logo
Vietnam's diaspora is shaping the country their parents fled

Vietnam's diaspora is shaping the country their parents fled

Mint5 days ago
Fifty years ago Thinh Nguyen left his homeland aboard an American navy ship. Some of his compatriots escaped in helicopters. Tens of thousands fled in makeshift boats. Many more, including Mr Nguyen's father and brother, were left behind as troops from North Vietnam stormed into Saigon, then the capital of American-backed South Vietnam. The chaotic evacuation marked the end of the Vietnam war, badly damaged American credibility and left Vietnam in Communist hands. It also helped create one of the world's biggest diasporas.
Today, the Vietnamese diaspora is a force of around 5m people, living and working everywhere from America to eastern Europe. They also do a lot for Vietnam. They send back roughly $16bn of remittances a year, one of the highest hauls in Asia and greater than the diasporas of Indonesia or Thailand. But far more than their money, the people themselves are transforming the home country. Half a century on, Vietnamese emigrants and their children are coming back, bringing with them not just wealth but also the skills and education they have picked up abroad. Hundreds of thousands of overseas Vietnamese, who are known as 'Viet Kieu', visit their homeland every year. Official data on how many stay permanently are scarce, but many do.
The flow began slowly in the 1990s, when memories of war were still fresh. The government started to encourage Viet Kieu to return, describing them as 'an inseparable part of the Vietnamese nation'. Some came back to start businesses after the Communists opened up the economy through market reforms called doi moi. Mr Nguyen, who had worked in Silicon Valley, returned in 2002 to found a software company. Vietnam was 'the new El Dorado' and 'startup heaven', he says, because costs were low. His return coincided with a thaw in relations with America, which helped Vietnam develop its successful, export-oriented economic model.
In the years since Mr Nguyen arrived, Vietnam's economy has boomed. Last year it grew by 7%, faster than any other country in Asia. Companies such as Samsung and Apple have set up in Vietnam, which is now a crucial cog in global supply chains, exporting everything from smartphones to trainers. The diaspora is returning to take up opportunities in these bustling tech and manufacturing industries, as well as many others. They can use their upbringing abroad to their advantage: some American-Vietnamese work for Intel, which assembles chips in Vietnam.
Viet Kieu also come to connect with their roots. Having grown up abroad, they want to see what their homeland is like and improve their language skills. It is not always an easy transition. John Vu, a 33-year-old who grew up in America, moved to Saigon—known today as Ho Chi Minh City—in 2019 and organises meet-ups for Viet Kieu. He says some complain that 'they stand out like a sore thumb' and that locals speak English to them even when they try to speak Vietnamese. Younger returnees also face resistance from their parents, who knew a different Vietnam.
Celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war—which the government calls 'Reunification Day'—were complicated for some Viet Kieu. On April 30th tens of thousands of Vietnamese gawped at fireworks and fighter jets soaring above tanks and troops in Ho Chi Minh City. Mr Nguyen stayed at home. To him, having lived through the fall of Saigon, 'it is not a cause for celebration.' But younger Viet Kieu, as well as many local Vietnamese, do not have the same painful memories. Mimi Vu (no relation), who moved from America several years ago, was among those who felt 'happy the country is united'. Some, though, were just happy to get a few days off work.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Iraqi police clash with paramilitary fighters who stormed government building
Iraqi police clash with paramilitary fighters who stormed government building

Indian Express

timean hour ago

  • Indian Express

Iraqi police clash with paramilitary fighters who stormed government building

A gun battle erupted in Iraq's capital on Sunday between police and fighters from a state-sanctioned paramilitary force that includes Iran-backed groups, killing at least one police officer and leading to the arrest of 14 fighters, authorities said. The clash broke out in Baghdad's Karkh district after a group of fighters from the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) stormed an Agriculture Ministry building as a new director was being sworn in, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi, is an umbrella group of mostly Shi'ite paramilitary factions that was formally integrated into Iraq's state security forces and includes several groups aligned with Iran. According to the Interior Ministry, the PMF fighters burst into the building during an administrative meeting, causing panic among staff who alerted police. Security sources and three employees at the scene said the fighters had wanted to stop the office's former director from being replaced. A statement from the Joint Operations Command, which reports directly to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, confirmed that the detainees were PMF members and had been referred to the judiciary. At least one police officer was killed and nine others were wounded, police and hospital sources said. Sudani ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the incident, the command said. The arrested fighters belong to 'PMF brigades 45 and 46', the statement added. Both brigades are affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, according to Iraqi security officials and sources within the PMF.

From Obama's ‘treason' to missing gold reserves, the wildest conspiracy theories consuming Trump's Washington
From Obama's ‘treason' to missing gold reserves, the wildest conspiracy theories consuming Trump's Washington

Indian Express

timean hour ago

  • Indian Express

From Obama's ‘treason' to missing gold reserves, the wildest conspiracy theories consuming Trump's Washington

OK, so US President Donald Trump's name is in the Jeffrey Epstein files. But who put it there? Could it possibly have been Barack Obama from his prison cell? Or a tranquilized Hillary Clinton? Oh wait, maybe it was etched onto the documents by Joe Biden's magical autopen. Or is that mixing up different scandals? It's so hard to keep up with the latest wild notions circulating in the capital and beyond. Washington is awash in conspiracy theories these days, a cascade of suspicion and intrigue promoted or denied in the Oval Office, ricocheting around Capitol Hill and cable news and propelled at warp speed across social media. No commander in chief in his lifetime has been as consumed by conspiracy theories as Trump, and now they seem to be consuming him. They have been the rocket fuel for his political career since the days when he spread the lie that Obama was secretly born overseas and therefore not eligible to be president. More than a decade later, Trump is coming full circle by trying to divert attention from the Epstein conspiracy theory with a new-and-improved one about Obama supposedly committing treason. The harmonic convergence of competing conspiracies has overshadowed critical policy issues facing America's leaders at the moment, whether it's new tariffs that could dramatically reshape the global economy or the collapse of ceasefire talks meant to end the war in the Gaza Strip. The Epstein matter so spooked Speaker Mike Johnson that he abruptly recessed the House for the summer rather than confront it. The allegations lodged against Obama so outraged the former president that he emerged from political hibernation to express his indignation at even having to address them. The whispers and questions — 'this nonsense,' as Trump put it — followed the president all the way to Scotland, where he landed Friday for a visit to his golf club. 'You're making a very big thing over something that's not a big thing,' he complained to reporters, suggesting, in his latest bid at conspiracy deflection, that instead of him, the news media should be looking at Epstein's other boldface friends like former President Bill Clinton. 'Don't talk about Trump,' he said. Conspiracy theories have a long place in American history. Many Americans still believe that someone else had a hand in killing President John F. Kennedy, that the moon landings were faked, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job or that the government is hiding proof of extraterrestrial visitors in Roswell, New Mexico. Sixty-five percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters in 2023 that they think there was a conspiracy behind Kennedy's assassination. Some conspiracy theories do turn out to be true, of course, or have some basis. But presidents generally have not been the ones spreading dubious stories. To the contrary, they traditionally have viewed their role as dispelling doubts and reinforcing faith in institutions. President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Warren Commission to investigate his predecessor's murder specifically to keep rumors and guesswork from proliferating. (Spoiler alert: It didn't.) Trump, by contrast, relishes conspiracy theories, particularly those that benefit him or smear his enemies without any evident care for whether they are true or not. 'There have been other conspiratorial political movements in the country's past,' said Geoff Dancy, a University of Toronto professor who teaches about conspiracy theories. 'But they have never occupied the upper echelons of power until the last decade.' Conspiracy theories are not the exclusive preserve of Trump and the political right. Around the time of last month's anniversary of the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, some on the left once again advanced the notion that the whole shooting episode had been staged to make the Republican candidate into a political martyr. Trump, however, has stirred the plot pot more than any other major political figure. In the six months since retaking office, he has remained remarkably cavalier about suggesting nefarious schemes even as he heads the government supposedly orchestrating some of them. He suggested the nation's gold reserves at Fort Knox might be missing, resurrecting a decades-old fringe supposition, even though he would presumably be in position to know whether that was actually true, what with being president and all. 'If the gold isn't there, we're going to be very upset,' he told reporters. It fell to Scott Bessent, the decidedly nonconspiratorial Treasury secretary, to burst the bubble and reassure Americans that, no, the nation's reserves had not been stolen. 'All the gold is present and accounted for,' he told an interviewer. Trump has played to long-standing suspicions by ordering the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., an act of transparency for historians and researchers that may shed important light on those episodes. But Trump has gone beyond simple theory floating to make his own alternate reality official government policy. Some applicants for jobs in the second Trump administration were asked whether Trump won the 2020 election that he actually lost; those who gave the wrong answer were not helping their job prospects, forcing those rooted in facts to decide whether to swallow the fabrication to gain employment. Trump has likewise claimed that Biden was so diminished toward the end of his term that his aides signed pardons without his knowledge using an autopen. Biden was certainly showing signs of age, but the autopen story was conjecture. Asked if he had uncovered proof, Trump said, 'I uncovered, you know, the human mind. I was in a debate with the human mind and I didn't think he knew what the hell he was doing.' The past week or so has seen a fusillade of Trumpian conspiracy theories, seemingly meant to focus attention away from the Epstein case. Tulsi Gabbard, the president's politically appointed intelligence chief, trotted out inflammatory allegations that Obama orchestrated a 'yearslong coup and treasonous conspiracy' by skewing the 2016 election interference investigation — despite the conclusions of a Republican-led Senate report signed by none other than Marco Rubio, now Trump's secretary of state. She also claimed that Hillary Clinton was 'on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers' during the 2016 campaign. Relying on this, Trump accused Obama of 'treason,' suggesting he should be locked up and going so far as to post a fake video showing his predecessor being handcuffed in the Oval Office and put behind bars. The idea of a president posting such an image of another president would once have been seen as a shocking breach of etiquette and corruption of the justice system, but in the Trump era it has become simply business as usual. For all that, the conspiracy theorist in chief has not been able to shake the Epstein case, which reflects the rise of the QAnon movement that believes America is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Most of the files, the ones that his attorney general told him include his name, remain unreleased, bringing together an unlikely alliance of MAGA conservatives and liberal Democrats. It was well known that Trump was friends with Epstein, although they later fell out. So it's not clear what his name being in the files might actually mean. But Trump is not one to back down. Asked last week about whether he had been told his name was in the files, Trump again pointed the finger of conspiracy elsewhere. 'These files were made up by Comey,' he told reporters, referring to James Comey, the FBI director he had fired more than two years before Epstein died in prison in 2019. 'They were made up by Obama,' he went on. 'They were made up by the Biden administration.' The theories are endless.

38 killed as Islamic State-backed rebels attack church in Congo
38 killed as Islamic State-backed rebels attack church in Congo

India Today

timean hour ago

  • India Today

38 killed as Islamic State-backed rebels attack church in Congo

Islamic State-backed rebels killed 38 people on Sunday in an attack on a church in eastern Congo, city officials assault in Komanda, a city in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is believed to have been carried out by ADF rebels, wielding guns and machetes, officials told Kato, an official in the city administration, said worshippers were taking part in a night mass when the rebels stormed the church in the early hours of Sunday Thirty-eight people were killed, 15 injured and several others were still missing, officials Munyanderu, a human rights activist present at the scene in Komanda, said shots were heard overnight but people at first thought it was thieves."The rebels mainly attacked Christians who were spending the night in the Catholic church," said Munyanderu."Unfortunately, these people were killed with machetes or bullets."The United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DR Congo has condemned a recent resurgence in violence in the province where this attack happened. - EndsTune InMust Watch

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store