FW: New Book to be Released in October: Vietnam: Asia's Rising Star
Carl Thayer
From: Carlyle Thayer <c.th...@adfa.edu.au>
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2023 3:26 PM
To: Carl Thayer <carlt...@iinet.net.au>
Subject: New Book to be Released in October: Vietnam: Asia's Rising Star
A New Book on the Future of Contemporary Vietnam
Scheduled for release in October 2023
Vietnam
Asia’s Rising Star
The Drivers Behind the World’s Most Exciting Growth Story
by
Brook Taylor and Sam Korsmoe
Foreword
By Carlyle A. Thayer
Professor Emeritus, University of New South Wales, Canberra
English Language Publisher: Silkworm Books International
Vietnamese Language Publisher: Quang Van Education and Publishing
The Synopsis
In the sane months prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we (Brook Taylor from New Zealand and Sam Korsmoe from the USA) launched a research project about the future of Vietnam. Collectively, we have been living in, working in, and studying about Vietnam for more than 55 years. We have participated in the ‘Vietnam Growth Story’ that has spanned the past three decades. During this time frame, the Vietnamese economy has grown consistently every year with double digit trade growth and significant Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). There have also been several ambitious forecasts and statements made about the country’s potential. For example, the accounting firm PwC published a long-term forecast report that stated Vietnam will move up 12 places on the GDP rankings to become the 20th largest economy in the world by 2050. The Prime Minister of Vietnam has stated that achieving high-income status by the year 2045 is a national imperative.
Yet despite these long-term growth trends and optimism, there are few published insights that explain ‘the how’ and ‘the why’ of the country’s growth and development. For this reason, we believed the time was right for a new and comprehensive look at Vietnam. We had a basic question that we wanted to answer.
Is Vietnam undergoing a flash of development that will eventually die out or are the foundations for long-term, equitable growth now being poured?
One of the challenges about writing a book on Vietnam’s economic and social development is the plethora of pundits who throw out sound bite theories and models of what Vietnam is doing. These arguments are often highly political and agenda driven. We had no agenda other than to try and explain what has been happening over the past 25 to 30 years. More importantly, we wanted to get a sense of what Vietnam will be like from 2020 to 2050.
Our means to do this was to test a hypothesis. The hypothesis had two parts. Part One asked whether or not Vietnam is or will be a ‘Tiger Economy.’ We developed specific metrics to test this question. Part Two asked whether or not Vietnam will grow and develop in the same way that South Korea and Taiwan did when they were ‘the Tiger Economies of Asia’ back in the 1980s and ‘90s. Both of those countries survived and thrived in their respective post-war, post-colonial environments. Within a period of 50 years, they escaped the Middle Income Trap and became high-income countries. While we recognize and report on the differences between contemporary Vietnam and South Korea and Taiwan of the 1980s and ‘90s, this hypothesis contains a very basic and compelling question: Can Vietnam grow and develop from 2020 to 2050 like South Korea and Taiwan grew from 1980 to 2000?
We report on Vietnam’s successful fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and considered it as one of the means to test the hypothesis. We also feature some unique cultural traits of Vietnam such as the substantial role of women in the economy and significant investment in the education sector. We analyse the country’s so far successful replication of the East Asian Development Model which was a key reason why South Korea and Taiwan succeeded.
This book was written for a wide audience, including investors, foreign governments, NGOs, and multi-lateral organizations. However, it is also relevant for students within and outside of Vietnam and anyone who is curious about how a country becomes rich. Whether Vietnam completely replicates the South Korea and Taiwan experience or not, even coming close will provide a compelling story that is worth paying attention to and is well worth writing down.
That is what we have done with this book.
The Authors
Brook Taylor is a New Zealander who has been living and working in Vietnam since 1997. He has over 30 years of finance and management experience. This includes 25 years in Vietnam, eight years as a partner in Big 5 accounting firms and 17 years as the Chief Operating Officer and the CEO of Asset Management at VinaCapital, a multi-disciplinary investment management firm with more than $3.8 billion in assets under management in Vietnam.
Brook’s work is also his hobby. Outside of VinaCapital, he has founded and invested in several successful startup companies including Timo, Vietnam’s first and largest internet bank, and Rooster Beers, a Vietnam-centric craft brewery and soda company. He is also involved with several other online businesses spanning financial services and tourism.
Brook has a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce and Administration from the Victoria University of Wellington and an Executive MBA, with distinction, from INSEAD. He is a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA) and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).
Sam Korsmoe is an American who has been engaged with Vietnam since 1990 and lived and worked full-time in the country from 1993 to 2004 and again from 2018 to the present day. He speaks Vietnamese (fluently), Mandarin Chinese (survival), and Chavacano (near fluently).
Sam has written extensively on business, culture, education, and sports for several publications. In addition to numerous market and industrial research reports about Vietnam and Cambodia, he wrote and published two books, an oral history of Vietnam, Saigon Stories (2006), and a nonfiction book on marathons and other sporting events, A World Gone Mad for Marathons(2019). Sam is the founder and lead instructor of the Saigon Writers Club (established in 2021) which has hosted nine creative writing classes for aspiring writers and has published four short story anthologies.
Sam has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Montana State University and a Master of Arts in International Studies from the University of Washington. His Master’s thesis was on Doi Moi, the economic reforms of Vietnam.
Foreword
by
Professor Carlyle A. Thayer
From the moment I finished reading the initial proposal by co-authors Brook Taylor and Sam Korsmoe for a book on Vietnam as Asia’s next Tiger Economy, I became an ardent supporter of this initiative. I have been visiting, researching, and writing about Vietnam for the past fifty-five years. My focus was on the recent past and present in Vietnam and rarely did I venture to forecast developments a few years into the future.
As I read various drafts of Vietnam: Asia’s Rising Star, I was prompted to reassess how I had framed my knowledge and experience about contemporary Vietnam and compare it with theirs. I was then led to engage intellectually with the co-author’s central concern: Does Vietnam have what it takes to become Asia’s next Tiger Economy and, if so, what factors will enable it to do so?
Taylor and Korsmoe bring together more than fifty-seven years of experience living and working in Vietnam. It is on this basis that they explore what Vietnam’s future will be. Vietnam: Asia’s Rising Star is a riveting and stimulating treatise on the drivers behind Asia’s next Tiger Economy.
The approach that the authors employ transcends normal academic discourse and disciplinary methodologies. They opt to look beyond economic models and take an interdisciplinary overview based on rigorous deductive reasoning. They extrapolate key themes from Vietnam’s geography, history, culture, and government to mould this overview. They then incorporate into their analysis the views of ordinary Vietnamese men and women whom they interviewed. This expanded interdisciplinary and eclectic approach provides a stimulating prologue to the main part of Vietnam: Asia’s Rising Star.
Taylor and Korsmoe apply a rigorous methodology by developing, evaluating, and testing the metrics for their two-part central hypothesis: (1) Vietnam is the next Tiger Economy of Asia, and (2) it will grow and develop in a similar way to how South Korea and Taiwan grew as the Tiger Economies of their era. For the first part of their analysis, the co-authors identify key metrics associated with South Korea and Taiwan that defined them as Tiger Economies. Vietnam is measured against these metrics.
For the second part of their analysis, Taylor and Korsmoe introduce additional metrics to select pertinent case studies. Six wide-ranging case studies make the final cut, ranging from education; leapfrog technology; the role of women; tourism, cuisine, art and Olympic Dreams; to value-added agriculture and public works.
The case studies draw on data from Taiwan, South Korea, and elsewhere, for comparative purposes. The analysis of each case study is evaluated through a series of testing tools. The result is a finely crafted qualitative assessment. The reader is literally invited to add his or her perspective to this process and decide whether the co-authors have made their case. Vietnam: Asia’s Rising Star concludes with a chapter entitled Vietnam in 2050 with a positive, forward-looking, and compelling account of the factors that will influence Vietnam’s rise
Vietnam: Asia’s Rising Star will fill a lacuna in the literature on Vietnam because it is interdisciplinary, contemporary, and forward-looking. There is no book on the market that fills this gap. This book will appeal to an extremely wide audience because it is original and rigorous in its approach and superbly well written. Vietnam: Asia’s Rising Star should be read by anyone with an interest in Vietnam—students at all levels, academics of whatever discipline, diplomats in or about to be posted to Vietnam, government aid workers and NGOs, tourists, investors and financial analysts, overseas Vietnamese, and anyone else with an interest in the future of Asia.
Carlyle A. Thayer
Emeritus Professor
University of New South Wales, Canberra
July 2023
Table of Contents
Foreword by Professor Carlyle A. Thayer
Preface
My Extended O.E. by Brook Taylor
My Thirty-Year Journey by Sam Korsmoe
Chapter 1 – The Hypothesis
Chapter 2 – The First 2,000 Years
Chapter 3 – This Is Who We Are
Chapter 4 – Open for Business
Chapter 5 – Free Trade Better Work
Chapter 6 – Policymakers
Chapter 7 – Is Vietnam a Tiger and Can it Jump?
Chapter 8 – What the Asian Tigers Had
Chapter 9 – The Cards It Holds
Chapter 10 – Six Case Studies
Case Study One – Education: Start with the Children
Case Study Two – Leap Frog Technology: Faster Than Google
Case Study Three – The Role of Women: Holding Up Half the Sky
Case Study Four –Tourism, Cuisine, Art, & Olympic Dreams: Building A National Brand
Case Study Five – Value-added Agriculture: How Vietnamese Coffee Farmers Disrupted An Industry
Case Study Six – Public Works: It’s Just A Metro. How Hard Can It Be?
Chapter 11 – The Risks Ahead
Chapter 12 – Vietnam in 2050
Carlyle A. Thayer
Emeritus Professor
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of New South Wales at the
Australian Defence Force Academy
Canberra, ACT 2610 Australia
Phone: +61 02 6251 1849
Mobile: 0437 376 429
Calling Mobile from overseas +61 437 376 429
