Having lived in VN for over 2 years (2019-2022) and witnessed government policy making first hand, I must say I am a lot less positive about Vietnam’s future than I was before.
The main reason is that decision making at all government levels seems virtually non existent. Unlike China, which has a very strong central leadership, Vietnam’s government is very fractious , with an enormous amount of infighting and score-settling all the time.
This means no one want to be accountable for decisions in case they will be used against them at a later stage.
There is also an enormous amount of rent seeking, where one group may oppose very sensible policies or development projects just in order to extract financial gain. For a communist country, Vietnamese are extraordinarily obsessed with money, and rent seeking is the quickest way for (local) officials to get rich.
Combine this with all the other factors, such as the poor education and lack of political vision, and you have a country that’s heading for a grinding halt.
Yes, some big manufacturers are still settling up factories, and these are hailed as big victories, but these are just riding on past policies. “Changing direction” is not something I think Vietnam is able to do.
The former Singaporean PM Lee Kuan Yew, already described Vietnam’s problems in his memoirs, and they haven’t been fixed. If anything they’ve gotten worse because there is so much more richness up for grabs.
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