In Vietnam’s communist system, all land is owned by the people and managed or leased out by the state. Most of the property for the golf project is still controlled by families with long-term rights of use. In the Khoai Chau district of Hung Yen province — where the Trump project will take up nearly four square miles along the Red River — a sense of betrayal has been rumbling.
At town-hall meetings in early April, officials told hundreds of residents that the best they could expect was about half of what their land would have sold for even before the golf project was announced in October.
Amid a chorus of outrage at one meeting, nearly everyone stormed out. Word of the offered rate spread through streets and into the fields. Opposition has hardened as farmers fear losing investments in saplings that take years to mature, and the security that the land has provided for generations.
“They’re not listening to us,” Le Thi Thanh, 57, said on a recent fever-hot afternoon, squatting to graft young custard apple trees. “They just come here and impose their will.”
At the groundbreaking, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh seemed sensitive to the possibility of public backlash in a country where, despite the power of a one-party state, people are not afraid to protest over being forced from where they live and work.
Raising his voice to a crowd of bankers, generals and Trump invitees in suits or shimmering stilettos, Mr. Chinh instructed the provincial authorities to ensure that those who sacrificed property would “have a new livelihood and new home better than their old ones.”
He also said the project would “receive maximum support” to “further strengthen the relationship between Vietnam and the U.S.” He promised that it would be completed in 2027.
Golf courses provide absolutely zero economic benefit and are a net social, environmental and land-use drain on the local economy
If the government thinks that allowing this corruption to flourish will incentivize the west to pull a Deng Xiaoping in the year of our lord 2025, then they’re dumbasses, the west wants cheap labor and no regulatory oversight free of charge, this is not 1992 the US will not build factories, transfer technology or fund infrastructure for the sake of Vietnam’s development, even if it slashes labor laws
That era is over, the west is too financialized to commit to the foreign investment Vietnam’s elites are looking for or pretending to look for, this shit is only viable as grift and corruption for the individuals involved
WTF is going on with Vietnam?
Capitulation to Trump and earlier, collaboration with the zionazis. Something isn’t right.
Current leadership is highly focused on wanting Vietnam to get out of the middle-income trap, saying this is the country only chance to do so, they are pure nationalist and developmentalist, wanting to emulate Japan/Korea/Singapore/China rise. Their policies including:
- Reduce state bureaucracy by reducing amount of state employees (with good compensation) through merging departments and provinces
- Heavily increase spending on sciences
- Building infrastructures including better highway system as well as high speed train and metro
- Free basic public education from next year
- Gradually transition to a free healthcare by 2030s
- Promoting importance of private businesses as well as being much more lenient toward them when they break laws not putting them in jail if they pay enough to cover the damages.
- Building international financial centre
Trump capitulation and zionist collab are just all for self-interest to develop the country. The country rely heavily on foreign investments (from East Asia and Singapore) and export (US exports account for 1/3) for their developments.
At least there are no peeling back of existing labor laws yet.
If Vietnam’s gov is goofy enough to believe the Zionists and Trump will fund even one percent of those developmentalist planks, then I look forward to seeing them get burned by Trump and laughing Israelis
I mean honestly who the fuck do they think they’re dealing with, they’re 25 years too late to play that game, watch as Trump tariffs their ass again
Western economist have been hyping up Vietnam as the next SK/China due to “sino-buddhist work ethic” or something.
Why is the New York times posting this?
It’s because Vietnam and China are getting close (they had been close since the 90s, but Western cope thought that Vietnam would simultaneously forgive the US for spraying their country with Agent Orange while still holding a grudge against China for China invading Vietnam during the 70s). Vietnam recently had a massive 50-year anniversary of the liberation of Saigon where the PLA was invited to march through the streets with the US declining to attend because Burgerlanders are sore fucking losers.
Expect to see more “Vietnam condemns China for imperializing the South China Sea” articles.
falling back into their favorite patterns of “trump bad” + anti-communism + “look at how incompetently these non-whites govern”, seems like. Last one is pretty much the most consistent tenor of NYT’s foreign affairs pieces throughout the years.
To conflate socialism and fascism i guess
I feel like they can just say, " be cool we are bribing the US" in Vietnamese and we won’t bother to translate it.
