcoming war, division, penury and isolation and growing strongly but equitably to reach middle-income status. This model could be followed by many impoverished African states or, closer to home, perhaps by North Korea. If it can be combined with gradual political liberalisation, it might even offer something for China to think about.
我国经济经历了三十多年的快速发展，在取得了发展奇迹的同时也存在着很多问题。下面是我为大家精心推荐的经济类学术论文（英文），希望能够对您有所帮助。
经济类学术论文（英文）篇一
The Likonomics
“Likonomics”, the term to describe Chinese Premier Li Keqiang`s economic policy. Was coined on June 27 by three economists at Barclays Capital. Like "Thatcherism", "Reaganomics", and more recently “Abenomics”, "Likonomics" has become the buzzword to describe the implications of China's new economic program. And what is “Likonomics”? The Barclays Capital`s economists also give our a explain, “Likonomics” was a series of measures adopted by the State Council. The measures were passed to ensure the sustainability of China`s economy. “which could be summarized as "Likonomics", consists of three key pillars: no stimulus, Deleveraging and structural reform." It is mean the China need to free the market, and stop the government control the market. And this new police is a long-term objectives, so the next three years the grew rate of Chinese quarter of Economic will be reduced at least 4%.
“Since assuming office in mid-March, Premier Li Keqiang has taken a different policy path. Its key economic policy framework, which could be summarized as "Likonomics", consists of three key pillars: no stimulus, deleveraging and structural reform.”(China Daily 07/05/2013 page9 by Huang Yiping). In the news, we know the three solutions, “no stimulus”, “Deleveraging” and “structural reform”. The “stimulus” mean the government in the short time,following the liabilities or expand the money supply to stimulate the economy, but at the same time the inflation also coming, So the first way is to decrease the Chinese inflation. And the second solution is “Deleveraging”, this solution`s meaning is “repay”, repay the money that borrow before the economic crisis, at the same time the most assets, such as stocks, bonds, real estate the prices of those assets will be decrease, and the country`s economy also will be reduced. The last solution is the “structural reform”, everyone know the government has no able to control the market, because the government cannot get all information for the government, but it just is the half reason for this solution, the other part is the “corruption” in the Chinese government system, the power official have able to control the economy. So the Premier Li Keqiang build the “free trade zone” in Shanghai, in this area no one can control the economy, that mean every thing happen in this area are all form the market`s self adjusting.
In fact the words “no stimulus”, “Deleveraging” and “structural reform” are professional, so I use my own word to explain the “Likonomics”. I have four steps. First step, only “fight” the inflation and do not care the Chinese Economy grow rate, right now in China the RIBOR between banks is from 2% increase to 30%, it is effective to stop the banks`s venture investment, because when the RIBOR increase the bank have to keep the “working capital” in their own hand, they have no enough able to pay the extremely high interest rate, so that the total money in the market going to decrease. But at the same time the China “Total Social Financing ” it reduced 43%. Secondly step, is decrease the TAX, as same as the picture show as, right now the Chinese tas price is stand on the point A, and if the government reduced the tax price the total tax revenue will be increase. Thirdly step, is free the coal`s price, because in China the coal is the most important resource, people use the coal to generate electricity, warm and others, but on the coal have 88 kinds of tax, and the government disagree to trade the coal with other countries, so that if the government stop to control the coal`s price, the price will be decrease, then the burden of enterprises will accordingly drop. Fourth step, and also the last step is talk about
the government control. We all know, that if the government control the market the efficiency of market will goes down, because the government cannot get all the information in the market. So the “Free trade zone” was born in Shanghai, in this zone the government cannot control, and the other large enterprise also cannot intervene, it is a 100% free market. The Premier Li is use this way to break the bureaucracy in China.
Right now, the China is the fastest develop country in the world, and at the same time the stagflation also is coming. So the Premier Li use the extremely hard cost to stop the Chinese inflation increase. We don`t know what will be happen in the after ten years, even twenty years, the China, stand on the top of world, every action of China can have able to effect the international economic.
All the informations are from those website:The Likonomics
经济类学术论文（英文）篇二
I live in the area which has five communities. They are a large community Taizi vally, two medium communities Shanshuiqing and Nuode internation, and two small communities, Shanhaicuilu and Ray. 0755. Residents Quantity:2500 families.
The supermarket quantity: before 2009, there's a Huarun for us to buy something we need, but it moved after property right had transfered . Before 2010,there are no formal large supermarket. Supermarkets in geographical position from this area is far place but they has some small buses to transport customers, but I live in the area which just has some stores and a large farmer's market. By the end of 2010, Easy life opened and Baijia opened in early 2011. They are opened for residents’ everyday necessities demand. In March 2011,Easy life went out of business but Baiji’s business is booming.This article will mainly discuss the reason of Easy life closed and consumers choice problem.
一.What decided they fate?
1. From market supply and demand we can see that when Easy life and Baijia existing at the same time, there are supply greater than demand .
2. When market supply greater than demand, which decide their fate is consumer preferences.
First, shopping environment from view, consumer preferences in purchasing Baijia because it has a comfortable environment for comsumer to buy something. And at this point, Baijia do better than Easy life, such as: the ground very clean, there was nothing in the cart like residual vegetables or other things, shelves are very neat and clean, air indoor is very good.moreover from display of goods to see, though two of the supermarket goods no matter from varieties or to brand are familiar, but Baijia do better than Easy life and obviously the main problem is that Easy life’s commodity classification isn’t science, shelves has many unused space, etc. In addition to attract consumers from some of the factors, such as the lights, warm lamplight can make the fruit and vegetable appear very fresh, and can still make consumer feel very comfortable and it can also stimulate consumer to buy someting, so consumers are willing to spend more time to purchase goods.But choose the cool color light will make the fruit and vegetable seems not fresh and color looks wrong, the most important is the cool color light may make consumers feel unwell, consumers don’t want to stay in the supermarket any more, that is certainly will reduce consumer’s more consumption. At this point Baijia will do better than Easy life.
The above is from thing’s logical thinking , however, but when we use economic theory to treat Easy life closed and there is something we cann’t understand. Because of Easy life is at the side of the road where there is a large community, a medium-sized community and a small community. From the factor of buy something convenient to see, people actually are more willing to go to Easy life, because it does not need to cross the road. And the cashier of Easy life work more efficiently than Baijia, the bill. And this reduce customer unnecessary waiting time. The most important advantages of Easy life that the price of same goods is cheaper than relative to the best goods cheaper than Baijia. So why are these relationships to the immediate interests of consumers advantage did not let Easy life’s business thriving? Instead of "advantage" that is blatant and why let Baijia’s business thriving? Personally, I think, this is the result of irrational consumer behavior! Economics of three assumptions, the most controversial is rational man hypothesis.
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