Health Ministry urges sugary drink tax as consumption soars in Vietnam
In 2023, the average Vietnamese consumed around 66 litres of sugary beverages, equivalent to 18g of sugar per day, or 36 per cent of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s maximum recommended intake for adults.
Between 2009 and 2023, sugary drink consumption quadrupled, nearly doubling in the past decade alone. Per capita consumption surged by 350 per cent, from 18.5 to 66.5 litres per year.
A 2019 national survey found that nearly 34 per cent of students aged 13–17 drank carbonated beverages at least once a day.
The WHO estimates that without stronger controls, sugary drink consumption in Việt Nam could rise by an average of 6.4 per cent annually through 2028, fuelling higher rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
The MoH says that taxing sugary beverages is one of the most effective and low-cost interventions to reduce sugar consumption and prevent non-communicable diseases. The WHO recommends a tax that raises retail prices by at least 20 per cent.
According to research by the Hanoi University of Public Health, such a tax in Việt Nam could reduce rates of people who are overweight or obese by 2.1 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively, prevent 80,000 diabetes cases and save nearly VNĐ800 billion (US$30.77 million) in healthcare costs.
At a National Assembly session debating amendments to the Law on Special Consumption Tax, Finance Minister Nguyen Van Thang said WHO data showed Vietnam was among the countries with the fastest-growing sugary drink consumption.
'Most of the sugar we consume comes from these beverages, driving obesity. WHO recommends a minimum 20 per cent tax. Frankly, we should have acted sooner,' he said.
Delegate Le Hoang Anh from Gia Lai Province rejected the proposed 8–10 per cent tax from 2027 as too slow and too weak, arguing it fails to align with the national priority of putting health first.
He pointed to countries like Thailand, which introduced a sugary drink tax in 2017, and the Philippines and Malaysia, which now collect billions of dollars annually from similar levies.
'If we don't act today, we will pay tomorrow, in lives lost, higher medical costs and reduced productivity,' he warned.
Anh recommended adopting a 10 per cent tax starting in 2026, rising to 20 per cent by 2030, along with an absolute tax based on sugar content, like Thailand's.
At least 108 countries have already imposed a special consumption tax on sugary drinks, including six in South-East Asia: Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia and Laos.
The MoH says this demonstrates that such a tax is feasible and necessary for developing countries like Vietnam.
Since 2017, Thailand has imposed a tiered excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages based on their sugar content, rather than a flat percentage. The higher the sugar content, the higher the tax, reaching up to 5 baht ($0.15) per litre for drinks with more than 14 grammes of sugar per 100ml. On top of this, a 14 per cent value-added tax is also applied to the ex-factory price.
The tax increases retail prices by approximately 11 to 20 per cent, encouraging manufacturers to reduce sugar content and helping curb sugar-related health risks.
In the Philippines, the excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages has been in effect since 2018.
It imposes a specific excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, charging 6 pesos ($0.10) per litre for drinks sweetened with sugar or non-caloric sweeteners and 12 pesos per litre for those containing high-fructose corn syrup.
This tax has effectively raised retail prices by about 16 to 20 per cent, aiming to curb consumption and tackle health issues like obesity and diabetes. — Vietnam News/ANN
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80 years on from WWII, China's interests lie in a peaceful Asia-Pacific: Mitter
Rana Mitter is a leading historian whose research focuses on the impact of Japan's invasion of China during the second world war on the development of Chinese politics, society and culture. He is S.T. Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and previously taught at Oxford University on the politics of modern China. He was also director of Oxford's China Centre. This exclusive interview first appeared in SCMP Plus . As China prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, what are your thoughts on the role of the conflict in shaping contemporary China? World War II is one of the most important factors in the shaping of modern China, but it's often underestimated, both in China and the West. This was the greatest political and economic trauma of the 20th century. The invasion of China by Japan led to many millions of deaths. Many Chinese became refugees within their own country. The infrastructure and the communications built in the 1920s and 1930s were largely smashed into pieces, so that was a huge influence in terms of having to start again after the war. The war made it more likely that China would have a revolution rather than just reform after it ended, because economic and social conditions became so devastatingly bad that it opened up space for the Chinese Communist Party to really develop the revolution in the countryside. Beyond that, many aspects of modern China that we think of as part of the revolution actually emerged during the war – such as the system of work units for example, that existed for a long time in socialist China under Mao Zedong and even beyond. The role of women became more prominent in Chinese life during the war years. Many younger women also became involved in national defence, health and nutrition, trying to make society after the war better for families and more stable. During the 1920s and 1930s, China was heavily split between rival military leaders. At the end of the war, China was much closer to becoming unified as a country, as many of those warlords were eliminated during the wartime period. Although it would finally be the 1949 revolution under Mao that provided a solid unification of the country, the process began in the wartime years. World War II continues to be very important in terms of remembering a time when different factions and parties, nationalists, communists and others came together against an outside enemy and were able to find a sense of national purpose. How could Beijing use the 80th World War II anniversary commemoration as an opportunity to improve people-to-people exchanges with the West? The problem is that China still isn't very good at seizing diplomatic opportunities because it tends to fall back on language that is mainly about China's complaints, rather than about opportunities that could really open up. The opportunities tend to be expressed in very broad, positive but vague terms, and the complaints tend to be very specific. And the problem is, it's quite hard to get people on your side if you don't actually engage in a dialogue that seems as if both sides are genuinely talking to each other. An example is cutting down the EU-China summit from two days to one. Beijing also insisted that the Europeans should come to Beijing, when actually it was China's turn to come to Europe. So Europeans have done these things – they're diplomatic people. They say OK, but it's not the easiest start in terms of suggesting that China is opening up a new conversation, where China is willing to actually be expansive and creative in its thinking. So maybe a sort of reset of Chinese diplomacy is an opportunity to do that. So far, there aren't many signs of that. China has, in the past couple of years, withdrawn from the famous Wolf Warrior diplomacy, but it hasn't yet worked out what sits in its place. Do you think Chinese officials understand how their diplomacy is viewed from an outside perspective? Very smart Chinese diplomats are aware that China has a PR problem. Just because people now find the US much less predictable doesn't mean that they think China is a safe bet. So, finding ways to essentially define China – not just in words, but in actions and in patterns of behaviour – as a reliable partner, that's the really key challenge for Chinese diplomacy in the next few years. The language is sometimes there – not always, but sometimes – but the actions involve a lot of quite difficult and long-term effort. And so far, if that's happening, it's only at a very early stage of that process. A lot of Chinese diplomats, publicly and privately, have said they thought the previous Wolf Warrior effort was a mistake, asking what comes next and how China actually takes advantage of the changing world order. That will involve more than just hoping that people will feel alienated from America and automatically seek out China. They won't. Well, that will not be enough on its own. World War II ended in the Pacific theatre with two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Now, 80 years later, Britain and France have announced joint cooperation on nuclear weapons and the US has once again deployed nuclear forces in the UK. What does this say about the future of nuclear weapons? Nuclear non-proliferation is definitely much weaker than it has been. Many of the Cold War-era treaties between the Soviet Union and the US seem to be essentially falling away. Britain and France are primarily concerned with their own major security vulnerability as the future American position on Russia remains uncertain. A lot of different actors are looking at new threats in the world and trying to work out whether their current nuclear stance is sustainable. Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in 1994, which made it vulnerable to the Russian invasion. Many countries will be looking at Ukraine's experience and trying to avoid that. The US has engaged directly with Russia to end the Ukraine war but those warmer ties now seem to have cooled off. What is your view of the changing dynamic between them? Right now, the person who is probably having to think most carefully about changing the US position is Russian President Vladimir Putin. For much of the first part of the year, the Donald Trump administration tried to find ways to bring Moscow back into the negotiations about Ukraine. But in the past few weeks, it's become clear that President Trump thinks Putin has no intention of coming to a peace agreement. It's possible that he may take a much more confrontational attitude with Russia. The world was very surprised when Trump actually made the decision to bomb Iran. His general doctrine is that getting into wars is a bad idea, but when he considers it necessary he is prepared to use force – and that's something Putin might now have to think about. How could this changing dynamic in Russia-US ties affect China? Maybe several months ago, there were some people in Washington who thought that it might be possible to detach Russia from China in a 'reverse Nixon', or 'reverse Kissinger' play, but that is not a very widely held idea any more, for two reasons. First, people realise that there is a very close relationship between Russia and China. This was made clear by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi when meeting his European Union counterparts. For the first time, it was much more explicit that China would not wish to see Russia lose. The other factor is the American idea that they could detach Russia from China and bring it close to the US has fallen away. People have seen that Putin has not changed his policy towards Ukraine at all and is bombing it more fiercely than before. We're likely to see a scenario in which the US tries to neutralise Russia as much as possible while still looking for a negotiation on Ukraine, but essentially there probably will be more concentration on pushing back against China alone. What conditions could bring about the end of the war? We don't know what conditions it will take to come to an end, but we do know that, at least in the past few weeks, President Trump has reauthorised the supply of weaponry to Ukraine to fight back against Russia, which at one point he was holding back on. Now it's clear that weaponry is going to Ukraine and the war may last longer than would have seemed the case just a few weeks ago, when it seemed Ukraine might run out of ammunition. The question becomes whether Russia can maintain its all-out war-based economy and conscription of soldiers, while keeping inflation – which is very, very high – under control. The longer the Ukraine war continues, the less likely it is that Russia can do that, and the more weapons that are supplied by the Americans, along with the Europeans, the longer the Ukrainians can keep fighting. Under former president Joe Biden, Washington and other Western capitals formed a united stance on a wide range of China-related issues. How will Trump's presidency change that alliance on China? Europeans are looking to negotiate on their own issues with the US, such as tariffs. The question of China has been put a bit on the back shelf but essentially, the issue is that China provides useful supply chains. There is also a problem, in particular for Europe, of whether it can draw on China's markets but not be overwhelmed by Chinese exports, particularly in areas like autos and electric batteries. Those problems are not really changed by the relationship with the US. The EU has a whole variety of fundamental issues it needs to solve – about how it creates a new industrial model, where it cooperates with China and where it needs to restrict its market. And in some ways, it's learning from China, because China has heavily restricted its own market in some areas, such as online service provision. So the Europeans will also pick and choose where they feel vulnerable, opening up in certain areas and closing in others. The Trump administration is still figuring out its policy on China. There are different strands of thinking that you can see from the outside, but how important they are in relation to each other, and how they will balance out in the end, is still unclear. For instance, there are some traditional hawks, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others, who take a view on China that in some ways would not have been that different from Republicans seven or 10 years ago. But you also have the whole technology world – Silicon Valley and beyond. A lot of them are still very interested in making sure that the relationship with China is smooth. Apple is one of the most profitable and innovative companies in the United States, but huge amounts of its production and connection still take place in China. Of course, some production has moved to India, but China is still really important to a company like Apple. There has been a growing interest in moving more production and intellectual property back to the US but there's no sense yet that this is a complete disconnection from China, and that points in a different direction from the hawks. Then there is the question of what Trump himself thinks. It's interesting to look at the tariff policy, because tariffs have been put on China but also on other countries, including traditional US allies. Also, when Trump says 'I like to talk to my good friend Xi Jinping. We can talk about things' – what does he want to talk about? Not clear. Compared with other presidents, Trump seems to really like personal diplomacy. In other words, he believes that his personal relationships with leaders are the important thing. Speaking of leadership diplomacy, what conditions do you think will be needed for Trump and Xi to meet? I think a meeting between the two leaders is quite likely. Trump is announcing that the deal has been done with China. He would only want to go to China if the deal is kind of there, so he can mark it in a big ceremony and have a prominent meeting with Xi. I don't think he would want to go to China to negotiate. We're moving into a phase where the US wants to get most of its tariff deals done within the next couple of months. During his first term, Trump had a very grand welcoming ceremony provided by Xi in Beijing. I think he would like to do that again – a big, grand meeting that Trump will think of as a historic event, that showcases he's able to do negotiations and deals with China in a way that other presidents haven't been able to do. I think he would want to push quite hard in that direction. That's my guess. Are the two presidents likely to get along? I think that's perfectly possible. You might remember that when Trump invited Xi to Mar-a-Lago, he said that he gave Xi a big piece of chocolate cake. He never talked about giving chocolate cake to German chancellor Angela Merkel. That's a sign that he feels there's some sort of ability to speak leader to leader in that sense. Xi has said less about Trump, but he hasn't said any very publicly hostile things personally about him. Will it stop competition? No. Will it stop conflict? Maybe. In some areas – I would single out technology – I think the US and China are going to be increasingly in competition and there will be less sharing of intellectual property or scientific development. That would mean other countries could benefit from both, or they may have to choose a side. This will not change because of a meeting. But can the two leaders talk about lowering the temperature and avoiding misunderstandings that could lead to military confrontation? That might be more possible. Turning to China's security environment, how might Beijing's relations with its neighbours change, given the uncertainties of Washington's policies during the Trump administration? My guess is that China will be assessing how solid and secure American security guarantees are in Asia. There's some evidence that the United States might want to maintain and maybe deepen its relationship with standing allies Japan, Australia and South Korea. We know that Trump is interested in the Korean peninsula. In his first term, he wanted to do personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. But even when South Korea is going through political change and a lot of turmoil, there's no sense that I've seen that the United States is stepping back from its relationship. I would say that if you are looking from Beijing, the conclusion to draw at the moment is that things will change much less in Asia than in Europe. Supposing American security guarantees, naval presence and alliances were withdrawn from Asia – the first thing that would be likely to happen is that Japan and South Korea would think hard about getting their own nuclear weapons. They have the capacity, science and the technology. They could do it, but they won't do it at the moment. in a strange way, Beijing's best bet for keeping the region relatively nuclear-free is to encourage the Americans to stay. And most of its neighbours would share that analysis. They want the Chinese market, but they also want American security. They don't want either one to disappear. I think that's what makes the calculation different in Asia and that will affect the way that China and the US deal with other countries in the region. What about the South China Sea? The South China Sea is probably one of the most potentially dangerous flashpoints, along with Taiwan. The South China Sea has more of a chance of running out of control because it's not just between two or three entities – seven or eight are involved. The US is not so directly involved in that. But I would say that China is missing a big soft power opportunity, which it could take up at a time of uncertainty about American security intentions, of being able to provide reassurance to regional neighbours like the Philippines. If China is not looking to increase its maritime and territorial claims, it could create a much better basis of trust in the region. But right now there's much more military activity from China, not just near the Philippines but also off the coast of Australia, and that's heightening tensions in the region. How is the importance of Taiwan to Beijing shaping the security environment? One of the most interesting things is that after repeatedly trying to take the island, Mao Zedong basically said to then-US president Richard Nixon, when they met in Beijing in 1972, that the Taiwan problem could be left to the side for 100 years. That's a reminder that actually the Taiwan question has not been a constant one at the forefront of China's relationship with the world. Right now, there are a whole variety of reasons that China needs to think about its changing place in the world. It has an opportunity to influence the world order at a time when the United States is changing its role. It also has significant economic problems at home, in terms of creating new forms of employment, dealing with the way technology has changed labour markets, and stimulating domestic consumption, which the party has repeatedly said is a really important domestic priority. In that context, you could say that with all those important problems, Taiwan doesn't appear as a major solution or issue that will help to resolve any of them. If you look at Chinese policy priorities, it's very clear that the single most important task for the government is the economy. China needs the Asia-Pacific region to be economically productive to get its economy going again. That means the attention has to be on the domestic economy and how it relates to a peaceful, calm Asia that does not have any sort of confrontation. In five to 10 years, if current trends continue, the Asia-Pacific region could be even more of a driver of the global economy than it is now. It can become the most economically dynamic region in the world, with lots of foreign direct investment and expansion. However, for that vision of Asia to emerge, the region needs to stay peaceful and stable and absolutely avoid wars. Any regional confrontations could put that economic future in danger and that would be very bad for China and its neighbours. Alongside the nationalism that comes with the promise of building a powerful China, there is also a revival of traditional Chinese culture in both society and the official narrative. How do you think this will shape China's governance and foreign policy? This is one of the most interesting and important elements of what's going on in thought and ideology in China today. First of all, there is a real interest in what some people call traditional thought, or pre-modern thought, which includes the Confucian tradition but also lots of other areas, such as Taoism. The Chinese government has been sponsoring publication of China's canon of official writings, with the parts that suit contemporary politics tending to be stressed. For instance, Confucian thinking does have an interest in proper hierarchy and this is something that is obviously very attractive to the Communist Party, because it wants people, essentially, to be stable and ordered. But there are other ideas – such as individual self-development or self-cultivation, which could lead more to the idea that people should have individual rights – that are less popular with the party. China's political culture since 1949 has been heavily shaped by the Marxism and Leninism that underpins the Chinese Communist Party. Many of the ideas are still there and you can hear them in the language of Xi and other top leaders. Even while they are praising traditional Chinese culture and wisdom, they are also pointing out that Marxism and Leninism still have significance. How are these two things compatible? Actually, it's not easy. There was a TV show broadcast in Hunan province that got a lot of criticism on Chinese social media. It was called When Marx Met Confucius and was a way of trying to talk about the difficulties in combining these ideas. There is actually quite an interesting and difficult tension in the way that these two thought systems operate in China today, but I think that they are both very much part of the debate. How has the Chinese intellectual landscape changed in the past 10 years? Do you share the view that it can be summarised as a rise in nationalism, Sinification of ideas and declining critical voices? What other trends are you seeing and what are their effects? In some ways, China's intellectual sphere has narrowed, at least in public, but in other important ways, it has expanded. The narrowing is real, and probably the biggest obstacle that China places in its own path to developing new ideas at home and being able to exert influence abroad. It's difficult to persuade the wider world that you're a force for new thinking if new thinking at home is heavily restricted. In terms of subjects, including history, most people would say that the room for publication and discussion is much more limited than it was 10, 15 or 20 years ago. Many aspects of modern history are harder to research and write about in China today than in the past. The most productive recent time intellectually in China was the late 1990s and early 2000s, when there was the most capacity to be able to speak more freely. That time will need to come again as China comes to grips with its new role in the world. It's not possible to have a very narrowed intellectual sphere and a very wide influence. But there are some areas where I think things are broader, and I'm particularly thinking about social media and the way it has expanded and grown so significantly in China in the past decade. Lots of ideas actually are discussed at a popular level, even when there's censorship a lot of ideas still get out there – not about top-level politics as that's too sensitive to permit – but if you think about things like concerns about economic change, people's concerns about their own financial situation, ideas about the position of women, society, feminism, those are quite visible in Chinese social media. That is not the same thing as two or three scholars sitting in a think tank writing some big paper, but in terms of understanding social trends and how they are shaping China today, social media has been very valuable to reflect those changes. How has the China studies community been affected by the changes of recent years? What will the subject look like, with a growing percentage of scholars outside the country unable to conduct interviews and on-the-ground research in China? You have put your finger on one of the most problematic issues – the number of students studying Chinese languages and doing higher-level research in the West on China is going down significantly. It was never very high, but it was going up, and now the numbers are shrinking. One reason is the sense that doing serious research in China – particularly for social scientists but also for researchers who need to use archives and libraries – is much more difficult than it used to be. What real China researchers need is to be able to travel and set up their own agendas, to be able to do interviews at the local level that enable them to understand how local government works, or to collect large amounts of data that enables them to see how effective or ineffective particular policies are. This is the work of real social science, and it involves transparency and openness on data and a willingness to welcome the gathering of data, rather than assuming that it has to be banned for security reasons. So, although more scholars are coming back to China, opening up more capacity to be able to do real research in China is the next barrier that needs to be overcome. There are a lot of brilliant Chinese students in many countries in the West who are doing significant social science and humanities research. But their Western equivalents who study China can't do that kind of work in China, so it becomes very unbalanced. What about your own experience with the Asia studies and Chinese history students you taught at Oxford and now Harvard? When it comes to postgraduate students doing PhDs, a significant number are Chinese. We do still have some Westerners, but the problem is that they have to be enthusiastic about China, willing to learn its language and culture, and then be able to find a meaningful project to research. It's harder now to assure students that they can find a pathway to doing really good social science research inside China, so a lot of students just leave China out. If people say China is a very difficult place to do research and South Korea is easy, maybe people just decide they want to learn Korean instead. The sense among Western researchers that it's hard to do serious research in China has transmitted to students finding it difficult to find a career path if they do study China. I think that's a great shame. -- South China Morning Post
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- Malay Mail
Why Putin is talking nukes before Trump summit on Ukraine
LONDON, Aug 15 — Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the eve of a summit with US President Donald Trump that their countries might strike a new deal on nuclear weapons as part of a wider effort to strengthen peace. The summit is about Ukraine, so why talk about nukes? Putin has been under pressure from Trump to agree to end the three-and-a-half-year-old war in Ukraine, something Moscow says is part of a complex of security issues that have raised East-West tensions to their most dangerous level since the Cold War. With Russian forces gradually advancing in Ukraine, Putin has rebuffed Kyiv's calls for a full and immediate ceasefire. But if the summit makes progress towards a new arms control treaty, Putin could argue he is engaging on wider peace issues. That could help him persuade Trump that now is not the right time to impose new sanctions on Russia and buyers of its oil and other key exports, as the US leader has threatened. It could also be part of a broader drive to improve relations with Washington, including on trade and economic issues, where the Kremlin says there is huge untapped potential. Why has Putin repeatedly talked up Russia's nuclear arsenal? Throughout the war, Putin has delivered veiled threats about using nuclear missiles and warned that entering a direct confrontation with Russia could lead to World War Three. They have included verbal statements, war games, and lowering Russia's threshold for using nuclear weapons. The fact that Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country gives it a stature in this domain that far exceeds its conventional military or economic power, allowing Putin to face Trump as an equal on the world stage when it comes to security. How many nuclear weapons do Russia and the US have? According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia and the United States have estimated military stockpiles of 4,309 and 3,700 nuclear warheads, respectively. China trails with an estimated 600. What does the existing US-Russia nuclear treaty say? Signed by then-US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, the New START treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy. Each is limited to no more than 1,550, and a maximum of 700 long-range missiles and bombers. Strategic weapons are those designed by each side to hit the enemy's centres of military, economic, and political power. The treaty came into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for five more years after US President Joe Biden took office. In 2023, Putin suspended Russia's participation, but Moscow said it would continue to observe the warhead limits. The treaty expires on February 5. Security analysts expect both sides to breach the limits if it is not extended or replaced. Trump said for the first time last month he would like to maintain the limits set in the treaty. 'That's not an agreement you want expiring. We're starting to work on that,' he said on July 25. 'When you take off nuclear restrictions, that's a big problem.' What are the other nuclear points of contention? In a symptom of the underlying tensions, Trump this month said he had ordered two US nuclear submarines to move closer to Russia because of what he called threatening comments by Medvedev about the possibility of war with the US. The Kremlin played down the move but said 'everyone should be very, very careful' with nuclear rhetoric. Separately, an arms race looms over shorter- and intermediate-range missiles, which can also carry nuclear warheads. During Trump's first presidency, in 2019, he pulled the US out of a treaty that had abolished all ground-based weapons in this category. Moscow denied his accusations that it was cheating. The United States plans to start deploying weapons, including SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles, previously placed mainly on ships, as well as new hypersonic missiles, in Germany from 2026. Russia said this month it no longer observes any restrictions on where it might deploy intermediate-range missiles. — Reuters
