Richard Vogel/Associated Press
Students from a technical university were among throngs of Vietnamese who took to the streets of Hanoi on Saturday for a glimpse of Bill Gates.
Posted on 04/27/2006 3:34:29 PM PDT by neverdem
HANOI, Vietnam, April 26 — It was Lenin's birthday. The most important Communist Party meeting in five years was under way. And the star of the show was the world's most famous capitalist, Bill Gates.
The president, the prime minister and the deputy prime minister all excused themselves from the party meeting on Saturday to have their pictures taken with Mr. Gates, who has more star power in Vietnam than any of them.
When people heard he was in town, hundreds climbed trees and pushed through police lines to get a glimpse of him. He was the subject of the lead article in the next day's newspapers.
This is where Vietnam stands today, moving cautiously toward a new version of communism while the people and their leaders lunge eagerly for the brass ring of capitalist development.
"That was very symbolic," said Le Dang Doanh, an official in the Ministry of Planning, speaking of the reception for Mr. Gates. "It is a very clear sign of the new mood of society and the people. Everybody wants to be like Bill Gates."
It is 20 years since Vietnam, still struggling in the aftermath of war, began a sort of perestroika that has moved it from a strict planned economy to the more helter-skelter mechanisms of the marketplace. In the past decade, it has been putting its economic house in order — with a bid to join the World Trade Organization this year. And it is now drawing new interest from foreign investors.
"You'll find tremendous enthusiasm among the foreign community for Vietnam as the next rising star," said Jonathan Pincus, the country representative for the United Nations Development Program.
He said this was partly because major companies like Microsoft as well as Intel, Canon and Fujitsu were leading the way, and partly...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Richard Vogel/Associated Press
Students from a technical university were among throngs of Vietnamese who took to the streets of Hanoi on Saturday for a glimpse of Bill Gates.
It's a mixture of free enterprise, state-owned enterprises, government subsidies, and one-party rule.
Just because the DDR called itself democratic never meant that it was actually democratic.
I'd the only diehards left in the communist camp would be North Korea (excuse me, the People's Democratic Republic of Korea) and Cuba. Both countries are museum pieces and economic basket cases.
What's the DDR? IIRC, last time that I saw it, the formal name of Vietnam is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Think about it: Pringles. Mmmmm. Pringles.
Or could it be that Western CEOs have become blind to Communism and anti Westernism? Are they the Henry Fords of the 21st century?
They would be where Taiwan is today if John Kerry and his ilk and the mainstream press had not caused us to get cold feet and abandon a loyal ally to a godless ideology, which resulted in the imprisonment or death of more than a million people.
The Vietnamese crushed the Cambodian Khmer Rouge (true communists) and beat the ever-loving snot out of the PLA in China's land war with Vietnam in 1979.
Give credit where it is due; the Vietnamese are smarter than the North Koreans and Cubans and Zimbabweans. They are embracing Bill Gates while the Communist Party in France is marching in the streets, protesting anything that disrupts their cradle-to-grave job system in Paris.
Makes the unnecessary Vietnam War all the more tragic.
Communist Viet Nam has been trying to be capitalist to get rich enough to fend off China. The rulers there will liberalize and promote market solutions as far as they can and still keep their jobs. Unfortunately, that is not nearly far enough and they will lose their jobs ultimately. There are not a dozen believing Communists in the country now and I use that number because I am giving the "benefit" of the doubt to some of the Central Committee folks. The Human Rights problems are also improving but in fits and starts. A large part of the remaining weight on the Catholics has been removed and the economic ans social disabilities are being finally eased. I don't know anything about the treatment of the Minorities/Protestants lately, though.
There are plenty of blowhards willing to bring back the glorious misery that is communism. Mugabe and Chavez come to mind.
SO not breaking news.
P J O'Rourke pointed all this out 11 years ago in It's the End of History and Poly Sci isn't expected to recover either
Even John Pilger realized it 5 years ago (but he thought it was bad thing)
Viet Nam is effectively run by a Mafia, not real Communism at all.
*Bump*
What's tragic is that you believe that the valiant fight of a people against slavery and our support of them was unecssary.
Communism is alive and still a force to be reckoned with. We dismiss them at our peril.
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Here's a few more pictures to also NEVER FORGET:
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
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Or at least have his monopoly.
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