Word: vietnamize
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...millenniums, China hardly touched the mighty Mekong, content to let its raging headwaters flow unimpeded from the Tibetan plateau down through Laos, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But over the past few years, the emergent superpower has begun turning the world's 12th-longest river into a highway for regional commerce and a source of hydroelectric power. For many Indochinese entrepreneurs, increased China trade and investment has allowed a backward region to participate in their upstream neighbor's remarkable economic expansion. Southeast Asian governments hope China will share the electricity it will harness after a series of massive dams...
...Southeast Asians are quite as sanguine about the flourishing trade. Memories of imperial domination still haunt Vietnam, which was colonized by China and repelled invading Chinese troops as recently as 1979. In Cambodia, many still remember the People's Republic's patronage of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, which oversaw the deaths of an estimated one-quarter of the population. And even in countries with less complicated historical ties to China, suspicions of an economic overpowering endure. Farmers in northern Thailand complain that they cannot compete with the influx of cheap Chinese-grown garlic, apples and onions. Even Thai customs...
...These dams may boost economic growth in developing countries facing severe energy crunches. Vietnam, for example, suffers from chronic electricity shortages, and compared with coal-fired and oil-burning plants, hydropower is a relatively clean and inexpensive solution. But dams also have severe, long-term environmental consequences. Vietnam's Mekong Delta, where the river finally meets the sea, is a vast web of waterways that serves as a giant rice bowl, providing the nation with half of its total agricultural output. Yet in part because of the increasing number of dams reducing the flow of the river, salt water from...
...televisions. This year, a $1 billion industrial park funded by some 40 Chinese businesses is set to open near the South China Sea, providing jobs for tens of thousands of Vietnamese. Like the rest of the country, the delta has a booming young population that is profiting from Vietnam's economic reforms. For this striving generation, their homeland's historic enmity with China is all ancient stuff. Do Quang Tranh speaks of how magnificent imported Chinese products are, describing in wonderment the "beauty of Chinese-made bricks." If he had his wish, this farmer would trade his fields...
Leadership by those who have actually served in Iraq would be infinitely preferable to that of the prevaricating crew of Vietnam shirkers and chicken hawks who "led" us into this appalling war in the first place...