We selected six criteria to measure whether Vietnam can credibly call itself a ‘Tiger Economy.’ Vietnam had to meet all or most of these metrics to be considered as such:

1. Numbers. Net growth for at least ten consecutive years (e.g., measurable outcomes such as GDP, FDI, trade, and foreign exchange reserves, have consistently grown for many years in a row).

2. Exports. Consistent movement up the value chain of manufactured products for export (e.g., the country’s factories consistently invest in and improve their operations to produce more sophisticated, higher margin, and more technical products for export and local consumption).

3. Industrialization. The foundations for the current and future industrial development and growth of the country are in place in terms of policy (e.g., an outward-looking free trade business environment, international competition rather than import substitution, openness to FDI, restructuring SOEs, a downward trend of agriculture’s share of GDP replaced by an upward trend of industry’s share of GDP, and other issues) and the country’s physical infrastructure is being built (e.g., roads, bridges, seaports, airports, and power generation) to facilitate industrial expansion.

4. Expertise. An expanding educated and highly skilled workforce (e.g., newly educated government workers and senior managers in the private sector are developing and implementing new management techniques while the workers who used to toil away on assembly lines to make shoes and garments are being trained to operate robotics and machinery with a much higher skill level).

5. Markets. Access to multiple global markets for Made-in-Vietnam products (e.g., locally made products are sold globally because the country has multiple free trade agreements with several countries in place as well as membership in global trading alliances).

6. Leaders. Strong leadership that is more a meritocracy than an oligarchy (e.g., while not always transparent, there are leadership changes that reflect a commitment to growth and development of the country rather than to an ideology or a dynasty).

Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea obtained and met most of these criteria from the 1970s onwards. Those countries’ ability to accomplish these metrics were part of the reason they became Tiger Economies. The authors key question is whether Vietnam can also meet these criteria.

As noted in the preface, there were two primary reasons we selected South Korea and Taiwan as the comparative case study countries for this book as opposed to one of the other two Tigers or a different country, such as China or Japan. The first reason is a cultural argument, and the second a historical argument based on the success of the Tiger Economy countries in the 1980s and 1990s.

The cultural reason lies in our belief that all three countries—Vietnam, Taiwan, and South Korea—share Northeast Asian cultural traits. These cultural traits include a commitment to education, respect for authority, a mostly single ethnicity among its population, postwar grit, and a work ethic that not too many countries possess. We argue that Vietnam, on these issues and others, leans more towards the culture of China, Japan, and Korea than towards Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. China was ruled out due to its size (among other issues) and Japan was ruled out because its development, although similar to that of South Korea and Taiwan, happened a much longer time ago.

This left us with the four Tiger Economies of Asia. Hong Kong and Singapore were immediately ruled out because they were city-states and thus not useful comparatives, so only South Korea and Taiwan remained. This made sense because these two countries were prime examples of how to execute the East Asian Development Model of development, which led to both countries becoming high-income countries by the year 2000. They were poor and undeveloped in the 1950s and 1960s, just like Vietnam was up to the 1990s, but they achieved remarkable success over the four decades from 1960 to 2000.

Vietnam’s growth from 2000 to 2020 has told a similar story in terms of the growth of various metrics essential to the East Asian Development Model. This includes trade, foreign direct investment, local investment, foreign currency reserves, official development aid, and other measurable metrics. Vietnam achieved these metrics in a similar way to how South Korea and Taiwan met those same metrics in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Moreover, Vietnam has several advantages that South Korea and Taiwan did not have, such as agricultural wealth, oil and gas resources, advantageous geography, and a much larger population and thus workforce.

With this cultural and historical backdrop established, we then proposed a comparison of a twenty-year period of significant economic development for South Korea and Taiwan (1980– 2000) against a thirty-year period for Vietnam’s future (2020–2050). These were the reasons we selected these two former Asian Tiger Economies as our benchmarks and as part of our hypothesis for this book.

We researched and wrote six case studies on economic and social sectors, such as education, technology, the role of women, sports, tourism, cuisine, agriculture, and public works. These are presented in Chapter 10. By reviewing each case study through five lenses, we were able to determine whether the observations in the case studies either nudge Vietnam closer to or further away from affirming our hypothesis is correct. The lenses through which we viewed each of these case studies are briefly described below.

1. Culture. Vietnam lies in a unique position in Asia. It borders China, a predominantly Confucian Northeast Asian country, as well as Cambodia and Laos, two distinct Southeast Asian Buddhist nations. Thailand is quite close, as is the Philippines, two more distinct Southeast Asian nations. These neighbors are relevant when considering which types of economic development and strategy Vietnam might follow, but they are less comparable when culture characteristics are considered. Our hypothesis states that Vietnam will shape its growth and development like South Korea and Taiwan, two Northeast Asian countries, and therefore not along the lines of Southeast Asian nations. Will Vietnam follow an authoritarian Confucian model or an often-chaotic Buddhist model? Where does its culture lie and how does it support our hypothesis?

2. Technology. Technology can be transformative for any country. This has been the case since ideas and knowledge could be shared across borders. The greatest invention of the twentieth century, the internet, has connected the world in an unprecedented way, but not all countries have approached the internet in the same way. Some countries, such as China, have set up firewalls and other barriers to the internet while others have opened their doors wide. How receptive a country is to new technology and the flow of new ideas is sure to impact how that country will grow.

Vietnam has been relatively open to these types of IT and internet developments. In the 1980s and 1990s, South Korea and Taiwan did not have the internet, but they were quite open to whatever technology existed and imported it into their country. Is Vietnam’s openness to the internet and other technologies a good trend that will lead to positive outcomes? Will it attract the type of IT talent and entrepreneurship that so many countries in the world desire as the world gets increasingly more connected online? The test within each case study is to identify whether the path Vietnam has taken in respect to accessing and adopting technology significantly supports its future growth.

3. Environment. Environmental changes are affecting the future of every country in the world. In the past, significant economic development has been achieved most often through the exploitation of natural resources rather than preservation, and there was little regard given to the negative impacts to the environment. This is no longer an option. Increasingly, people around the world are waking up to the fact that continuing down this development path is no longer sustainable if humans are to remain on this planet.

As a fast-developing, low-lying coastal country, Vietnam is much more vulnerable to environmental issues than many countries. In some cases, such as waste management and power generation, Vietnam can tackle the causes head on. In other cases, such as rising sea levels due to global warming, it is on the defensive and paying the price for the past actions of other countries. A recent climate report published by Climate Central, an American science organization that researches climate change and its impact on the public, revealed that most of the Mekong Delta, the country’s ‘rice basket,’ will be under water by 2050 due to rising sea levels.

It is hard to be optimistic on this issue. Whatever the tangible impacts, all countries must prepare for an uncertain world due to climate change, not to mention keeping their environment clean and safe for its citizens. Forty years ago, South Korea and Taiwan could choose to deal with or ignore much of the environmental impact of growing their economies. Vietnam does not have the same choice, but will it solve its environmental challenges? Can it adopt or find new environmental technologies better than other countries? Will it become a victim or a strong survivor of climate change? The real challenge this lens explores is not whether environmental factors will help Vietnam grow but whether they will hinder its growth.

4. Policy. Since the introduction of Doi Moi at the 6th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1986, the Party has seemed willing to endorse policies that keep opening Vietnam’s doors and windows ever wider. Vietnam is already one of the ‘most globalized’ countries in the world.3 It relies heavily on free trade and investment from outside to drive its economy. This is unlike China or Japan, which consider themselves large enough or strong enough to have their own markets. Perhaps for this and other reasons, import barriers are set up. They need less from outside markets.

Vietnam is different. For better or worse, it has fully embraced all that free trade and globalization have to offer and the government has put these intentions into policy. For example, this embrace is apparent in the foreign investment law and in the many free trade agreements and groups that the country has joined. Is this the right move? Can Vietnamese leaders reverse course if they need or want to, or have they passed the point of no return? What kind of policies were put in place by South Korean and Taiwanese leaders in the 1980s and 1990s? How much FDI did they allow in? This lens looks at whether there is evidence in the case studies that Vietnam will take advantage of the progressive policies that are already in place and whether similar new policies will continue to be adopted.

5. Governance. There are several reasons why countries get stuck at a certain economic and social level and/or remain poor. One of the most common is the inability of the government in power to govern effectively. This might be due to a weak legal infrastructure that leads to too many gray areas that result in corruption as the only means of getting something done. Sometimes there is an effort among elites to go slow on policies and projects that threaten their status quo—the status quo that has made them rich—and they want to maintain it even if it means the rest of the country remains poor. A small payoff to offload a container at the port is corruption, but it has a limited impact. A year-long delay in the development of a large infrastructure project because bureaucrats are intent on steering the construction contracts to certain individuals and companies is much more devastating for a country that wants to maintain its growth trends. We collectively label these issues as governance.

Governments create, pass, and implement policies, but they are not monolithic entities. They are composed of a large group or groups of individuals making hundreds of individual decisions, sometimes with limited resources or knowledge and often with numerous opportunities for self-interest. Reducing corruption and the application of laws for the good of all the people is particularly thorny as it relies on strong leadership that focuses on positive outcomes for the entire country rather than a chosen elite.

In less than fifty years South Korea and Taiwan achieved remarkable success. This is the reason we chose them as our comparative case study countries. The term ‘Asian Economic Miracle’ emerged from their success, as did the label ‘Tiger Economy.’ Thus, it is worth analyzing how South Korea and Taiwan achieved success because they offer viable development models.

Would Nostradamus have approved of our approach? Comparing Vietnam’s growth model today to the successful growth models of two countries in the 1980s and 1990s? Long essay-style case studies instead of quatrains? Who knows and who cares? The business of predicting the future is not for the faint of heart nor the thin of skin. The authors are neither of those things, nor are we clairvoyant. In the best way we could, we were simply trying to better understand this country as it moves through the 2020s and what it might look like by the year 2050.

The hypothesis made sense, and so that is how we began this research project. However, by the Tet holidays of 2020, we had to rethink our approach to describing what was happening in Vietnam. Everything had suddenly become much more complicated, and not just in Vietnam. The entire world had changed.