Buy a water bottle or tube of lipstick in Vietnam and there’s a decent chance the packaging came from Duy Tan, a company that supplies plastic to other businesses. Dinh Dai Ky, a sales representative in Duy Tan’s exports division, said his company produces so much plastic that it’s running out of customers. "The Vietnamese market is saturated, there’s no more room for us here," Ky said. "So we have to expand." Duy Tan is eyeing new markets from Myanmar (also known as Burma) to Sweden, as well as preparing to expand its base in the United States. "It has laws, it’s safe, so it’s good to do business in the U.S.," Ky said.
A guard monitors container trucks crossing the Tan Thanh border gate with China in Vietnam's northern Lang Son province
The government in Hanoi is hoping more businesses share Ky’s ambitions because they match Vietnam’s ambitions for itself. The country is working to grow its share of global trade, though not strictly for economic reasons. "Integration" has become a buzzword of late among officials, who want to see Vietnam transformed into a respected player in the world community. Besides increasing trade, Vietnam has made a push to cooperate with as many nations as possible on the security, diplomatic and humanitarian fronts.
War, past and present
Interestingly, part of what’s driving this campaign is armed conflict, both in the past and potentially in the future. Even though four decades have elapsed since the Vietnam War, this communist nation continues to be identified internationally as a former Cold War battlefield. Vietnam wants to reinvent itself and, to that end, integration is essential. "It's telling the world, 'We're growing up. Look at us, we're not at war anymore, we're a country,' " said Dennis McCornac, an economist at Loyola University Maryland. He has advised officials in Vietnam on its transition from a socialist-oriented economy to one based on a free market.
The Vietnamese have become not only weary of war, but also wary that it could break out again in the South China Sea. Relations with China reached a new nadir this spring, when the bigger communist brother dispatched an oil rig to the waters that both countries claim as their own. That pushed Vietnam onto the international arena, where it filed a petition with the United Nations to help settle the dispute multilaterally. McCornac argues that the provocation helped to speed up Vietnam’s already ongoing outreach to foreign friends. "That’s sort of making it go a little bit faster," he said. "Vietnam has decided ... don't put all our eggs in one basket."
Increasing trade