越南加入資本主義國家後，中美兩國都相當注目其發展。雖然兩國在歷史上都與越南有密切關係，但是，越南正謹慎在二國之間獲取其最大利益。中美都在越南持續大幅投資，並且也一定程度的與越南軍事合作。

Vietnam arrives as an economic player in Asia
By Jane Perlez The New York Times
TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 2006
HANOI With the fastest growth in Asia after China and a capitalist game plan that is attracting global investment, communist Vietnam is emerging as a regional economic power as it moves from rice fields to factories.

And with the wounds of war all but healed, Washington is paying attention.

Trade talks between the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, and his Vietnamese counterpart turned into a love fest here recently, choreographed by the hosts to show their affection for the United States.

”At last we’re having dinner together,” said Nguyen Van An, leader of the Vietnamese National Assembly, as he hugged the speaker and presented him with a copy of a letter from Ho Chi Minh to President Harry Truman appealing for U.S. help against the French. ”We should have met 60 years ago.”

Hastert’s presence in April was part of a larger dance that has since starred Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as visitors, and will feature President George W. Bush when he attends the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting here this autumn. Vietnam’s leaders have made plain that they want the United States on their side for equilibrium against China, a longtime former occupier. Vietnam, though an ideological ally of Beijing, fears an expanding Chinese sphere of influence and being reduced to an economic appendage of its northern neighbor.

Vietnam has fought wars against China, historically a rival, most recently in 1979. Now, relations have ”never been so good,” said Ton Nu Thi Ninh, vice chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the National Assembly. ”But that doesn’t mean they’re perfect,” she added.

”Everyone knows we have to keep a fine balance,” she said, declining to ”lean over” toward Washington or ”bow” to Beijing.

The Bush administration, also concerned about Beijing’s designs in Asia, is happy to provide a counterweight. The competition between Beijing and Washington for Vietnam’s allegiance sometimes seems toe-to-toe.

This month, Rumsfeld announced small but significant steps to deepen military cooperation with Vietnam, including the possibility that Vietnam will buy U.S. military spare parts. Last year, Vietnam enrolled some of its troops in the Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training program, which is open to friendly countries.

China’s minister of defense, Cao Gangchuan, visited Hanoi in April on the eve of a National Party Congress that chose Nguyen Tan Dung as prime minister and Nguyen Minh Triet as president.

The two support economic change but are political die-hards who favor the Chinese model: economic transition to open markets with firm Communist Party political control, analysts say.

China and the United States are rapidly increasing their economic presence here. Chinese and U.S. investments in Vietnam last year were about equal: a little more than $2 billion each, according to government figures.

Two-way trade between the United States and Vietnam rose to nearly $8 billion last year from less than $1 billion in 2001, most of it shrimp, clothes and shoes for U.S. shoppers.

Not to be outdone, the Chinese commerce minister, Bo Xilai, said in a visit to Vietnam this month that trade between Vietnam and China could reach $10 billion in 2006, an increase of almost 40 percent from 2005.

In one of the most significant new U.S. investments, Intel chose Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, as the site of a $600 million microchip plant that will begin production in 2008. With Vietnam’s membership in the World Trade Organization expected in the autumn, scouts for U.S. banks and insurance and telecommunications companies are knocking on doors here, poised to invest.

And in motorbike-crazy Vietnam, where city streets are clogged with cheap Chinese models, Harley-Davidson, the all-American company, has sensed an opportunity. It won concessions in recent trade talks to have tariffs on heavy cycles lifted and plans to open a showroom soon.

China’s investments have been mostly in raw materials like coal and bauxite and building roads and rails that will connect the long coast of Vietnam to southern China.

Signs of Vietnam’s economic exuberance abound.

One of the country’s best-known new entrepreneurs, Ly Qui Trung, 40, opened a noodle soup store three years ago and now has a chain of 33 outlets. Called Pho 24, after the national dish of noodles, beef, spices and greens in an aromatic broth, the stores earn their franchisees as much as $40,000 a year, Trung says, a handsome income in Vietnam.

”I use the method of McDonald’s: Everything is standardized, everything is uniform,” he said. ”It’s nine steps from taking the order to serving the food to saying goodbye.”

On the outskirts of Hanoi, Chen Guohui, a textile engineer from Southern China, runs a yarn manufacturing factory with 600 employees, many of whom left the surrounding farms to work as machine operators.

”Chinese factories are coming here more and more; labor costs are 25 to 30 percent lower than in China,” he said. At his plant, workers were paid an average of $60 a month.

Vietnam has arrived as an economic player in Asia after years of slow and fitful decision making by the ruling Politburo. The government finally passed an enterprise act in 2000 that permitted the formation of small and medium-size businesses, but major industries like power and telephones remain dominated by state enterprises.

The gradual approach has won praise from the World Bank, which says growth has come fairly equitably, creating fewer divisions between rich and poor than in some developing countries.

”It is rare for a country to graduate from being poor to middle income in 15 years,” said Klaus Rohland, the World Bank’s country director in Vietnam.

In 1993, Vietnam’s per capita income was $180. It climbed to $640 in 2005 and is expected to reach $1,000 by 2010, when Vietnam will no longer qualify for concessionary loans from the World Bank, he said.

Relations between Vietnam and the United States have improved but remain troubled by uneasiness in Washington over human rights and by the opposition of many Vietnamese- Americans to the Hanoi government.

The Vietnamese government remains irritated by Washington’s refusal to consider compensation for victims of Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide that the United States used in the Vietnam War.

Still, the anti-Americanism that can be found elsewhere, especially over the Iraq war, is less evident here. Ninh, of the Foreign Affairs Committee, singled out Gates, who was mobbed here in April, as an example of friendlier attitudes.

”Vietnamese like Bill Gates because he earned his money with his brain and got it with his determination,” she said. ”He is a role model young people can emulate.”

His last message, she noted, was to say, ”I’m coming back.”