Barun Roy: Doi moi and Viet Nam

ASIA FILE

It's a reflection of how Viet Nam has chosen to develop itself

After two decades of doi moi (literally, change and newness), Viet Nam has reached a stage where its gross domestic product has begun to grow by over 7 per cent a year, land prices are among the highest in the world, the Ho Chi Minh City skyline, from Saigon River at night, is looking a lot like Kowloon's, living standards are three times better than what they used to be, the incidence of recorded poverty has fallen sharply, and the ground looks prepared for the country's membership of the World Trade Organisation by the end of this year.

Yes, Viet Nam today is vastly different from the Viet Nam that the Americans had left behind in 1975, shattered from long years of wars and totally confused as to where to go next. For almost a decade the Vietnamese were groping in the dark, full of nationalist sentiments and ideological tall talk.

Then, in the mid-1980s, came the realisation that senseless nationalism won't take the country anywhere, that the quickest way to revive the economy was to be pragmatic, integrate with the world, accept foreign investments, and tap resources wherever they can be had best, even if that means dealing with ideological enemies.

This is the Chinese model and once the Vietnamese had seen what it could do for China, they felt inspired. While a lot of homework is yet to be done and the pace has been relatively slow, Hanoi hasn't wavered from its course towards a market economy, nor has it shied from doing business with the Americans, who had once inflicted so much pain on its people. In building up an economy, it has learnt, the politics of revenge doesn't help at all.

The results of doi moi are increasingly visible even to casual visitors. Over 165 skyscrapers of all types now dominate Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), while slums along its once polluted canals are yielding to new residential and urban areas.

In Hanoi, next to the American Embassy, a two-bedroom apartment in the 34-storey, steel-and-glass residential tower called Trung Hoa-Nhan Chin rents for over $600 a month, while dazzling villas in the fashionable West Lake area are being hawked for monthly rents of between $2,000 and $3,000. A

Luxembourg-based company is gearing up to build a 65-storey mixed-use property in the Vietnamese capital.

Highway 1, linking Hanoi and HCMC, has got rid of its potholes and ruts. A huge tourist complex, touted as Viet Nam's future entertainment hub, is nearing completion in Danang. The Japanese are looking to develop the Dalat-Dankia area for tourism.

The Americans want to build an $800 million tourism and commercial complex in the Central Quang Nam province. The Taiwanese have offered to set up a $700 million stainless steel plant in Vung Tau province. Indonesia's Selim Group has sunk $2.1 billion to develop an international city in Hanoi's West Lake district.

But nowhere is Viet Nam's ambition to integrate with the world, economically and culturally, better reflected than in the mega-million-dollar Saigon South project in HCMC. A 3,300-hectare (8,154 acres) area, about the size of the proposed Rajarhat New Town in Kolkata, is being developed to give the city a new lung and a fresh start before the economic boom begins to choke its arteries.

The area has a cultural and recreational zone conceived as a necklace of parks, gardens, and green spaces; a scenic river zone featuring a large nature park; and a development zone made up of high-end residential and commercial properties. Linking up the various zones is a 17.8 km. six-lane highway, known as Saigon South Parkway, connecting the Saigon port area at one end and Highway 1 on the other.

The project began in 1998, and already the place is thriving with an amusement park with a 20-storey-high Wonder Wheel, a movie complex, office buildings, luxury villas and apartments nearly fully occupied, golf courses, sports facilities, and at least half a dozen schools to serve various international communities.

However, it's not the content of its development but how it's being developed that makes Saigon South so interesting. The whole scheme is being implemented on a public-private-partnership basis by Taiwan's Central Trading & Development (CT&D) Group.

American architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have prepared the master plan while the design team includes two other foreign firms: Koetter Kim & Associates of Boston and Kenzo Tange Associates of Tokyo.

Electricity for Saigon South, as well as for the neighbouring Tan Thuan export processing zone, comes from Viet Nam's first fully foreign-owned power station, also built by CT&D. And Australia's Melbourne Institute of Technology is setting up a full-fledged branch campus, the country's first completely foreign-owned university.

It's a truly globalised endeavour and a reflection of how Viet Nam has chosen to develop itself, not at China's pace but steadily nonetheless.