The new Vietnam: open to foreign investors, closed to wartime past

Marcus Gee

HO CHI MINH CITY  -  Before he was a millionaire construction magnate, Dang Thanh Tam was a ship's captain. For someone from Vietnam, then a closed and desperately poor country licking its war wounds, it was a rare chance to see the world. He visited Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.

"I saw tall buildings. The roads were clean. The people looked great," he recalls over tea in his modest office. He decided that Vietnam had to catch up to its thriving neighbours and that he would lead the chase.

"They can own their own shops. They can own their own companies," he said to himself. "So why not me?"

He asked neighbours, friends and relatives: "Do you believe in me? Okay, give me money." He raised $1-million (U.S.) to start a construction company. Today, it is worth $700-million and Mr. Tam is one of Vietnam's richest men, the head of a conglomerate with 40 companies and a string of industrial parks.

He picks up visiting foreign investors in a Bentley limousine. He travels the world with Vietnam's top leaders, introducing them to his business friends. He believes with a passion that Vietnam must engage with the world he first saw as a seafarer.

A vigorous 53-year-old with tousled hair and a simple short-sleeved shirt, Mr. Tam nicely personifies the new Vietnam - outward-looking, eager to make friends, determined to move beyond the violent past. No one talks much about the long conflict with the Americans. Vietnam, its people seem to be saying, is a country, not a war. As Mr. Tam puts it, "We cannot change the past. We can change the future."

How? By opening its doors. "This is the only way we can improve the country and raise the standard of living of the people," he says. "Small countries need others. We cannot survive alone."

Vietnam has adopted the formula for success that has made so many other Asian countries rich: welcome foreign investors, embrace world trade. It accepts nearly as much foreign investment as India. It joined the World Trade Organization in January. As a result of this opening, its growth rate is one of the fastest in Asia.

In diplomacy, too, it is looking outward. It has been an active member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations since 1995. It was elected to a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council last month, a triumph for a country that was not long ago an international pariah for its intervention in Cambodia.

It has played host to the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Hanoi last year. Mr. Tam proudly shows a photo from the conference on his cellphone - George W. Bush has his arm around Mr. Tam's shoulder. Americans are generally popular here, the war be damned.

Pierre Lizée, a Canadian scholar who has lived in Hanoi, says Vietnam is building itself a new identity: "A Vietnam that is open to business, a Vietnam that is moving be-

yond its past focus on war, a Vietnam that is part of the global diplomatic superstructure, a Vietnam that is modernizing and wants to play a role that accords with its new position on the international stage."

Its top leaders are constantly on the road. Communist Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh is visiting South Korea next week, a month after visiting the Communist North. Vietnam plays both sides of the big powers, too, keeping on the good side of China, its giant neighbour, but also making up to Washington. "The U.S. is the biggest economy in the world," says Mr. Tam. "If you are against them, it is not good for you." You couldn't write a better summation of Vietnam's new pragmatism.

It's a refreshing attitude. While other countries slouch along with a chip on their shoulder over past oppression by the West, Vietnam wipes its hands and moves on. Its struggle with Western colonialism is much more recent, but you won't see Vietnamese wallowing in the bitterness and anti-Americanism that afflict so much of the Middle East. You won't see them obsessing about wartime atrocities, either, as China does over Japanese outrages in the Second World War. "What does the past do for you?" says Mr. Tam. "It's history."

Vietnam is showing that you can be an open, forward-looking nation and a proud and independent one at the same time. That's a lesson the whole developing world could embrace.

mgee@globeandmail.com