By Chris Plante

Chris Plante is The Asia Foundation’s Director of the Environment Program. He can be reached at cplante@asiafound.org. Recently, he participated in a panel discussion titled “Water Worries: Balancing the Water We Need with the Water We Have” aired on City Visions Radio.

Thinking about World Water Day this Sunday, March 22nd, and the 2009 World Water Day theme of Transboundary Water, “sharing water, sharing opportunities,” I am reminded of “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost’s 1914 poem in which he asks why two neighbors must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. Today, the unwritten rule – that good fences make good neighbors – makes plenty of sense to most of us. Our cities and suburbs, farms and factories, power plants and parks, and roads and rivers share common geography, boundaries, and neighbors.
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By Kim Ninh

Kim Ninh is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Vietnam. She can be reached at kninh@asiafound.org.

On a cold and gray day last December, a group of women huddled together in the Hoa Sua restaurant in Hanoi for the last lunch before they departed for the flight that would take them back to their home province of Can Tho, located in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. This was no simple lunch; the women critically examined the food, commented on the service, and eyed the table’s setting as well as the restaurant’s décor. Gracefully and patiently answering their questions was Ms. Pham Thi Vy, the founding member cum director of the Hoa Sua School, which runs the Hoa Sua restaurant along with a number of other successful businesses in Hanoi. The amazing thing about the Hoa Sua School is that it is a vocational training school for disadvantaged youth that has successfully met the needs of the market for fifteen years.

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Earlier today in Vietnam, The Asia Foundation and its local partners released one of the year’s most highly anticipated reports: the 2008 Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI). The PCI ranks the ability and willingness of provincial governments to develop business-friendly environments for private sector development. This marks the fourth in an annual series of Vietnam’s largest and most comprehensive assessments and rankings based on the views expressed by 7,820 domestic entrepreneurs and managers from firms across Vietnam’s 64 provinces.

Investors use the Index as a reference for their investment decision-making, and PCI results have been cited by Vietnam’s Prime Ministers and in more than 500 investigative and news articles. Each year, PCI gauges the progress of economic and administrative reforms and provides guidance to Vietnam’s policymakers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. Looming as Asia’s next tiger economy, Vietnam is growing at an average of 8% per annum.
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By Harry Harding

Harry Harding is a University Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University and a Trustee of The Asia Foundation. He wrote “China Policy for the Next U.S. Administration,” a chapter in The Asia Foundation’s newly-released “America’s Role in Asia,” and recently attended a Thai-US Think Tank Summit in Bangkok where he spoke on the U.S.-Southeast Asia relationship.

Now that the U.S. presidential election is over, the incoming Obama administration will begin a reconsideration of American foreign policy.  Numerous urgent issues will compete for attention, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and the parlous state of the global economy.  But consideration of these urgent matters should not come at the expense of issues that, while perhaps less immediate, are no less important.  One of these is the American relationship with Southeast Asia.

There is a widely shared view, both in Southeast Asia and in the Asian policy community in the U.S., that the United States has been paying insufficient attention to the region. In introducing the Southeast Asia section of the Asia Foundation’s recently-released America’s Role in Asia report at a press conference in Washington last month Tommy Koh, Ambassador-At-Large at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, complained that Washington has been treating Southeast Asia with “benign neglect,” perhaps because the region has presented the U.S. with neither significant challenges nor great opportunities.
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The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Vietnam, Kim Ninh, is featured in PBS’s Frontline World’s, “Forgive and Forget?: America Inside the Vietnamese Soul“ in which she offers her insight as a returned expat to Hanoi. She tells reporter Nguyen Qui Duc, “Vietnam is a place that has tremendous affection for America, and I find myself explaining America to my Vietnamese friends and colleagues. In that process, I can recall the good things about America and what makes me feel American: the openness of mind, the generosity of spirit, the willingness to experiment, and the mix of people and institutions that allow for such extraordinary creativity. America is truly a special place.” She can be reached at kninh@asiafound.org.

By Kim N.B. Ninh

Kim Ninh is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Vietnam. The below is an op-ed carried Tuesday in the International Herald Tribune and originally in In Asia. She can be reached at kninh@asiafound.org.

Vietnam may be experiencing the highest inflation rate in the last two decades, a whopping 28 percent year-on-year in August, but of late the country is consumed with a different crisis. The latest beauty to be crowned Miss Vietnam on Aug. 31, 18-year-old Tran Thi Thuy Dung, was discovered to not have finished secondary school, contrary to the government’s beauty contest regulations. On the surface, the ingredients of this still unfolding scandal are rather mundane. It turns out that the rules established by the Miss Vietnam organizing committee were different from those of the Ministry of Culture, asking for contestants to have achieved “the level of high school and higher” rather than the government’s requirement of a high school graduation exam. Read more…

By To Kim Lien

To Kim Lien is a Program Manager for The Asia Foundation in Hanoi.

Over the past few weeks, Vietnam’s dying rivers have been the subject of intense media and public outcry. Reports indicate that Vedan, a Taiwanese company, which produces monosodium glutamate, has inflicted significant environmental damage for over a decade to the Thi Vai River. The Thi Vai River’s destruction has severe consequences. Many Vietnamese are dependent on aquacultural production; their livelihoods along the river have been destroyed. Ships can no longer anchor at Go Dau port in Dong Nai province because of pollution damage — and the port is losing revenue.  The river is also the source of drinking water for many, which seriously affects public health.
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By Tommy Koh

Tommy Koh is Ambassador-At-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore, and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies and the National Heritage Board. He was one of the three Asian co-chairs for the recently released book, America’s Role in Asia: Asian and American Views. Below is an excerpt from his chapter, which provides recommendations for a new U.S.  administration’s foreign policy towards the Southeast Asia region.

The peoples of Southeast Asia are following the 2008 U.S. presidential elections with great attention and admiration, given the open and transparent primary processes. America’s real and vibrant democracy is reflected in the competing candidates’ travels to every corner of the country to win the hearts and minds of voters. This illustrates that the highest office of the land can neither be secured by wealth nor pedigree and, this year especially, neither race nor gender is an insurmountable obstacle. Consequently, in some parts of the world, including Southeast Asia, anti-Americanism has been balanced by a respect for America’s current exercise of democracy.

Thus, every region of the world wants America’s attention; the only question is whether American attention is positive or negative. Washington’s nature is to focus attention on the largest countries, regions, and economies, which can pose a threat to American interest or to international peace and security. By these standards, Southeast Asia ” a region largely at peace ” does not receive the positive attention it deserves. Read More…

By V. Bruce J. Tolentino

Bruce Tolentino is The Asia Foundation’s Director for Economic Reform and Development Programs. He can be reached at btolentino@asiafound.org.

Over the past few weeks, as the U.S. financial system has reeled from a shocking series of major “adjustments,” Asia’s economists and bankers remind themselves of the key lessons — painfully taught — by the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s:  (a) all markets are linked; (b) financial markets are much more volatile than others and thus require more stringent oversight and regulation; and (c) refocusing on economic fundamentals is key to long-term recovery and growth.

Taking the long view, the medium-to-long term impact of the U.S. financial crisis on Asia is likely to be muted.
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By Kim N. B. Ninh

Dr. Kim N. B. Ninh is the Hanoi-based Country Representative of Vietnam for The Asia Foundation. She can be reached at kninh@asiafound.org.

Vietnam may be experiencing the highest inflation rate in the last two decades, a whopping 28% year-on-year in August, but of late the country is consumed with a different kind of crisis.  The latest beauty to be crowned Miss Vietnam on August 31, 18-year-old Tran Thi Thuy Dung, was discovered to not have finished secondary school, contrary to the government’s beauty contest regulations.

On the surface, the ingredients of this still unfolding scandal are rather mundane.  It turns out that the rules established by the Miss Vietnam organizing committee were different from those of the Ministry of Culture, asking for contestants to have “the level of high school and up” rather than the government’s requirement of a high school graduation exam.  Under furious media questioning, the organizing committee stuck by its gun, stating that although its regulations did not meet legal standards, the new Miss Vietnam did not do anything wrong.  Under more media investigation, there are now serious questions about whether Miss Vietnam’s school records have been doctored to show that she has completed the twelfth grade, even though she had left in the middle of the school year. 
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