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2 Vietnam's generational
split By Long S Le
When
Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet meets with
his US counterpart George W Bush on Friday in
Washington to discuss trade, investment and
perhaps even politics, Vietnam's shifting
demographics won't be on the high-level agenda.
Yet the sentiments of Vietnam's post-war
generation are increasingly crucial to the success
or failure of the Communist Party-led and
US-supported economic reform drive.
"Youth
is the future" is not merely an article of faith
but is a statistical reality in today's Vietnam.
About 60% of the country's
80
million or so people are under the age of 30. This
means about 50 million Vietnamese –or about 24
million under 14 and 26 million between 15 to 30
years old –came of age after the Vietnam War.
More and more Vietnamese urban youth are
now modeling themselves after American capitalist
Bill Gates rather than revolutionary cadre Ho Chi
Minh, marking a notable departure from
nationalistic ideals to economic pragmatism and a
significant shifting of dues from youth leagues to
karaoke bars.
This partially explains why
the Communist Party has in recent years faced hard
times in recruiting young people - from 1993 to
2002, only about 4% of new party members were
students. A 2000 poll conducted by a state-run
magazine, Tuoi Tre, found that 90% of Ho Chi Minh
City youths considered Microsoft founder Gates
their "role model", followed by Ho Chi Minh at
39%. The then-prime minister, Phan Van Khai, was
only half as popular as president Bill Clinton, 3%
and 6% respectively.
The 120,000 published
copies of Tuoi Tre's survey were later destroyed
by state censors and the publication's three
editors were harshly sanctioned. Yet the survey's
findings showed clearly the sociopolitical
orientation of today's Vietnamese youth is starkly
different from their parents, who came of age
during the so-called anti-American War and whose
upward mobility was closely associated with the
ruling Communist Party. Yet is it different enough
to cause real political change?
In the
Cold War era, university students sent to Eastern
Europe and other socialist countries had the right
political credentials and saw their academic
achievement as owed to the "people" who sent them
abroad in order to contribute to greater
collectivity. Many from that generation - now
ranging from 45 to 60 years of age - are replacing
the more senior generation, whose task today is to
balance market-oriented economic reforms with Ho
Chi Minh thought and revolutionary socialist
institutions.
President Nguyen Minh
Triet's tour of the United States reflects this
desired "third way". On Thursday, he signed a
Trade and Investment Framework agreement with US
Trade Representative Karan Bhatia designed to open
more Vietnamese markets to US investors. He also
secured more than US$2.5 billion through a
memorandum of understanding with Citigroup,
Wachovia, Microsoft, and NYSE Euronext to help
modernize Vietnamese state-owned enterprises,
including the Electricity of Vietnam, Vietnam Coal
and Mineral Industries Group, Vietnam National
Shipping Lines, the Ho City Minh City Securities
Trading Center and the Vietnam Bank for
Agriculture and Rural Development.
This
financial assistance implicitly legitimizes the
role for Vietnam's state-owned enterprises in the
country's capitalist transition. Yet on the
surface they would also appear to run counter to
US trade policies, which broadly encourage
governments to govern and get out of private
business. According to US consul general to
Vietnam Seth Winnick, by focusing too heavily on
production, the Vietnamese government "becomes
distracted" and "can't do its job as a
government".
The Communist Party-led
government is now bidding to pursue a "third way"
which both maintains Ho Chi Minh's communist
collectivist philosophies but also legitimizes the
capitalist pursuit of individual wealth and
private consumption. As Vietnam more deeply
engages the global economy, many Western analysts
contend that the old generation of Vietnamese
leaders is destined to lose the campaign to keep
its people uniform and uninformed. Indeed the
conflicting collectivist and capitalist impulses
are fast causing intergenerational gaps in
political outlook, with sections of the younger
generation less tolerant of the party's tight
state controls.
Vietnam's post-war
generation are increasingly taking courses in
English, establishing friendly contacts with
foreign families and friends, and rapidly plugging
into the Internet, which as of last July including
13 million regular users. For many Vietnamese
youth, speaking English and surfing the Internet
are part and parcel of their passion for
modernity. Yet whether Vietnam's new generation is
pushing for the sort of social and economic change
that will lead to more democracy is still
uncertain.
One key reason is that these
activities are not necessarily private or beyond
the administrative control of the government. A
recent study by the OpenNet Initiative found that
access to the Internet in Vietnam is extensively
regulated, not only through legal means but also
through technical sophistication. According to the
study, the state has been able to block access to
"a significant fraction, in some cases a great
majority, of politically or religiously sensitive
material" that could undermine its one-party
system. It goes on to predict that "state online
information control will deepen and grow".
One clear example of state control is the
arrest of three Vietnamese youth Internet users
who were detained in October
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