News, 9-10/9/01
hyt...@my-deja.com
BY JIM PUZZANGHERA
Mercury News Washington Bureau, 7/9/01
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives approved a historic trade pact with
Vietnam on Thursday, along with legislation chiding Hanoi for human rights
violations in hopes the package will lead to economic and democratic reforms in
the communist nation.
The trade pact would fully normalize relations between the two countries as they
continue to try to move beyond the acrimony caused by the Vietnam War. After two
hours of often-contentious debate, the House passed the measure on a voice vote,
a reflection of its strong bipartisan support.
The deal still must be passed by the Senate, but it also enjoys broad support
there, where it easily was approved by the Finance Committee in July. It is
expected to pass the full Senate and be signed into law by President Bush this
fall. Senior Vietnamese leaders have said the National Assembly also will
approve the pact in the fall.
U.S. companies and farmers have been eager to gain more access to one of the
world's fastest-growing -- but heavily protected -- economies. Trade between the
two countries amounted to $1.12 billion last year, three-fourths of that in
Vietnamese exports such as coffee, shoes, rubber, textiles and fish.
Under the deal, tariffs the United States places on imports from Vietnam would
fall from an average of 43 percent to about 4 percent, as would tariffs and
other barriers placed by Hanoi on U.S. products and services.
The agreement also would protect U.S. intellectual property rights in a nation
that is one of the world's biggest computer-software pirates. Because of its
communist regime, Vietnam is one of six nations in the world the United States
has denied normal trade relations.
``This trade agreement is an opportunity to open up whole new avenues of
commerce and contact between our two countries,'' said Rep. Earl Blumenauer,
D-Ore. ``We're going to see a new era of economic prosperity in Vietnam . . .
that will give them the energy to slam the pages closed on this era and open a
new one.''
Relations still touchy
But 21 years after American troops withdrew from South Vietnam, ending the
bitter war and turning the entire country over to the Communist North
Vietnamese, relations with Vietnam are still a touchy subject for many in
Congress. Thursday's debate was contentious, as ardent anti-communists and human
rights advocates joined forces with representatives from areas with large
Vietnamese communities, such as San Jose and Orange County, to oppose the trade
deal.
``I am a firm believer in trade . . . but the situation in Vietnam is
different,'' said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, whose district contains
thousands of people who fled communist Vietnam. She urged her colleagues to
reject the trade deal in order to keep the pressure on Hanoi to grant religious
and political freedoms to its people. Opponents of the trade deal also said
Vietnam has not done enough to locate the remains of American soldiers still
missing in action.
Lofgren was among the main backers of the ``Viet Nam Human Rights Act.'' The
measure, which also passed Thursday, by a vote of 410-1, expresses Congress'
outrage at continued human rights abuses and tries to force reforms. The bill
would cap non-humanitarian aid to the Vietnamese government at current funding
levels unless progress is made on human rights. It also authorizes $2 million to
support human rights efforts in the country and to circumvent Hanoi's jamming of
Radio Free Asia broadcasts into Vietnam.
Human rights issues
``As we now open up our relations with Vietnam . . . politically and
economically, it is critical this body speaks out loud and clear on the issue of
human rights in Vietnam,'' said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo. ``It is important
to promote trade, but it is important to stand up for human rights as well.''
Lantos and other supporters of the human rights measure said they were outraged
of reports this week that two prominent, elderly dissidents were questioned by
Vietnamese police. That followed the reported death on Sunday of a 61-year-old
Buddhist activist, Ho Tan Anh, who burned himself to death in the city of Danang
in protest of the lack of religious freedom in the country.
In making the arrests shortly before Congress voted on the trade pact,
Vietnamese officials ``have verified themselves, by their own arrogance, the
need for us to pass a bill asserting human rights,'' said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,
R-Huntington Beach.
A long way to go
Even supporters of the trade deal admitted that Vietnam has a long way to go on
human rights. But they said the situation was improving as the United States has
become more engaged. Increasing trade between the two countries will hasten
economic and political reforms in Vietnam, backers of the deal said.
``It is a trade agreement that will allow us to continue to improve relations
with one of the fastest growing countries in terms of population and economy in
Southeast Asia,'' said Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield.
* Oil hits Vietnam beach despite bucket brigade
HANOI, Vietnam (AP, 8/9/01) -- Local residents in small boats used buckets to
try to collect thousands of gallons of oil from a damaged tanker and save a
nearby Vietnamese beach resort, an official said Saturday.
But wind and waves drove much of the spilled oil to the beach, which normally
attracts thousands of vacationers a day, the official of Vung Tau port said.
The Vietnamese Petrolimex 01 tanker, carrying 19,000 tons of diesel oil, was
anchored in Ganh Rai Bay in Ba Ria Vung Tau province when it was hit early
Friday by a Liberian-registered oil tanker, he said.
Several thousand gallons of oil spilled from a large hole in the ship before
other vessels were able to pump the remainder from the tanker's damaged
compartment, the official said. It took nearly a day to stop the spill.
The Liberian-registered oil tanker, Formosa 1, was not damaged in the accident.
Authorities refrained from using chemical foam to contain the oil, fearing more
serious pollution.
The Petrolimex 01, which belongs to Vitaco, a subsidiary of the state-owned
Petroleum Import and Export Corp., or Petrolimex, dropped anchor in the bay
about two hours before it was hit.
The accident occurred two miles from the beach in Vung Tau, about 75 miles from
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's southern commercial center.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the accident, he said.
Several oil spills have occurred in southern Vietnam over the past few years.
Vietnam produces more than 15 million tons of crude oil a year, but imports all
its oil products.
The construction of the country's first oil refinery by a joint venture between
state monopoly Petro Vietnam and a Russian company is under way in Dung Quat in
the central province of Quang Ngai.
* Vietnamese immigrants lose on tech
David Goll, Business Times, 7/9/01
Having read studies on the impact immigrants from China and India have had on
Silicon Valley and the tech industry, Tam Bui felt it was time to take a look at
how Vietnamese émigrés have affected the dominant industry of their adopted
homeland.
The second generation Vietnamese immigrant and UC-Berkeley student found little
in the way of impact to write about.
Her conclusion: Due to their different immigrant circumstances, people who left
Vietnam during the 1970s and 1980s as children or teen-agers are not as numerous
or as professionally "networked" in the high-tech arena as their Chinese or
Indian counterparts, who primarily arrived in the United States to attend
graduate school or work in tech-related businesses, having obtained H1B visas.
That's affected the ability of the 447,000 Vietnamese Americans who reside in
the nine-county Bay Area to earn an adequate living in the exorbitantly
expensive region. Bui also found that those with their own tech startups or
working for larger companies don't have nearly as many business connections with
their homeland as the other two groups.
"The Taiwanese and Indian governments have played a much bigger role in
promoting high-tech business both in their own countries and here than has
Vietnam, creating sort of a cross-pollination effect," she said. "The Vietnamese
government really has no relationship with Silicon Valley. High-tech business is
just getting started in Vietnam itself."
Despite her trailblazing efforts, Bui is no valley insider: She's a UC-Berkeley
senior whose parents ended up in California after their native South Vietnam
fell to the communist regime from the north in 1975.
"I was born and raised in Sacramento," said Bui, 20, whose major is titled
political economy of industrialized societies. She plans to study city planning
in graduate school next year.
"I found studies on Chinese and Indian immigrants in Silicon Valley fascinating,
but when I checked to see if anything similar had been done on Vietnamese
immigrants, there was nothing to be found."
Some of the studies on Chinese and Indian immigrants had been written by a
UC-Berkeley instructor, AnnaLee Saxenian, professor in the university's
Department of City and Regional Planning. So Bui approached Saxenian for advice
on how to proceed, and she agreed to become her mentor on the project.
Bui conducted her research earlier this summer, interviewing about 30 Vietnamese
immigrants in their 30s who are entrepreneurs, business executives and community
leaders.
Bui presented her study earlier this month at the annual California McNair
Scholars Symposium at UC-Berkeley, among a group of more than 100 students
participating in the event. McNair Scholars are first-generation American
college undergraduates from racial and ethnic groups traditionally
underrepresented in graduate-level education.
Lacking a car, Bui spent many hours during May and June taking BART and buses
between her East Bay home and her interview subjects, most of whom live and work
in the South Bay.
"Most of the Indian and Chinese immigrants now here received an elite education
in their homelands before coming to the United States, but Vietnamese immigrants
received most of their education here," Bui said. "Where other immigrants
settled in Silicon Valley, forming strong professional and personal ties with
one another, the Vietnamese have been here longer and are more spread out and
assimilated into American society. Like other people who grew up here, they
formed alliances with people they grew up with or friends they made in college."
Trung Dung is one of Bui's East Bay research subjects who has made his
connections work. He left Vietnam in 1984 at age 17, and his family settled in
Boston. Soon after arriving, he passed the high school equivalency exam and
entered the University of Massachusetts, where he earned undergraduate degrees
in math and computer science and finished most of a graduate-level program
within three years.
Dung moved here five years ago to co-found OnDisplay Inc., a company that
designed and manufactured Internet software. He sold the San Ramon-based company
last year and started another software firm, Tascola Inc.
While he agrees with Bui's findings that Vietnamese Americans are
underrepresented in the high-tech world, Dung compares them to other groups
who've been in the United States far longer than recent immigrants.
"We've only been here for about 25 years, so we're just beginning to form
professional networks to help us individually and as a community," he said.
"Unlike people from India, for example, many Vietnamese had to overcome a
language barrier. In the next five to 10 years, you'll begin to see larger
numbers of us starting our own companies or rising to upper management levels.
Dung said he had a basic reason for starting his own high-tech career in the
East Bay.
"My partner lived in Walnut Creek," he said. "But, looking back, I'm happy we're
here. Considering how bad the commute is to Silicon Valley, this is the place to
be."
Bui is also scheduled to present her study at a meeting sponsored by
UC-Berkeley's Haas School of Business next spring.
* Vietnam officials on trial for corruption
BBC, 10/9/01 - Eight people have gone on trial in Vietnam over a high-profile
corruption scandal that led to the disgrace of a deputy prime minister.
Six of the defendants are top government officials, who are accused of aiding
and abetting the corrupt land dealings of a private businessman.
The case, which sparked widespread public anger, involved the illegal reselling
of land earmarked for an amusement park in Hanoi.
In November 1999, the then Deputy Prime Minister, Ngo Xuan Loc, was dismissed
for his part in the scandal, but just five months later he was appointed special
advisor to the government with responsibility for the property sector.
The communist authorities in Vietnam admit that corruption has become a
widespread problem in the party.
* Vietnam corrpution trial begins
BBC, 10/9/01 - A court in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, has begun hearing the
first legal proceedings against top officials involved in a corruption case
which dates back almost two years.
The corruption allegations in 1999 led to the disgrace of a deputy prime
minister, Ngo Xuan Loc, the most senior official to be dismissed for corruption.
On Monday, eight other people - a central bank official, a tourism chief and six
officials from the planning ministry - went on trial over the case which centred
on a property deal on the Hanoi area of West Lake.
The allegations of fraud over the development of a $13m amusement park on West
Lake sparked an angry public reaction when they came to light. People demanded
tough action against those accused of involvement in the land deal.
It concerned a company headed by Le Tan Cuong, which allegedly falsified
financial documents making it eligible to bid for the contract to build the
entertainment complex despite the comapany having no construction experience.
The army newspaper, the Peoples Army, says the alleged fraud was uncovered when
the developer tried to sell off part of the land at a grossly inflated price.
About 30 people are said to have been involved in the fraud.
When a deputy prime minister, Ngo Xuan Loc was accused of involvement late in
1999 he became the most senior official in Vietnam to be dismissed for
corruption.
Just five months later he was back, working in a job with cabinet rank, with
responsibility for the same property sector connected to the original
accusations against him.
The case against the other officials is expected to last until Friday.
* Vietnamese Catfish Rile Southern Lawmakers
WP, 10/9/01 - You might call it the new war with Vietnam. But this time it's
over catfish, not communism.
Several House members from the South, who say Vietnam is dumping thousands of
tons of catfish a year in this country to the detriment of domestic catfish
farmers, want Congress to require the Asian version of the southern delicacy to
be labeled as a "product of Vietnam."
But to buttress their case, they are offering an argument with an ironic
historical twist. Catfish from Vietnam, they say, are raised in waterways that
remain polluted by Agent Orange and other highly toxic defoliants dumped on the
country by the U.S. military during the war.
"That catfish is produced in disgusting conditions on the Mekong River, which is
one of most polluted watersheds in the world," said Rep. Marion Berry (D-Ark.),
whose state is the third-largest producer of catfish, after Mississippi and
Alabama. "That stuff [Agent Orange] doesn't break down. Catfish are bottom
feeders and are more likely to consume dioxins that were sprayed as defoliants."
An amendment authored by Berry and Rep. Mike Ross, another Arkansas Democrat,
would require wholesalers not only to identify the country of origin but also to
label it as "Mekong catfish," "pangas catfish" or "basa catfish" to distinguish
it from what they say is the real thing: U.S. catfish.
Catfish producers say imports from Vietnam have soared, from 575,000 pounds in
1998 to as much as 20 million pounds this year.
Native catfish, raised in farm ponds under U.S. Department of Agriculture
guidelines, is a culinary fixture in the South, where it is served barbecued at
everything from family picnics to political fundraisers. So Berry and Co. make
clear they mean business.
Berry has pursued the issue with Bush trade officials and broached it with
Vietnamese officials during an Asian foray earlier in the year.
The catfish amendment, also sponsored by Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering
(R-Miss.), was ruled out of order during the final markup of a new farm bill in
July. Berry said they will try again to insert the provisions when the bill goes
to the House floor, or in a subsequent conference with the Senate.
* Dioxin affecting Vietnamese not exposed to Agent Orange - Dallas researcher
finds 'incredibly large levels' 30 years after sprayings
The Dallas Morning News, 10/9/01
A Dallas researcher is piling up more evidence that Agent Orange, which U.S.
troops sprayed more than 30 years ago to obliterate jungles in Vietnam, is still
exposing new generations of Vietnamese people to highly toxic dioxin.
New test results on people living near the site of a U.S. air base at Bien Hoa
City in the former South Vietnam confirm high levels of cancer-causing dioxin in
groups never exposed to the original spraying: children born after the war and
adults who moved to Bien Hoa from the north, where no Agent Orange was used.
The air base at Bien Hoa, a city of 390,000 people 22 miles northeast of Ho Chi
Minh City, was an Agent Orange storage center. As much as 7,000 gallons of Agent
Orange – named for the orange stripes on its barrels – spilled there in 1970.
Test results received last week confirm earlier findings by dioxin researcher
Dr. Arnold J. Schecter of Dallas that dioxin exposure from Agent Orange is an
ongoing problem for many Vietnamese, not just for those who were there when
spraying took place.
Of 35 Bien Hoa residents for whom test results are in, 33 had elevated dioxin
levels in their blood. Among a comparison group of people living in Hanoi in
northern Vietnam, only one showed elevated dioxin – and that amount was still
more than 10 times lower than the lowest level found in Bien Hoa.
"It shows that people are still getting large amounts of dioxin 30, 40 years
afterwards," said Dr. Schecter, professor of environmental sciences at the
University of Texas School of Public Health at Dallas. "These are just
incredibly large levels."
Dr. Schecter, who did the study with dioxin researcher Le Cao Dai of the Vietnam
Red Cross and other scientists, was scheduled to present the findings at an
international dioxin conference that convened Sunday in Kyongju, South Korea.
The study is part of Dr. Schecter's 17 years of research on Agent Orange, a
herbicide mixture that U.S. troops sprayed on about 10 percent of southern
Vietnam to wipe out forests where enemy forces might hide.
From 1962 to 1971, the United States sprayed 15 herbicides in Vietnam, according
to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The department says Agent Orange,
used from 1965 to 1970, accounted for most of the 20 million gallons sprayed.
U.S. soldiers and airmen who mixed or sprayed Agent Orange, as well as the
Vietnamese people who were in the sprayed areas, have been the subject of health
concerns since the time the spraying occurred.
Agent Orange was contaminated with a type of dioxin – a family of powerful,
long-lasting and cancer-causing substances – known as
2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, or TCDD.
TCDD, an industrial byproduct, is the most toxic and most studied of the 20
dioxin or dioxin-like compounds found in virtually all people's bodies. The
Environmental Protection Agency's new scientific reassessment of dioxin, due out
soon, calls dioxin a human carcinogen. The substance also is linked to other
serious health risks.
Previous research has found declining dioxin levels in Vietnamese people.
However, "recent blood, soil and sediment samples from Vietnam strongly suggest
a reversal of this trend," according to an abstract of Dr. Schecter's latest
study, "with current as well as previous exposure of Vietnamese people and the
environment."
Researchers speculate that dioxin in the soil contaminated groundwater and then
made its way into surface waters, where people caught fish as a main food
source. Highest levels were found in people who ate fish from a river adjacent
to the air base site.
People who ate locally caught fish had dioxin levels in their blood as high as
271 parts per trillion, 135 times higher than the level for people in northern
Vietnam who were never exposed to Agent Orange.
Children in Bien Hoa who were born at least nine years after the spraying ended
had dioxin levels 29 to 44 times higher than unexposed Vietnamese. One child
born in 1988, 17 years after the last spraying, had 34 times the level of
unexposed people.
Chemical tests show that Agent Orange was the only possible source of the
dioxin, Dr. Schecter said. Further research is needed to isolate which fish
contain the dioxin and exactly how the dioxin reached the river, he said.
Dr. Schecter said the findings at Bien Hoa suggest that similar problems might
be occurring at Vietnam's 12 to 30 other "hot spots" of heavy Agent Orange
spraying or spills.
This summer, the United States and Vietnam signed a limited agreement for more
research, including a conference on Agent Orange and human health to be held in
Vietnam next year and some early soil sampling.
Soil tests could eventually set the stage for talks over the need for massive
environmental cleanups in Vietnam – and over who should pay for them – as well
as more medical research on what Dr. Schecter calls a public health emergency.
"Vietnam is the largest dioxin lab in the world," he said.
* Vietnam holds Taiwan-owned tanker after collision
HANOI (Reuters, 10/9/01) - Vietnamese authorities will hold a Taiwan-owned
tanker for an "unknown period" after it collided with a Vietnamese tanker last
week, triggering a diesel spill, officials said on Monday.
They said the Vietnamese tanker Petrolimex 01, owned by state-run Vietnam
National Import-Export Corp (Petrolimex), had arrived at Ho Chi Minh City port
for repair after all the diesel in the damaged compartment had been pumped out.
No one was injured in the accident, which occurred early last Friday in a bay
off Vung Tau, in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province. The diesel spill was about 40 km (25
miles) from the nearest tourist beach.
Truong Thanh Cong, director of the Science, Technology and Environment
Department in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, told Reuters Formosa One was being held
at an anchorage off the province.
"Formosa One is still held there while we are assessing environmental damages,"
Cong said but did not say when the tanker, which is registered in Liberia, could
continue its route.
The tanker, owned by Taiwan's Formosa Plastics and carrying 20,000 tonnes
(146,600 barrels) of diesel collided into Petrolimex 01, which was carrying
19,000 tonnes (139,270 barrels) of diesel while entering an anchorage off Vung
Tau.
Formosa One is a 31,372 deadweight tonne (dwt) vessel and Petrolimex 01 is
22,651 dwt.
Vung Tau port authority officials have said the crash had damaged a compartment
of Petrolimex 01 causing several thousand tonnes of diesel to spill.
However, director Cong said the spill was about 700 tonnes because the damaged
compartment contained a little more than 1,000 tonnes of diesel.
Vung Tau is about 120 km (75 miles) southeast of Ho Chi Minh City and officials
and residents in the beach city said the smell of diesel fumes there had been
strong on Friday but the fuel had since evaporated or soaked into the beach.
On Monday, local authorities and the Vietnam-Russia joint venture, Vietsovpetro,
continued to contain the spill.
Port officials have said the damage assessment and environmental work would take
several days.
An official of the Ho Chi Minh City-based Vietnamese shipping agent Hai Au,
which handles services for Formosa One, said he was also not aware of any
possible departure time for the tanker.
"It may have to wait for a unknown period," he said. "Local authorities told me
they can't say when it could go."
* EU warns of failure to launch new trade round
HANOI, Sept 10 (Reuters) - European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said on
Monday failure to launch a new round of trade liberalisation talks later this
year would be an "extremely damaging symbol" for the global trading system.
But he said he was confident the concerns of developing countries about a new
round could be addressed and a consensus reached by a World Trade Organisation
(WTO) meeting in Doha, Qatar, in November when it is hoped a new round can be
launched.
European officials were talking up the likelihood of a new world trade round
later this year as they began meetings with their Asian counterparts on Monday.
But Asian officials took a more cautious line, saying they expected hard
bargaining ahead to address their concerns.
The last attempt to launch a new trade round failed in Seattle in December 1999
when Europe and the United States, the world's two biggest trading blocs, fell
out over the agenda.
"There is a general consensus on the fact that WTO suffered a blow in Seattle
and if we're not able...to update the WTO rulebook...because of dissension among
the membership, it's going to be an extremely, extremely damaging symbol for the
multilateral trading system," Lamy told reporters.
The meetings this week in Hanoi involve the 15 EU countries, the 10-member
Association of South East Asian Nations, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia,
New Zealand and the United States.
The EU and the United States want to launch a new round of trade talks at the
WTO's November 9-13 meeting in Doha, a move they hope will help boost a flagging
world economy.
OPTIMISM AFTER MEXICO MEETING
They expressed optimism about this possibility after a meeting in Mexico earlier
this month involving ministers from both the developed and the developing world.
The EU has been one of the most forceful advocates of launching a new trade
round and Asia's concerns are high on the agenda at talks in Hanoi under the
Asia-Europe (ASEM) forum.
Several Asian countries -- including Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines --
have expressed reservations on various issues.
"There's not much improvement. There's still no improvement," Boontipa Simaskul,
director general of the Thai Commerce Ministry's department of business
economics, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Hanoi meeting.
Indonesia's Trade and Industry Minister Rini Mariani Sumaro told Reuters that
Jakarta basically supported the launch of a new round in Doha, but with certain
conditions.
Philippines Assistant Secretary for Trade Jose Antonio Buencamino said on Friday
changes to WTO rules proposed by developed countries covering investment and the
environment were non-starters, and that Manila also had serious concerns about
an EU proposal on food safety.
Lamy said he believed those concerns can be addressed in time for the Doha
meeting.
"We need to discuss the sort of consensus which we believe is now possible with
the eight weeks we have ahead of Doha on the main difficult topics," he said.
SUBSIDIES AND DUMPING
Lamy stressed that the EU was willing to be flexible but within a framework of
rules on subsidies and dumping.
"We've given signals we're ready to take on board a number of their concerns,"
he said.
"But at the end of the day, we're being pretty clear on the fact that the rules
part of a new round has to be there, because for the EU it's basically a
question between balancing the agenda between market liberalisation on the one
side...and rules on the other," Lamy said
The EU has not publicly contemplated the possibility of a setback in Doha but at
talks in Belgium last Friday, France sounded a discordant note by raising the
possibility that efforts might fail and the EU should have an alternative plan
ready.
Some European officials have speculated that France might be reluctant to make
concessions on agricultural policy before its elections early next year.
French State Secretary of Commerce Francois Huwart dismissed that speculation on
Monday, but said there was much work to do before Dohar and that he was being
realistic and cautious about the prospects for success.
* Vietnam man sprouts a dozen new teeth -- at age 95
HANOI (Reuters, 10/9/01) - A 95-year-old Vietnamese man who watched his teeth
gradually drop out for 20 years has started teething again and now has a dozen
new ones, an official newspaper has reported.
Nguyen Cong Du in Phu Cu district of the northern province of Hung Yen started
teething in 1998, growing both front and molar teeth that are "as white as the
baby-teeth", the official Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said.
Du has now been able to switch from what had become routine meals of congee, or
broth, to Vietnam's popular steamed rice, the paper said.
* Vietnam's motorcycle ventures on a joyride
HANOI (Asia Times, 11/9/01) - Most motocycle joint ventures in Vietnam are
reporting increasingly strong profits.
Honda Vietnam has, up to June 30 this year, made an aggregate US$65.8 million
profit while Suzuki Vietnam and GMN have each topped US$12 million and Viko
Strade US$450,000. While VMEP, a fully Taiwanese-owned manufacturer, has
totalled an accumulative loss of US$27 million since 1996, it has now turned the
corner, making a US$1.4 million profit last year.
Only Yamaha Vietnam - which has been in the market for just three years and has
been unable yet to find a niche - is still in the red. It has accumulated losses
of US$4.8 million.
Almost all of the ventures have also reached high localization rates: VMEP uses
63 percent local components, Honda and Suzuki between 52 and 61 percent, GMN 42
percent and Yamaha Vietnam 34 percent. However, the prices of locally-made
motorcycles remain high compared with those in other Southeast Asian countries.
Vietnam has meanwhile attracted 52 foreign-invested projects, worth a total of
US$260 million, to manufacture parts for motorcycles. Of the projects, 32 are
wholly foreign-invested companies, two are joint ventures and the remainder were
formed under business cooperation contracts.
Most are medium and small-sized enterprises of Taiwan and Japan, manufacturing
exhausts, handlebars, frames, saddles, tires, shock absorbers and batteries.
VMEP, a joint venture between Vietnam and Taiwan, has planned to increase
investment for its localization program from US$6 million at present to US$15
million for the manufacture of whole engines in the country by 2004.
Honda Vietnam, a joint venture between Honda Motor Co Ltd of Japan, Asian Honda
of Thailand and the Vietnam Engine and Agricultural Machinery Corporation, has
invested US$9 million in producing engine parts in Vietnam.
(Asia Pulse/VNA)
* Vietnam takes blame for export shortfall
(Asia Times, 11/9/01)
HANOI - Vietnam registered an increase of 12.4 percent in exports in the first
eight months of the year, much lower than the goal of about 16 percent set by
the National Assembly at the beginning of the year.
The poorer performance than expected resulted from a slow change of the
country's export structure to meet world market demand as well as low
competitiveness due to high input costs, deputy prime minister Nguyen Manh Cam
said.
In addition, fluctuating export prices, especially those of farm products in
world markets, were to blame, despite the government's "relentless" efforts to
promote exports.
Cam has urged the ministries of trade and planning and investment as well as
relevant ministries and agencies to take bold measures to promote exports in the
remaining four months to achieve the yearly target set by the National Assembly.
Special attention should be paid to the export of crude oil, seafood, coal,
vegetables, handicrafts and art articles, forest products, textiles, garments,
footwear, milk and cooking oil to achieve a total export value of about US$16.5
billion, a year-on-year increase of 14 percent, Cam said. The whole country
earned $10,45 billion from exports and spent $10.60 billion on imports in the
first eight months of the year.
He agreed in principle on an expansion of the range of export items to be
rewarded for their higher export values and on measures to be taken to promote
trade and finalize mechanisms of most-favored nation status presented to the
government by the trade ministry.
He further asked the trade ministry and other concerned ministries and agencies
to implement proper measures and policies to ensure strict control of the import
of incomplete knock-down motorbikes and automobiles of all kinds.
Meanwhile, the deputy minister for planning and investment, Vo Hong Phuc, says
the export of seafood and agricultural produce to South Korea could help Vietnam
narrow its trade deficit over the coming year. These items had yet to meet their
potential despite high Korean demand, said Phuc.
Although South Korea imports $10 billion worth of seafood and agricultural
produce per year, Vietnam exported only $130 million of these products to the
country last year, according to official Korean figures.
South Korean experts are advising Vietnam on how it can increase its exports by
promoting foreign investment in agriculture and harnessing advanced agricultural
techniques. Phuc said he hoped that the investments would help bring Vietnam's
agricultural produce up to international standards so it can better compete on
global markets. A number of South Korean companies had expressed interest in
investing in agriculture geared for export, he said.
Last year, total trade between the two countries reached $2 billion, of which
Vietnamese exports comprised only $322 million. Vietnam exported $72.2 million
worth of seafood to Korea last year, up from just $11.4 million in 1998.
Agricultural exports reached $58.5 million last year, a rise from $39.8 million
in 1998.
Vietnam's number one export to Korea is clothing, which represented $74.6
million last year. In the first five months of this year, imports from Korea
reached $713 million while exports were $153 million, according to official
Korean figures.
A boost in the exports of seafood, agricultural produce and consumer goods from
Vietnam to Korea would double two-way trade and help balance the trade figures,
Phuc said. The two sides have agreed to strengthen their trade and investment
ties.
Since diplomatic relations were established between Vietnam and Korea in 1992,
Korean companies have invested $3.3 billion in Vietnam. South Korea is the
fourth largest foreign investor in Vietnam. South Korean investment projects are
concerned mostly with ship-building, electronics, footwear and garment
manufacturing.
Ho Chi Minh City's export value totaled $4.38 billion in the first eight months
of this year, up 8.7 percent on the same period in 2000. Domestic businesses
contributed $3.54 billion to the total and foreign invested businesses $835.8
million, up by 6.9 percent and 17.2 percent, respectively.
Earnings from the export of farm produce was $202.2 million, up 4.7 percent and
aquatic products, $161.4 million, up 10.2 percent compared with the
correspondent period last year.
In the reviewed period, the city's import value was estimated at $2.47 billion,
up 2.1 percent year-on-year. The import value of the domestic sector was down by
1.5 per cent year-on-year while that of the foreign invested sector increased by
10.2 percent.
(Asia Pulse/VNA)
* Vietnam pumps 11.5 million tons of crude
Kuala Lumpur, Sept 10, IRNA -- Vietnam racked up a turnover of US$2.36 billion
from exporting more than 11.5 million tons of crude oil in the first eight
months of the year, the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported on Monday.
The state-owned Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation (PetroVietnam) General Director
Nguyen Xuan Nham said the oil export figure, a 14 percent increase over last
year's, accounted for 72 percent of the corporation's yearly plan.
During the same period, the associated gas pipeline system at the Bach Ho (White
Tiger) field brought 1.2 billion cu mt of associated gas onshore for the Ba Ria
and Phu My power plants amounting to 80 percent of the yearly plan.
Vietsovpetro's (VSP) oil exploitation activities accounted for 80 percent of the
sector's output.
Over the last eight months, VSP exploited more than 9 million tons of crude oil,
increasing 20.6 percent over the figure for the same period last year and
achieving 70 percent of the yearly plan.
Bach Ho and Rong Oil Fields alone are yielding 38,000 tons a day. Over the last
10 years, VSP has expoited more than 97 million tons in the two oil fields.
The corporation is supervising and working on the development of 18 oil
extraction contracts.
It is also looking for foreign partners to help expand oil exploration
activities in blocks 09.3, 10 and 11.1, according a VNA report.
* Decree Number 55 Important To Internet Development In Vietnam
InternetNews - International News Archives, 10/9/01
By Dao Yen
The Internet cafe business has been flourishing in Vietnam, with more than 3,000
establishments in Ho Chi Minh city and 500 outlets in Hanoi sprouting up in
recent years. However, these booming businesses now have to deal with Decree
number 55, the Vietnamese Government's latest move to regulate the country's
Internet access market.
Decree number 55, which goes into effect today after being issued about two
weeks ago, requires that all Internet cafes sign business contracts with
recognized ISPs in order to continue providing their Net surfing services. Cafes
that fail to do so with any of the five existing ISPs in Vietnam will be fined
up to VND5 million (US$333).
However, the Vietnam General Department for Post and Telecommunication (VGDPT),
which oversees the development of the Internet in the country, has yet to
address certain issues faced by Internet cafe owners.
A cafe owner was quoted on Vietnam Television as saying that his cafe leases
lines from two of the five ISPs, and that despite calls to both ISPs to clarify
what he should do, he still did not receive satisfactory answers. The ISPs had
apparently not received detailed guidelines from the VGDPT.
In response to such queries, VGDPT director Mai Liem Truc said, "The public
Internet has developed in a spontaneous way over the past years. We acknowledge
the importance of developing the public Internet to further serve people's
demands from now on. We will issue circulars to clarify the operation for
Internet cafes soon."
Still, the new decree has been regarded as an instrument that will lessen the
amount of red tape hindering the development of the Internet in Vietnam.
It has opened the country's Internet access market to private and foreign-owned
companies wanting to enter as ISPs and online service providers (OSPs), which
typically provide e-learning and online lottery services, as well as medical and
news portals.
The playing field for Internet exchange providers (IXPs), however, is still
restricted to state-owned enterprises.
Experts say up to 10 new ISPs will start up within this year as a result of
Decree number 55, increasing the pool of competitors for existing ISPs Vietnam
Datacommunication Company (VDC), the Corporation for Financing and Promoting
Technology (FPT), NetNam, SaigonNet, and Vietnam Electronics and Telecoms
Company (Vietel).
Currently, only VDC and FPT are fully functioning ISPs and have - between them -
captured 90 percent of the market. NetNam, an Institute of Information
Technology spin-off company, is still financially weak and latecomer SaigonNet
is slowly gaining more market share. Vietel has yet to offer any services after
obtaining its license to operate as an ISP, choosing instead to focus on
providing VoIP services to the local telco market.
But even if the number of ISPs in Vietnam does grow, there will not be
full-blown competition among the service providers as they will only be able to
compete on service offerings to Internet surfers - pricing is still fixed by the
Post and Telecommunication Department.
VGDPT has yet to issue evaluation criteria with which the new entrants will be
measured against. According to Truong Dinh Anh, director of FPT Internet, the
governing body should carefully screen applicants to ensure that they are
financially strong, technically able and adequately staffed to fulfill their
long term commitment to their customers.
There is more to be done for the development of the Internet in Vietnam. Decree
number 55 is one step forward - it shows, at least, the Government's firm
commitment to foster a better environment for the Internet to develop in
Vietnam.
* Baldwin follows Vietnam 'Path' in HBO telefilm
LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter9/9/01) --- Alec Baldwin is taking a "Path to
War." He is set to portray former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in HBO's
original movie about President Lyndon Johnson's administration.
Baldwin will star opposite Michael Gambon, who is signed to play LBJ. The film
written by Daniel Giat, has been in the works at HBO for several years. John
Frankenheimer will direct.
"Path" offers a behind-the-scenes look at LBJ and his foreign policy and
military teams during the escalation of the Vietnam conflict.
McNamara was a key architect of early U.S. policy in Southeast Asia and
supported U.S. military involvement. As the conflict in Vietnam escalated but
failed to bring results and as resistance mounted at home, he began to push for
a negotiated solution.
McNamara's reliance on system analysis as a basis for important military
decisions earned him the nickname "the human IBM machine." The
businessman-turned-politician recently was portrayed on the big screen by Dylan
Baker in Roger Donaldson's "Thirteen Days."
"Path" will be executive produced by Frankenheimer, Cary Brokaw, Edgar J.
Scherick and Howard Dratch. Filming is scheduled to begin next month in Los
Angeles.
The movie marks a second television project in a row in which Baldwin plays a
prominent U.S. political figure from the mid-20th century. Last year, he
portrayed Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes
trials, in TNT's miniseries "Nuremberg." His performance earned him a Golden
Globe nomination.
Baldwin, who was most recently seen in "Pearl Harbor," is repped by WMA.
* Europe Looks to Assure Asian Trade
HANOI, Vietnam (AP, 10/9/01) - In an appeal to southeast Asians who have been
leery about starting new World Trade Organization (news - web sites) talks,
Europe's trade chief pledged a flexible approach and said Monday their support
was vital to avoiding an ``extremely damaging'' repeat of the failure two years
ago in Seattle.
``There will be no launch if the U.S. opposes it,'' EU Trade Commissioner Pascal
Lamy told reporters. ``There will be no launch if developing countries oppose
it. There will be no launch if the EU opposes it.''
With the WTO set to meet in Doha, Qatar, in November, Lamy is using a series of
meetings here this week between European and Asian trade ministers to try to
smooth out concerns over the new talks among officials, including Malaysian
Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz, who have been WTO naysayers in the past.
Thai officials were among those expressing reservations on Monday, with Commerce
Minister Adisai Bodharamik saying he was unsure if the WTO will be able to
launch a new round of talks.
``According to my information today, we're going to have some difficulties,''
Adisai told reporters.
``We're quite happy to see the words flexibility issued by the Europeans, but we
have to go into the details of what they mean by flexibility,'' he said.
If the WTO cannot launch a fresh round of talks in Doha, it would be ``an
extremely, extremely damaging signal for the multilateral trading system,'' Lamy
said.
A European Commission (news - web sites) trade official said earlier that the
wealthy western nations have become less insistent on including workers' rights
and environmental protection in any new talks, hoping that will ease two of the
major concerns that kept poor nations from agreeing to a deal in Seattle. The EC
official spoke only on condition his name not be used.
But Lamy said Monday that rich and poor trading partners need to recognize the
differing political sensitivities each face - and that opening of new markets
needs to be accompanied by acceptable rules for trading.
The wealthy EU nations were jolted on Friday, when French Trade Minister
Francois Huwart suggested negotiations on new global trade talks should be put
off for a year to provide time for a deal to be reached without the risk of
another embarrassing failure.
``None of the other 14 member states see it this way,'' Lamy said Monday in
response to a reporter's question.
``The French position that maybe we could wait in order for there not to be a
failure is perfectly understandable,'' Lamy said. ``I think the view in the
system that if there were to be a failure the WTO would suffer terribly is
clear. Maybe the French care more about the WTO system than the others. That's
probably the base of their position.''
Trade ministers from the Asia-Europe Meeting, or ASEM, meet here through Tuesday
to discuss ways of bringing down obstacles to trade between their two regions,
but the future course of the WTO is high on everybody's minds.
The Europeans held one session Monday and the Asians had their own, preparing
for both sides to meet on Tuesday.
``We do not want ASEM to just be talking, talking,'' said Hubert Van Houtte, a
senior Belgian official. ``We very much want concrete results.''
The WTO is expected soon to admit China as a member, followed by Taiwan's
admission, and Lamy said he met early Monday with Vietnamese officials who are
showing increased interest in getting their nation into the WTO, the
Geneva-based body that sets global trade rules.
* 'The Quiet American': Backward to When the Road to Vietnam Was Paved
By SETH MYDANS, NYT 9/9/01
ANOI, Vietnam -- On an old Hanoi street redecorated to look like an even older
Saigon street, with local Western businessmen costumed like languid French
colonial satraps, a military band in rumpled white uniforms stepped smartly
through a jostling crowd, playing a marching tune.
As the director flapped his arms in encouragement, 200 Vietnamese extras cheered
wildly, waving bouquets. It was certainly an authentic moment; perhaps a bit too
authentic. What no one seemed to realize — not the foreign film crew, not the
Vietnamese bystanders — was that the crowd had just cheered a melody that is
anathema in today's Communist Vietnam: the national anthem of the defeated
enemy, the former South Vietnam.
The film being shot here this spring was based on Graham Greene's novel "The
Quiet American," published nearly half a century ago, a book that is read today
as a prescient warning of the disastrous effects of the American involvement in
Vietnam that was then in its infant stages.
It is a complex proposition. In a project that tries to look backward through
the prism of a prediction, it is sometimes difficult to draw the lines between
past and present, artifice and authenticity. Stumbling blocks lie everywhere. As
Greene took pains to emphasize, the truth is never simple. Like the book it is
based on, the film project inevitably participates in the long, difficult
history of well-intentioned Westerners in Vietnam.
Directed by Phillip Noyce for Miramax and scheduled to open early next year,
this will be the second screen version of Greene's 1955 book. Its producer,
Sydney Pollack, said in an interview that it attempted a greater realism, with
more rounded characters, than either the 1958 film, directed by Joseph L.
Mankiewicz, or the book itself.
On its surface, it is the story of a love triangle involving a naïvely
destructive American secret agent, a world-weary English journalist and a
seemingly passive but quietly determined Vietnamese woman. But the book was not
meant primarily as a love story, and neither is the movie.
For Greene, in one of his most didactic works, the agent, Pyle, was America; the
woman, Phuong, was Vietnam; and the journalist-protagonist, Fowler, was only a
half-step away from Greene himself, the world-weary European.
"You can't avoid the fact that these people are metaphors for attitudes that
represented a time we all lived through and have complicated feelings about,"
Mr. Pollack said. "There was a kind of conviction and certainty that turned out
to be naïve on the part of the Americans."
The story line evidently appeals to the Vietnamese. This is the most ambitious
Western movie project they have allowed to be filmed here since the war ended in
1975.
The spin, according to the official Vietnam News Agency: "It condemns the
maneuvers of hostile forces and foreign aggressors against the Vietnamese people
in the 50's."
As the filmmakers see it, Greene, writing before the American military buildup,
provided a map of the road that is paved with good intentions — a map, they say,
that was followed faithfully to its destination in the years to come.
"God save us," says the Englishman (played by Michael Caine), "from the innocent
and the good."
He is speaking of Pyle (Brendan Fraser), the American of the book's title, whom
he describes as "absorbed already in the dilemmas of democracy and the
responsibilities of the West; he was determined — I learned that very soon — to
do good, not to any individual person but to a country, to a continent, a
world."
But Pyle's ill-informed and clumsy attempts to do good bring ruin all around.
Roused from a lethargy born of cynicism, the Englishman helps engineer Pyle's
killing and, by default, wins back his lover. "Everything had gone right with me
since he had died," Fowler says in the book's final lines, "but how I wished
there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry."
THE film is an Australian production and, like Greene, it observes the American
role with a worldly cluck. "The Pyles of the world in their anti-Communism were
certainly justified," Mr. Noyce said in an interview on the set. "It's just that
they got it all wrong here in Vietnam. I think the warning Greene issued is that
you should really learn the history and politics and culture of a country if
you're going to meddle in it."
On the set, Mr. Noyce appears to be obsessive about his historical details,
interviewing, researching and fussing over accuracy. In Ho Chi Minh City (the
real former Saigon) he peeled back history to recreate the old French Rue
Catinat, which became known to American G.I.'s as the red-light district of Tu
Do Street and has been renamed again by the Communist victors, as the Street of
the General Uprising. He then took his crew to the rain-drenched rice fields of
Ninh Binh, in the north, to recreate a battle scene on the spot that Greene had
placed it.
Mr. Caine, however, suggested puckishly that there might be a touch of
inauthenticity in his own portrayal of a journalist. "I'll tell you this," he
said. "You journalists are going to be very pleased with me. I get the girl, and
I get the story. What more do you want? Your editors are going to think: `That
bastard, what's he doing out there? Get him back here.' " Of course, when we
journalists work, it's real sweat we get on our brows, not the "sweat beads" an
assistant was preparing to apply to Mr. Caine's forehead as he spoke.
The film has been a long-term project, and Mr. Noyce and his actors have talked
at length with people who lived elements of the story Greene tells — American
intelligence agents, a Vietnamese double agent, journalists. But none of them
have all the answers, and the truth in Vietnam has always been elusive.
On the day before the filming of the marching band, Mr. Noyce had spent the
morning in what amounted to a crash course in the mechanics and etiquette of the
guillotine. The film crew had taken over what was left of Hoa Lo prison, the
so-called Hanoi Hilton, where the French incarcerated hundreds of political
prisoners and, later, where the North Vietnamese held American pilots who had
been shot down on bombing raids. The remnants of the prison are now a museum.
* Reproductions of Masterpieces for Sale in Ho Chi Minh City
By SETH MYDANS, NYT 9/9/01
F they want to, tourists can leave Vietnam laden with local treasure: straw
hats, lacquer work, porcelain elephants, inlaid chopstick sets, Ho Chi Minh
T-shirts. Also van Goghs.
Or Rembrandts, da Vincis, Picassos, Warhols, Hoppers, Monets. You name it.
A surprising cottage industry has sprung up in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon
— the copying and sale of the great masters. Up and down the alleyways in the
central shopping district, men and women with paintbrushes (call them artists if
you will) are busy day and night in open shopfronts turning out reproduction
masterpieces.
It is possible, depending on the skill of the copier, to find a Mona Lisa
looking as if she had just been sucking on a lemon or a Mona Lisa looking as if
she had just been tickled. Large or small, bright or subdued, off-the-shelf or
by order, the world of art is gathered here along the sunbaked sidewalks of
Saigon.
The attraction, of course, is the price. Art dealers — who wouldn't touch these
copies — say there is more talent here, at lower prices, than any other place in
Asia.
"They get orders from around the world, from Italy, Singapore, Korea, the United
States," said Nguyen Thi Lan Huong, who owns Gallery Saigon, a well-respected
showplace that does not deal in copies. "People learned that in Saigon you can
have better-skilled artists working at cheaper prices. It's one of the few
places in the world that can do reproductions at these prices."
Van Gogh's sunflowers, for example, sell for $50 or $60, with the painter
keeping about $20 of that — big money by Vietnamese standards. Dali's melting
watches cost about the same. Impressionists are easy, say the painters, and
therefore cheap. Big, complicated projects can cost $100 or $150. In one shop, a
very large, expertly reproduced scene of Venice was selling for $350.
At the open-fronted Thanh Hoa Gallery on Le Loi Street, three or four or five
painters sit near the street to catch the light, the smell of their oil paints
mingling with the pungent scent of noodle soup from a nearby stall. Tourists
pause to watch, then move on to pick over displays of souvenir pith helmets,
engraved Zippo lighters, dog tags, opium pipes and carved statues of Buddha.
"Seventy dollars," said Truong Mui Luy, a saleswoman at the Thanh Hoa Gallery,
pointing to a painting of Napoleon on a horse. "It's a classical artist, but I
don't know exactly what his name is. We use good quality paint from Taiwan, so
the price is a little higher. Do you like the Klimt?"
The paintings can be purchased framed or unframed, stretched or rolled. They can
be carried out or sent abroad by the gallery. There is generally no problem at
customs. The only sensitivity, say the gallery owners, is to depictions of the
female body, and the painters generally bowdlerize their work to be on the safe
side.
Modigliani's "Running Nude With Open Arms" is one painting they don't copy, said
Lam Quang Thuan, who runs the little Huu Tinh Gallery on Nguyen Thiep Street.
Mr. Thuan has been turning out copies for about a decade, since Vietnam opened
its economy and artists discovered that paintings can be easy money. He can
paint anything. Just show him a book or a postcard.
At the age of 40, Mr. Thuan is too young to have fought in what the Vietnamese
call the American war. But he served for five years as a soldier when Vietnam
occupied neighboring Cambodia during the 1980's. Then, after studying art "for
fun," he said, he opened his shop a decade ago and now employs seven freelance
painters to supplement his own work.
It isn't hard for someone who has been to art school, he said. But some people
are better adapted to certain types of paintings. "I have to decide who's good
for landscapes, who's good for van Gogh, who's good for classical painting."
Evaluating his product, Mr. Thuan said, "We can reproduce with 90 percent
accuracy."
Only rarely do the painters produce works for themselves, he said. One such
painting, hanging in the back of his shop, is a regal portrait of Diana, the
Princess of Wales, in which Mr. Thuan has substituted the face of his wife.
Over the years, he said, he has built up a regular clientele, some of whom send
orders from abroad as private collectors or for sale in galleries. One frequent
customer is a European banker based in Singapore, who spoke on condition that
his name not be used.
"I've bought quite a lot, easily 30 or so," he said. "We have a big house and we
hang them in the staircase and God knows what. They look very good in frames."
Sometimes the banker visits Mr. Thuan's shop when he is here on business and
selects a few. Sometimes he sends in special orders.
"He can do more or less anything," the banker said. "The quality is good and the
finish is good. I like the Kandinsky style, so I say, `Give me something in this
range.' You can look in his art books and say, `This one, I want to have this
one.' Or, `I want to have this size, or this size.' "
Most of the buyers of reproductions are foreign tourists or resident
expatriates, said Ms. Huong of Gallery Saigon. Some Vietnamese have begun buying
as well, she said. "These paintings are becoming a must for the decoration of
the houses of the nouveaux riches. They want to have something that people know
and accept."
On a warm evening not long ago, a painter named Nguyen Van Thanh, 37, sat at his
easel beside a gallery on Dong Khoi Street, working a bit distractedly on a
Levitan. A shopkeeper from a neighboring boutique wandered over, pulled two
cigarettes from Mr. Thanh's shirt pocket, and lighted them for both men.
"People will buy anything," Mr. Thanh said. "Whatever I paint, they buy." But
certain paintings do seem to go in and out of fashion, he said. "Sometimes this,
sometimes that, whatever."
Right now Botero's dancing couple seems to be the rage. It hangs at the front of
almost every gallery, along with a Chinese painting of a girl in red silk
pajamas.
"I've done those dancers 100 times," Mr. Thanh said, even while confessing that
he did not know the name of the painting. Though he knows the scene by heart, he
keeps a reproduction on his knee for reference as he paints.
The Levitan landscape he was working on now was a special order, and he was
copying from a tiny reproduction in an old art book. The colors in the book were
dim and blurred, and so Mr. Thanh was using his own judgment as he painted —
perhaps the greatest instance of personal creativity among all the painters
working on this summer evening.
"I'll paint anything," Mr. Thanh said, clearly not very inspired by his work.
But when pressed to name a favorite, he said: "I like van Gogh the best. They're
pretty easy and the colors are nice and bright."
The booming business of reproductions has paralleled the emergence of Vietnamese
art onto the international scene in the past decade. As the economy opened and
government restrictions loosened, artists who had been restricted to official
styles and themes raced to catch up with the rest of the world.
Kandinsky, Klee and Pollock were revelations to Vietnamese artists. And the
emerging Vietnamese works were revelations to foreign buyers, being eclectic in
style, conservative in theme, but appealing to the eye — and cheap.
The free market is still something new in Vietnam, and most artists, it seems,
paint with dollar signs in their eyes. When a painting can sell for $3,000,
about 10 times the average annual wage, it is hard to produce art for the sake
of art alone.
In Hoi An on the central coast, a pretty town that is gentrifying itself as the
Carmel of Vietnam, almost every other shop seems to sell paintings and almost
every shopkeeper has taken up the paintbrush. Actual galleries are struggling to
differentiate themselves, hanging out signs that read "Genuine Artist."
With paintings now one of the most lucrative souvenir items in Vietnam inch for
inch, those that sell the best are being reproduced, both by their own creators
and by other painters.
And so the reproductions of the great masters in Saigon represent, in a way, the
mainstream of Vietnamese art. Copying — of van Gogh, of other Vietnamese, of
one's own art — has become one of the dominant artistic themes in Vietnam today.
SETH MYDANS is the Southeast Asia correspondent for The New York Times.
* Hanoi's Cafe Society
By KATHERINE ZOEPF, NYT 9/9/01
OU won't find the place at first. No one ever does. Tucked between two silk
shops on a busy stretch of Hanoi's Hang Gai, down a narrow passage that leads to
a little courtyard garden, the Café Pho Co has as much a quality of new
discovery about it on the 50th visit as on the first.
Known by some residents of Hanoi as the secret cafe, it's an oasis quite apart
from the motorbike-choked streets of Hanoi's Old Quarter. The low tables are
flanked by vases of lotus flowers, and ornamental Japanese pigeons with feathery
spats and fan-shaped tails wander serenely among them. The owner's art
collection hangs on the walls, and the canvasses are deeply stained from the
rains — the water deepens the colors, he says. Midmorning, the cafe is empty,
except for a few groups of old men playing chess over their coffee.
The coffee at the Café Pho Co is some of the best in Hanoi, a city that takes
its coffee seriously. Unlike the rest of Asia — a tea-drinking continent, by and
large, and a wasteland of instant Nescafé packets for your java-loving Western
traveler — Vietnam has a cafe culture to rival Italy's. Along with the colonial
architecture and the fresh baguettes that are still sold on street corners,
coffee is one of Vietnam's most pleasant legacies from its years of French rule.
Teeming traffic aside, the pace of life is quite gentle here still, and almost
any Vietnamese you'll meet, regardless of age or class, has a favorite local
cafe, where many hours are spent gossiping and smoking and sucking down the
ultrastrong, ultrasweet ca phe sua da (espresso served in a tall glass with
crushed ice and sweetened condensed milk), which is the favorite local coffee
preparation. Typically, you'll pay 20 to 40 cents a cup.
It's a restrained sort of cafe culture: no flamboyant umbrellas, no tables
spilling out onto the sidewalks. People-watching isn't really what it's about.
The typical Hanoi cafe is a tiny space, often just a storefront with a beaded
curtain separating it from the street. Hanoi's Old Quarter — the 36 market
streets, each named during the 13th century after the trade guild that sold its
wares there — is packed with such family-run establishments.
The interior of these cafes, like Café Quynh on Bat Dan Street, is usually quite
dark — a relief from the tropical sunlight outside — and the mood is hushed. A
cup of coffee is an affordable luxury in a country where the average household
income hovers around $300 a year, and Hanoi residents come to cafes to escape
the heat of the day, to relax, and to sip a cup of a grainy, bittersweet local
blend.
Like so much else in Vietnam, that cup of coffee has a bittersweet history. It
was the French colonists in Indochina who established Vietnam's first coffee
plantations, in the late 19th century, exploiting the local peasants as cheap
labor. Ninety years ago, the cafes that lined Hanoi's boulevards were mainly the
preserve of the city's wealthy foreign residents.
These are not things most people in Vietnam care to dwell on nowadays. Yet in
early February this year, a spate of demonstrations in the country's main
coffee-producing region, Dac Lac and Gia Lai Provinces in the Central Highlands,
made coffee the political issue of the moment. Ethnic minority groups in the
region were protesting the seizure of their lands, which were to be turned into
government-owned coffee plantations, and Vietnamese troops were dispatched to
maintain order.
Even with troops in Buon Me Thuot, the capital of Dac Lac Province, sales of
Buon Me Thuot coffee in Hanoi's cafes continued brisk as ever, and life remained
serene. The free-market overhauls of the last decade — the so-called doi moi, or
renovation — are changing Hanoi, but the city, the seat of power of Vietnam's
Communist government, is still far sleepier than Ho Chi Minh City to the south.
Development has been kept in check, and the many layers of the city's 990-year
history are visible everywhere. The gates of ancient pagodas are dwarfed by the
modern, narrow "tunnel houses," and the crumbling villas of the French district
have been converted into embassies or multifamily residences. The tree-lined
avenues around Lake Hoan Kiem are decorated with propaganda billboards urging
various things: attend to your children's education; protect against H.I.V.
In my previous life — which is to say before I graduated from college and took
an editing job in Hanoi — a cup of coffee was simply a crutch for the
sleep-deprived. I nursed acidic cups of student-center black through long
lectures and sneaked 24-ounce thermoses of the stuff into the library during
exam time. I developed a taste for coffee, to be sure, but can't recall very
much of it that I really wanted to linger over.
Vietnamese coffee, on the other hand, taught me to linger. At the Café Mai, a
small open-air establishment on Le Van Huu Street, south of Lake Hoan Kiem, you
can order a ca phe sua da, and the waitress will bring out a glass of ice and
syrupy yellow milk (sweetened condensed milk keeps better in the heat) with a
lidded metal contraption perched on top.
The cup of the contraption contains a tin plunger, screwed down tight over a
spoonful of powder-fine coffee grounds. Hot water drips down through the
grounds, through small perforations in the metal, into the glass below.
There's an aspect of ritual to it: sitting, waiting, watching the coffee brew
right over your own glass. The whole process takes about 10 minutes, and the
resulting drink is so sweet that some newcomers to Vietnam find it overwhelming.
But sipped slowly, through chips of ice, the sweetened condensed milk gives ca
phe sua da a mellow, caramel flavor, and makes it a wonderfully cooling drink on
a summer afternoon.
Once you've finished, you'll probably also be offered a cup of green tea — said
to cleanse the mouth — as a chaser. Food is not generally part of the
experience: it's not even available in most traditional cafes.
Though you won't find a Starbucks in Vietnam, there is no shortage of variety in
Hanoi's cafes. Besides the standard four coffee drinks — ca phe den nong (hot
black coffee), ca phe den da (iced black coffee), ca phe sua nong (hot coffee
with milk) and ca phe sua da (iced coffee with milk) — available in any cafe,
there is ca phe trung, hot coffee with a raw egg beaten into it, with or without
milk, which tastes a bit like flavored meringue. With sugar, it is practically a
meal. My favorite place for this is Café 129, at the southern end of Mai Hac De,
one of Hanoi's busiest restaurant streets.
For the truly adventurous, there is the infamous ca phe chon, weasel coffee,
which is exactly what it sounds like. Growers take the best beans from each
crop, and feed them to a weasel. The weasel does what comes naturally, the beans
are collected at his other end, then ground and brewed as usual. Apparently, the
weasel's digestive system does something mysterious to the beans which makes
them smoother and tastier than any other kind of coffee.
It took me some months to gather up the courage to try ca phe chon, which I
finally did at the Café Trung Nguyen, near the Hanoi People's Committee Building
just east of Lake Hoan Kiem, under pressure from a visiting friend. The drink is
undeniably smooth, but it has a faint musky taste, which I can only assume to be
the weasel.
The day a visitor to Vietnam can order a grande-skim-no-whipped ca phe chon to
go is probably years away, yet the character of Hanoi's cafe society is
changing. Since 1996, dozens of Trung Nguyen coffee shops, a nationwide chain
that is Vietnam's first domestic franchise, have sprung up all over the capital.
They are decorated with photos of pop stars, and packed day and night with
trendy students. Hanoians complain that shops that used to serve only coffee are
forced to diversify their menus and offer other things — lime soda or coconut
juice, for example — just to compete.
But smaller, traditional cafes still abound, and they are a good way for a
first-time visitor to experience a bit of Vietnamese daily life. So, when you're
wandering through Hanoi's Old Quarter and the afternoon heat and the haze and
the traffic become too taxing, go in.
Let your eyes get used to the light, and find a table with a good view of the
street. There are family photographs on the walls, perhaps a battered Happy New
Year! calendar. And the usual display of the cafe's wares are on the counter at
the back: cans of Coke and Sprite stacked in neat pyramids, bottles of Tiger
beer, jars of Ovaltine, big glass jars of apricots in syrup, Vinataba
cigarettes, Juicy Fruit and Doublemint gum in their little revolving display
case.
A child may bring a menu. Then you can make your request: "Xin cho toi mot ca
phe sua da" — one milk coffee, please.
KATHERINE ZOEPF, a researcher at The Times, recently completed a year working in
Hanoi.