Eight months ago, skyrocketing inflation, rising food prices, an overheated economy and an insane real estate market were the key factors causing economic indigestion in Vietnam. Now, all of a sudden, there is too much rice stockpiled all over the country that nobody wants to buy, fish are flopping in crowded ponds without a exporting freezer container to hop into, petrol prices are falling, inflation is zero from any practical point of view, and the future of export-driven growth seems a bit iffy, given the financial implosion in the United States.
Meanwhile, a lot of speculators and garden-variety investors are getting killed in the stock market and creamed by their underwater real estate investments.
Growth in Vietnam has been driven in large part by big transfers of investment funds seeking profitable projects, a rapid growth in domestic industry and services, and exports (especially to the Unites States). If the financial crisis in the rest of the world has a major downward effect on imports from Vietnam and capital flows in the form of direct investment, what looked like an overheated economy could get pretty chilly.
I’m starting to wonder if all this globalization stuff is such a good idea after all. Both on the way up and on the way down, economic forces seem to be much faster and stronger than in the past.
It may be heresy, but I have to say – I’m not all that upset to consider a somewhat slower pace of growth in Vietnam, at least in the urban areas. I think it’s because the Hoa Sua trees are blooming now, spreading the scent of sweet nostalgia over the city I live in. When those trees bloom in the fall in Hanoi, I can close my eyes and imagine a city with about 80% less traffic, no tall buildings and cool dark streets filled with strolling couples and families.
Hanoi is a city of lakes and tree-lined boulevards, and after the intense heat of the summer the lovely fall weather, signaled by the scent of Hoa Sua, makes you want to leave work early, have a cup of tea on the banks of West Lake while watching the sun go down, and then wander in aimless melancholy down streets canopied with tall trees.
You just have to be careful some manic on a motorbike doesn’t run you down; walking on the sidewalk is no guarantee you won’t get hit.
Perhaps a slower pace of life, something like the feeling in Hue, for example, would not be such a bad thing. Hue has a few Hoa Sua trees, but they just don’t smell right there – I get no emotional impact from the combination of Hue Streets and the scent of Hoa Sua. Not like Hanoi, where one whiff transports me into a different era, a more peaceful time.
But Hanoi is unlikely to slow down, unless there is a severe economic downturn. The city leaders in Hanoi are planning to turn Hanoi into a mega-city of 3,300 square kilometers. This plan, which has already taken effect, merges Hanoi city with Ha Tay province (now no longer a province), Me Linh district of Vinh Phuc province and several communes of Hoa Binh province. The new Hanoi has 6.2 million people, as opposed to the 3 million it claimed last year. Economic growth of the new Hanoi is expected to be over ten percent a year.
I’m scared.
Will the old, beautiful, charming Hanoi be lost forever, drowned in a sea of vehicles, shadowed by looming glass edifices, the lakes reduced to a few spots of water hemmed in by four-lane roads, huge new villas and office buildings?
Will the Hoa Sua still smell as sweet in the new Hanoi?