Word: minh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...city from five different directions.They had waited, says Tra, because "our main purpose was to seize Saigon, not to kill people. We didn't want to stop the evacuation." In fact, Nguyen Huu Hanh, who had come out of retirement as an ARVN brigadier general to join Big Minh's government, says "it was our troops" that fired at least some of the tracer bullets so prominent in accounts of the helicopter flights the previous night. "They were angry at the U.S. for leaving...
...investors have been allowed to open a casino near Haiphong, and Westerners are bidding to develop tourist sites along the scenic coast between Danang and Nha Trang. Hanoi, long a city of bicycles and moldy old colonial edifices, is now rich in motorcycles and office buildings. In Ho Chi Minh City, as Saigon is now called, the April 30 parade marking the end of the war will be set against a landscape bristling with billboards and construction cranes...
...even now, progress is uneven. Though Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are booming, rural Vietnam--where most of the country's 73 million people live--is largely destitute. Half of Vietnamese children suffer from chronic malnutrition. The country's remarkably high literacy levels-among communism's proudest accomplishments-have begun to decline, as teenagers race off to find jobs instead of staying in school. On a recent visit, Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a Hanoi favorite, complained that investment projects are "being held to ransom" by officials looking for payoffs. Harvard economist Dwight Perkins describes Vietnam...
...engine of change still has too many misfiring cylinders. Though provincial governments have been given more freedom, they haven't passed it on to entrepreneurs. Foreign investors are welcome, but corruption devours profits. Even longtime investors complain that the rules seem to keep shifting. Ho Chi Minh City's Export Processing Zone Authority lured foreign companies on the basis of proffered tax-free status--and then announced an 8% business tax. Economists warn that without a new round of reforms soon, Vietnam's progress will end. But the impressive gains so far may have made many officials overconfident. Boasts...
...well as their urban countrymen-from the socialist dole for health care and education. The rural families can't afford to pay for health care, however, and many now keep their children at home to work the land. Peasants are beginning to pour into Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City in search of work. Most don't find it. "Before, we launched a war against foreign aggressors," General Vo Nguyen Giap told Time. "Now we must launch a war against poverty...