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Vietnam's Tech Boom: a Look Inside Southeast Asia's Silicon Valley
rjmarvin writes: Vietnam is in the midst of a tech boom. The country's education system is graduating thousands of well-educated software engineers and IT professionals each year, recruited by international tech companies like Cisco, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, LG, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and others setting up shop in the southern tech hub of Ho Chi Minh City and the central coastal city of Da Nang. Young Vietnamese coders and entrepreneurs are also launching more and more startups, encouraged by government economic policies encouraging small businesses and a growing culture around innovation in the country.
Every day there's another story about some city that's "The Silicon Valley of ________"
Let's just call a spade a spade: The entire world is desperate for an engine of economic growth, and they have all pinned their hopes on tech-fueled riches which in most cases are really just more stories stories of bubble economics,
Tech,mat least in the sense of current gen Internet tech / apps and eCommerce is thoroughly saturated and questionably profitable in a disturbingly large number of cases.
But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment -- we'll likely hear many more silly stories of "technology capitals" sprouting up in every corner of the world.
I wish the USA's government economic policies encouraged small business and a growing culture around innovation in the country.
Instead we get more licensing and regulation requirements.
oblig:
"me outsource you long-time."
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
One of the economic problems brought about with the rise of trans-global companies is that capital is is fluid while labor is not. I'd be more than happy to live in an area that pays a lower wage as long as the cost of living was commensurately lower, but am disallowed to emigrate to another country. Funny how economist don't regard this as a distortion of the market, but the moment you mention tariffs, they throw their hands up in the air and talk about the evils of government meddling. Makes me want to go back to a gold standard just so they would have to pay for gold barges to pay their new staff. This disproportionality is somewhat addressed through the EU and other trade agreements, but is still looming as a crisis on the horizon: you can only slash and burn so often before you end up with banker's heads on pikes and Marx laughing from his grave.
Nor has economics made any inroads at addressing the problems with abundance. As many products of the tech boom are essentially digital, there is an unlimited supply which can only be profitable with artificial scarcity. Again, most economic theories I've read about are mostly silent about this distortion of the market, even going so far as to create abstractions like IP with a straight face.
It will be the height of irony if current capitalist models pave the way for market communism.
Is Vietnam really Communist any more? They are China w/ the one party rule but w/o the human rights abuses
Honestly, I'm surprised that this hasn't been a story sooner. In the 90s & 00s, when I worked in the Valley, after Chinese, the 2nd largest ethnic group in my company was Vietnamese. And this was at 2 of my former employers - both in semiconductors.
I'd say that Vietnam is a much better country for US to deal w/ than China. They don't have those human rights abuses, are no longer about territorial hegemony (other than some islands in the South China Sea that even Philippines & China all claim), are not occupying Cambodia, Laos or Tibet, are not supplying missiles to Iran or North Korea and in general are pretty happily minding their own business. I would much rather see a good portion of the outsourced China labor move to Vietnam, and the rest come back to the US.
They don't have those human rights abuses
Uhh .. no. Vietnam is a much more repressive country than China. You don't hear much about their abuses because the American press has puffed China up into a big bad boogey man, so stories about the evil Chinese more popular. When countries start to reform, as both China and Vietnam have, they actually seem to be getting worse, because abuses are more likely to be publicized, and people have more opportunities to express their grievances. But China is further along that path than Vietnam.
Uh... no it isn't. I'm an American liiving in Hanoi right now. Here is how this works:
Step 1: Do not criticize the communist party
Step 2: Have fun.
Break step 1 and you might have a bad time,especially if you do it as a vietnamese person in vietnamese publications. But other than that - go nuts.
That's pretty much it. It's capitalism central over here, growth is crazy high, infrastructure is surprisingly good across the whole country. Pollution isn't bad (at least in Hanoi,can't speak to Saigon).
If you want to know the difference, try using Google's play store in china - walled. Try accessing a lot of foreign sites in china - walled. Here I've got no issues at all. Almost nothing is blocked and my VPNs are never blocked at all. I can dial into the USA and watch netflix no problem.
Oh, and I have a person 45mb fiber line for $40 a month. It rocks.