Vietnam's generational split
By Long S Le

When Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet meets with his US counterpart George W Bush on Friday in Washington to discuss trade, investment and perhaps even politics, Vietnam's shifting demographics won't be on the high-level agenda. Yet the sentiments of Vietnam's post-war generation are increasingly crucial to the success or failure of the Communist Party-led and US-supported economic reform drive.

"Youth is the future" is not merely an article of faith but is a statistical reality in today's Vietnam. About 60% of the country's 80 million or so people are under the age of 30. This means about 50 million Vietnamese ?or about 24 million under 14 and 26 million between 15 to 30 years old ?came of age after the Vietnam War.

More and more Vietnamese urban youth are now modeling themselves after American capitalist Bill Gates rather than revolutionary cadre Ho Chi Minh, marking a notable departure from nationalistic ideals to economic pragmatism and a significant shifting of dues from youth leagues to karaoke bars.

This partially explains why the Communist Party has in recent years faced hard times in recruiting young people - from 1993 to 2002, only about 4% of new party members were students. A 2000 poll conducted by a state-run magazine, Tuoi Tre, found that 90% of Ho Chi Minh City youths considered Microsoft founder Gates their "role model", followed by Ho Chi Minh at 39%. The then-prime minister, Phan Van Khai, was only half as popular as president Bill Clinton, 3% and 6% respectively.

The 120,000 published copies of Tuoi Tre's survey were later destroyed by state censors and the publication's three editors were harshly sanctioned. Yet the survey's findings showed clearly the sociopolitical orientation of today's Vietnamese youth is starkly different from their parents, who came of age during the so-called anti-American War and whose upward mobility was closely associated with the ruling Communist Party. Yet is it different enough to cause real political change?

In the Cold War era, university students sent to Eastern Europe and other socialist countries had the right political credentials and saw their academic achievement as owed to the "people" who sent them abroad in order to contribute to greater collectivity. Many from that generation - now ranging from 45 to 60 years of age - are replacing the more senior generation, whose task today is to balance market-oriented economic reforms with Ho Chi Minh thought and revolutionary socialist institutions.

President Nguyen Minh Triet's tour of the United States reflects this desired "third way". On Thursday, he signed a Trade and Investment Framework agreement with US Trade Representative Karan Bhatia designed to open more Vietnamese markets to US investors. He also secured more than US$2.5 billion through a memorandum of understanding with Citigroup, Wachovia, Microsoft, and NYSE Euronext to help modernize Vietnamese state-owned enterprises, including the Electricity of Vietnam, Vietnam Coal and Mineral Industries Group, Vietnam National Shipping Lines, the Ho City Minh City Securities Trading Center and the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development.

This financial assistance implicitly legitimizes the role for Vietnam's state-owned enterprises in the country's capitalist transition. Yet on the surface they would also appear to run counter to US trade policies, which broadly encourage governments to govern and get out of private business. According to US consul general to Vietnam Seth Winnick, by focusing too heavily on production, the Vietnamese government "becomes distracted" and "can't do its job as a government".

The Communist Party-led government is now bidding to pursue a "third way" which both maintains Ho Chi Minh's communist collectivist philosophies but also legitimizes the capitalist pursuit of individual wealth and private consumption. As Vietnam more deeply engages the global economy, many Western analysts contend that the old generation of Vietnamese leaders is destined to lose the campaign to keep its people uniform and uninformed. Indeed the conflicting collectivist and capitalist impulses are fast causing intergenerational gaps in political outlook, with sections of the younger generation less tolerant of the party's tight state controls.

Vietnam's post-war generation are increasingly taking courses in English, establishing friendly contacts with foreign families and friends, and rapidly plugging into the Internet, which as of last July including 13 million regular users. For many Vietnamese youth, speaking English and surfing the Internet are part and parcel of their passion for modernity. Yet whether Vietnam's new generation is pushing for the sort of social and economic change that will lead to more democracy is still uncertain.

One key reason is that these activities are not necessarily private or beyond the administrative control of the government. A recent study by the OpenNet Initiative found that access to the Internet in Vietnam is extensively regulated, not only through legal means but also through technical sophistication. According to the study, the state has been able to block access to "a significant fraction, in some cases a great majority, of politically or religiously sensitive material" that could undermine its one-party system. It goes on to predict that "state online information control will deepen and grow".

One clear example of state control is the arrest of three Vietnamese youth Internet users who were detained in October

2005 for nearly nine months without trial for participating in a pro-democracy chat forum at www.PalTalk.com supported by overseas Vietnamese in Canada. The e-mails and voice discussions that took place on the forum were recorded by a government ministry and the three were later charged of violating article 19 of the criminal code, which relates to charges for attempting to overthrow the government.

Muted protests
Internet communications have recently been brought under the country's press law, criminal code, executive orders and constitutional provisions related to national security. Such crackdowns and penalties reinforce the dominance of the party's one-party politics among the post-war generation and sends a clear signal that any displeasure with the political status quo cannot be displayed in an organized manner. That explains in party why student demonstrations and protest politics are almost never seen on Vietnam's streets.

This is not to say that the majority of the post-war generation is not open to Western concepts of democracy and human rights. But the "localizing" of democratic values is complex and often contradictory. For example, the 2001 World Values Survey-Vietnam showed overwhelming support among Vietnamese youth for the idea that democracy is the best form of government. However, the same survey also found that an even greater percentage of the population endorsed and supported democracy as it was constrictively defined in the state's development plan.

My fieldwork shows that a number of urban young professionals, who would sincerely recite the benefits of communism, are very optimistic about the domestic political changes now taking place. Many of them possess an undeniable entrepreneurial spirit and believe their success will be based primarily on individual effort - independent of politics. There are also those who hold more independent political thoughts, but are nonetheless cautious about joining alternative political groups or movements, including those led by overseas Vietnamese.

Moreover, thousands of Vietnamese students are now studying overseas at Western universities. A large number of them are bidding to extend their stay in the US, and a good many want to stay in the US permanently. Those that have become particularly conscious of some aspects of democratic norms and values are among those trying to put off returning to Vietnam.

However, the majority of these students I have encountered tend to shy from criticism of the one-party system, either because they are the beneficiaries of the status quo or that they fear causing trouble for their families and relatives back in Vietnam. Many still lack the ability to think critically and independently, due perhaps to their formative educational training in Vietnam which stressed rote learning.

One important question concerns how many of those who return from the West to Vietnam will end up working for the government, where salaries are low and merit-based promotions slow. Many of course would prefer to work for higher-paying Western firms which are in growing numbers establishing their presence in Vietnam. That market process is slowly but surely undermining the party's constitutional claim to be "the force leading the state and society".

To be sure, the post-war generation increasingly expects the government to deliver the economic conditions that will allow for an improved standard of living. The party's strategy to manage these growing expectations seems to be: "Leave us to run the state as we see fit and we'll allow you to grow rich in the process."

For many Vietnamese youth, as long as the party's modernity program creates better tertiary education, jobs and allows them to uninhibited pursue personal wealth, for now they can live with the one-party political system and the party's economic reforms that revolutionize the prevailing socialist order rather than converting it to full-blown capitalism.

To be sure, not all those expectations are being met, specifically concerning the education system. Party leaders still dictate curriculum, including which textbooks should be used at all school levels. At the university level, the courses offered are seldom relevant to the skills needed to compete in the local market. There is still a significant gap between the public call for education reform and the government's view that education policy must be an integral part of its wider socio-political policy.

But as more and more of the post-war generation start to benefit economically, fewer and fewer seem willing to question whether the party's should be the only force allowed to represent the common interest. Vietnam's recent economic progress, as well as its extraordinary untapped potential, have overshadowed the importance of supporting a younger generation of Vietnamese political leaders, unaffiliated with the party and willing to challenge the one-party status quo.

Unfortunately, this won't make the agenda when Triet and Bush meet at the White House.

Long S Le is the director of international initiatives for the Global Studies Program and also a lecturer of Vietnamese studies at the University of Houston in the United States.