Communism in Vietnam

David Cameron becomes first British PM to visit Vietnam

David Cameron clearly sees Vietnam as a regime he can do business with

Vietnam may be one of the last five true Communist countries in the world. 

It maintains all the trappings of a dictatorship that tramples on human rights, but Cameron clearly thinks this is a regime with which he can do business.

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But if Hanoi’s politics have changed little in the past 40 years with Communist rule as dominant as ever, the elderly men running the country have let loose a casino capitalism. 

In a symbol of change, the building in the former Saigon from which US marines and CIA agents were helicoptered at the end of the war is now a luxury area selling Burberry.


Cameron travelled in Vietnam as a young backpacker in the early 90s, and despite the protocol-ridden formalities of the signing ceremonies for Rolls Royce engines and Prudential Assurance, he would find the sprawling metropolitan city quite startling with its bars and vibrant streets. 

The US may have lost the battle to protect south Vietnam from communism, but its capitalism may yet win the war.

Cameron is in Vietnam to get Britain access to the fastest growing middle class in south-east Asia. The statistics of economic transformation are, as Cameron said, extraordinary. 

The country’s growth per head was 350% between 1990 and 2010. It is currently growing by 6% a year and is predicted to be one of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world. 

Britain’s aid programme, not obviously necessary, comes to an end next year.

Startups burst on to the scene regularly. 

A third of the entire country, 30 million people, are on Facebook – 17 million via smartphones or tablets – and they are estimated to spend two and a half hours a day on the site. 

Vietnam is also a young country. 

Two-thirds of the population was born after the fall of Saigon and the reunification of Vietnam in 1975.

About as communist as China, is Vietnam today.

Ho's legacy is party dictatorship and national unity.

Socialism, not so much.

"Ignominiously pulled out"?

Did Patrick Wintour really mean to fault the US for giving up the fight?