If foreign investment is anything to go by, the nominally communist rulers of Vietnam have made their peace with capitalism. The country raked in foreign direct investment worth more than 8% of GDP last year: even more, proportionally, than China. After its oversized and overheating neighbour, Vietnam also boasts Asia's best-performing economy. It has grown by an average of 7.4% a year over the past decade and is likely to achieve a similar figure this year. Better yet, the boom has lifted many Vietnamese out of poverty. As recently as 1993, the World Bank considered 58% of the population poor. By 2002, that had fallen to 29%. Can Vietnam maintain this remarkable momentum?
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