Ask old China hands about the early 2000s and you are likely to be met with a nostalgic sigh. The years following Beijing’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 were a thrilling time in the Middle Kingdom. GDP growth repeatedly topped 10% per year. Foreign investment flooded in and manufactured goods poured out in astonishing quantities onto global markets.
Of course, rocky geopolitics have since soured that dream of an emerging “global village” (how often do we hear that term anymore?). Yet there is still a place where that post-Cold-War optimism is alive and well. To China’s south there is another communist country whose economic dynamism, manufacturing prowess and openness to the West feels reminiscent of early 2000s China: Vietnam.
An economic phoenix
Vietnam’s own growth story is in some respects even more astounding than China’s. Even after the Vietnam war ended in 1975, the conflict-ravaged nation found itself under a US trade embargo that lasted until 1994. In 1979, intra-communist disputes saw Hanoi sucked into a brief border war with China, its powerful northern neighbour. Vietnam started the following decade as one of the world’s poorest nations, with a GDP per capita comparable to that of Ethiopia.
By the mid-1980s the shortcomings of centralised command economies were becoming apparent even to Marxists. Just
