Race with China

When finding this graph I have realized the Asian countries to compete with each other. China is able to attract more companies to build factories in their country and this is how they have started to lead in our worlds economy. India on the other hand is either doing very well or is failing, i think this is because there weather is very unpredictable and creates devastation so companies are nervous about investing so much money. But the Vietnam is in the middle is slowly increasing and trying to build a better economy and compete with China for industry. So in years to come it will be interesting to see how their government will react to this competition.

Vietnam's Government

The communist Party is dominating Vietnam right now. In the new constitution written in 1980 it states that there will be only one party, the communist party, and no one should question their authority. This then lead to a much more strict rule, with less humanitarian rights granted to the citizens.There is a centralized system and powers are only given to a selective few. There is a hierarchy similar to most governments, but these positions are not elected by the public but rather the assembly. The president doesn't have any authority, and is in office for 10 years. This government has been quite corrupted. They have been known to frame and wrongly execute laws to kill their enemies. There are not set rules here. Though they have many laws they are written in a way so that they can twist them anyway they want.

Here is the president of Vietnam with the communist flag behind him.

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a conflict between Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1955 to 1975. These countries were fighting about communism and divided many people including Vietnam into north and south. The North Vietnam supported communist and South Vietnam supported the US and other anti-communist countries. The US got involved because they wanted to make sure South Vietnam didn't spread communism. They wanted to make sure to keep it contained in south Vietnam. Both sides of Vietnam viewed this war as a sort of civil war and maybe even being colonized by the other side. There are many consequences we see in United States. This war cost 58,000 American deaths and 1-2 million Vietnamese deaths. The war didn't truly accomplish much and United States pulled out. This war created ciaos in America also. Many people didn't understand why we were there and many people say this is the most unliked war in our history. Many young people created protests and rallies and made sure people knew how unhappy they were about the governments decisions.

Here is a detailed Timeline of the Vietnam War 



Education in Vietnam

Education in Vietnam is very important and taken very seriously. The culture has a great respect for learning and understanding what is taught. Education was first primarily for social mobility between north and the south. But now it has become much more than that. They start very young in Vietnam. Need to be in school for a 6 day week by the age of 5. This is a lot of time but sometimes the schools need to cute days back to half days because of over crowding. Education is one of the only ways that you could improve your life in Vietnam. Families will sacrifice almost anything to make sure their children get an education.  So though children start working young they are probably still going to school or some type of education. Unlike here there is placement and depending how you do there are many different paths you can take( you can see an example at the bottom of this post).There are many steps in ones education as you can see from the diagram below and though many people go to a college only 11% of students go to a university because they are only private and are quite expensive. Currently the government is giving 20% of all the governments money to education. Which is a huge amount. This shows even more how education mean so much to them.

Land Usage in Vietnam

Religion Distribution

What does Communism mean today?

Human Rights in Vietnam

    

The Human Rights Watch states, "The Vietnamese government tightened controls on freedom of expression during 2010, harassing, arresting, and jailing dozens of writers, political activists, and other peaceful critics." This is a wonderful website because it has all types of media covering rights in most countries in the world. But i learned that things in Vietnam are not good at all. Many organizations and governments including ours has tried to get involved with how the government treats its people but they wouldn't allow it. There is no freedom of speech in Vietnam. Things like the Internet are monitory very closely. They also record all telephone conversations. They only have a couple of website but many are blocked to to banning. There is also not much freedom of speech, so it makes the news and media quite are to accomplish there. In Vietnam like many other communist countries there are only a couple government regulated newspapers and TV channels to makes sure there are no uprisings. There are no elections in Vietnam therefore people don't get to elect someone they believe to rule their country. This makes people feel very stranded because this simple thing gives the power to the people. They also hold people prisoner for any most crimes committed against the government, involving media. Recently they released a bunch of these reporters and other media specialist because of over crowding in the prisons. But the crime rates are much lower than other places because punishment in so well enforced. Women's rights are almost nonexistent. Most women never leave the house unless they are working at a factory or in the fields. So all in all there are basically no human rights and one can easily see resemblance to those of other Communist or dictatorship governments.

Vietnamese Cuisine

Vietnamese cuisine has basics that are seen in most of the dishes including: fresh vegetables, meat, eggs, fish sauce, soy sauce, rice,  and fresh herbs. The recipes have been around for many generations and are kept secret. The main thing they focus on is the different types of herbs the use in a dish. The women experiment during the day to figure out what is the perfect amount of something to make a dish taste wonderful. The most common herbs used are Thai basil, mint, and lemongrass. The women get inspiration from there dishes from nature. Vietnamese cuisine is quite healthy and most of the vegetables are served either raw or steamed with a little bit of herbs. Many Vietnamese families are vegetarian because of their Buddhist values. Though this is common it is up to the family to maintain that lifestyle.

There is a difference between Vietnamese food we eat in America and when you actually travel there. Here they fry most of the things on the menu and use a lot of salt, but there it is much more light and natural.

Environmental Issues in Vietnam

With most developing countries, Vietnam is quickly killing all their natural resources. Its major problem is logging and the slash and burn method. Agriculture is a large part of their economy and they way they are treating the environment it isn't going to be part of it for long. These methods are also contributing to soil degradation. They are over using their resources to keep up with the demand and not thinking about the consequences.This is also having a large effect on the natural water supply that Vietnam has. Though they don't have much it will be all gone if they don't stop what they are doing. When ever we research a developing country and try and understand their problems the main cause is usually education. If a country is educated they wouldn't be doing the things they are doing now. So if the Vietnamese population knew what is potable water and what isn't and how to filter water or sterilize water they would see a huge gain in health care along with a better water supply.

There are terrible typhoons in Vietnam which leads to extensive flooding and tragedy among whole towns and parts of the country at one time. This isn't something the people are doing but it is an issue that needs to tackled. Though there aren't many things a government can do about this they could help warn the people when they are coming create evacuation groups and help build solid infrastructure that could withstand these types of storms.

Vietnam and United States Relations

Though these two governments are on good terms today this wasn't always the case. After 20 years of torn relations, President Bill Clinton announced on July 11, 1995, diplomatic relations with Vietnam once again. As this relationship grew they started opening up embassies and creating consulate generals for their countries. Their relations have become stronger with the talk of basic human rights and security measures taken in their countries. I found this interesting that the President would talk about human rights with the Vietnamese leader because there isn't any form of rights in Vietnam and maybe he was trying to help the country by pushing democracy on them but it seems like they were just discussing different topics. They now have different treaty's and trade agreements with each other and things seem to be improving dramatically. But since learning about motives of a government i quickly realized that America wasn't just doing this to be nice they had motives behind it. The United States some would say, is run by the large corporations. Before we had relations with Vietnam their economy wasn't doing so well. We abused this and now have sweatshops and many factories their because the labor is dirt cheap and we can do it. I thought it was interesting how when researching our relations no article just came out and said this, but I know that there are many factories their and that America usually has a self interest motive behind most everything they do. But overall we have a good relationship with Vietnam.