Another one bites the dust, walking shamelessly down Prakash Karat’s ‘pro-imperialist’ path, and that is none other than Vietnam, run by his comrades. The latest emerging market that is being deluged with attention from America Inc is Vietnam. The Wall Street Journal has frequent Vietnam stories; and in true American Inc fashion, there is a rush to hold emerging market conferences and strategy sessions in Ho Chi Minh City, with well-arranged tours of the hinterland, so that the American senior management team can understand what it takes to capture Vietnam, so to speak. And as a bright young man who works in the region was explaining to me on a flight back from Saigon, whenever there is an American business leader of Fortune 100 CEO rank visiting Vietnam, the visit carries all the courtesies extended to highly placed political figures, which includes the top brass from Hanoi descending and offering them goodies and wooing them to invest. “Think of us as a compulsory add-on to your China strategy,” they say, as they open doors wide, positioning themselves as the must-have de-risking strategy for all those who have investments in China.

They emphasise their young population, their outsourcing advantages, their hyper fast-paced GDP growth and the fact that they may be small on a stand-alone basis ($61 billion GDP, 84 million people), but when added to a global company’s Asean portfolio, they make a big difference to the vibrancy of that portfolio. A Business World article says: “Vietnamese authorities aggressively wooed Intel for investment... largely on the strength of that — and the relentless wooing from Hanoi — Phue said that Intel made the strategic decision to hedge against China... decided to set up a brand new $600 million chipset factory at the Saigon High Tech Park.”

... contd.