People get so confused, but understand that Vietnam is poised to be a big winner from this whole global trade reconfiguration if they lick the American boots hard enough.

The decision to concentrate the global industrial capacity in China was a deliberate US imperial strategy. And there was a reason for that: the land reform already implemented in communist countries gave the those countries the unique advantage of not having to deal with local landlords when it comes to seizing land to build industrial areas/infrastructure. This is why it had to be China, whereas other developing countries like India would have a much harder time accommodating foreign capitalists if the local landlords keep blocking the government from building vast transportation network and infrastructures.

Now that the US is looking to “decouple” from China, Vietnam is seeking to take advantage of its status as a communist country (ironic, I know) to displace the role that China has played. It wants to be the next China that has tremendously benefited from the last 30 years of neoliberal free trade regime.

I sometimes wonder if countries who understand historical materialism are simply more realistic than the others when it comes to taking advantage of the global capitalist system?

However, for those who don’t know, Vietnam has relatively strong workers protection laws (maximum of 40 hours overtime per month, and not more than 200 hours annually). Such limits do not exist in China and you can work as long as you like without limits. We know this because on the Chinese internet, there are businessowners who have set up factories in Vietnam only to find out that they couldn’t exploit the workers in Vietnam as hard as they could back in China, and proceeded to complain about it on the internet lol. (Of course, you can also read about it on the doing business with Vietnam website here)

So if Vietnam truly wants to “compete” with China, I wonder if they will have to give up their labor protection laws as well?