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After they expelled the French and Americans, and then the Eastern Bloc collapsed, they were relatively free of foreign influence to develop their country as th
by Maken 3y ago
After they expelled the French and Americans, and then the Eastern Bloc collapsed, they were relatively free of foreign influence to develop their country as they saw fit.
- alephnerd 3y ago> expelled the French and Americans And invited them back with the Moi reforms in 1986. > relatively free of foreign influence They got a massive FDI influx from Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China - especially after China began boycotting Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese firms in the 2013-2017 period. This is why VN's first SEZ (Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park) was devoted to food processing. A leadership crisis has also been brewing in the VCP for that reason, as the Southern cadre leans pro-SK and the Northern cadre leans pro-PRC.
- foobarian 3y agoSo maybe the difference with CdI then is not being adjacent to PRC and a few other industrial/financial powerhouses. Tough nut to crack.
- alephnerd 3y agoThe difference is CdI had a destructive civil war from 2004 to 2011, and failed political and economic institutions in the 1980s and 1990s. Félix Houphouët-Boigny created a command economy that rested on commodity extraction (yes, command economies aren't only a Communist thing). On the other hand, countries like Vietnam, China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and South Korea listened to the IMF in the 1990s and worked on reforming institutions. CdI's economy only recently started to get on track after Ouattara came to power. It didn't hurt that he is an actual trained economist who has worked at the IMF and WB. > being adjacent to PRC French investment in the CdI in the 1960-70s is similar to Chinese and Korean investment in Vietnam in 2023, and American, Japanese, and Korean investment in China in the 1990s and 2000s The PRC's GDP per Capita didn't catch up to CdI until 2005 when their civil war entered full gear. The only difference is CdI's institutional capacity was crap compared to plenty of similarly poor Asian countries in the 1990s (China, Vietnam, India) The Phillipines is a similar story as well btw. In 1990 Phillipines and Turkiye had the same standard of living. In 2023, Türkiye's HDI caught up with Hungary and most of Central Europe, while Phillipines fell behind Vietnam and Indonesia - two countries that have historically been much poorer than PH.