Opinion | Is Vietnam the Next ‘Asian Miracle’? – The New York Times

Within days of China’s announcing the first case of Covid-19, Vietnam was mobilizing to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Using mass texts, TV ads, billboards, posters and loudspeakers, the government exhorted the nation’s 100 million citizens to identify carriers and trace contacts, contacts of contacts, even contacts of contacts of contacts. Rapid isolation of outbreaks has kept Vietnam’s death rate among the four lowest in the world — well under one death per million people.

Containing the pandemic allowed Vietnam to quickly reopen businesses, and it is now expected to be the world’s fastest growing economy this year. While many nations are suffering enormous economic contractions and running to the International Monetary Fund for financial rescues, Vietnam is growing at a 3 percent annual pace. Even more impressive, its growth is driven by a record trade surplus, despite the collapse in global trade.

This breakout moment for Vietnam has been a long time in the making. After World War II the “Asian miracles” — first Japan, then Taiwan and South Korea, most recently China — grew their way out of poverty by opening to trade and investment and becoming manufacturing export powerhouses.

Now, Vietnam is following the same path, but in an entirely new age. The conditions that made the original miracles possible are gone. The postwar baby boom is over. The era of rapid globalization, with growing trade and investment flows, is over. Economic growth is slowing worldwide. In this environment, the superpowers no longer ignore the tactics that the earlier miracles used to get an edge. Last week the United States formally accused Vietnam of currency manipulation and initiated the same type of investigation that triggered the tariff war with China.