Thirty years on, Saigon's Cholon thrives again
HO CHI MINH CITY - Cholon, Saigon's Chinatown, is back in business, its traffic-clogged streets lined with bustling stores, small businesses, restaurants and markets. Three decades after terrified Cholon residents rushed to join the flood of "boat people" fleeing the new communist authorities, the neighborhood is thriving once more as Vietnam encourages private business and opens its arms to foreign investors. The government particularly wants to lure back the Viet Kieu, the overseas Vietnamese, those who fled.
"The policy of our government is not to limit the development of the private sector in any way," Politburo member Nguyen Minh Triet told foreign reporters as Vietnam prepared to celebrate the fall of Saigon, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City, on April 30, 1975. It meant the end of the Vietnam War and national re-unification. Even ethnic Chinese, who were told to leave in the early days of the new Vietnam, are being wooed to return.
As entrepreneurs and traders linked to other ethnic Chinese communities around the world, they can help Vietnam grow richer, said Phan Xuan Bien, the head of the Communist Party ideological department in Ho Chi Minh City. "Our policy is to treat the ethnic Chinese without any discrimination," he said. "We want to take advantage of this community's skills for our development." Statements like that are a measure of how Vietnam has changed since 1975 when the North Vietnamese army poured south to end 30 years of war against the French and the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies. The campaign took just 55 days.
Dangerous combination
In 1978, as the trickle of boat people grew, to be an entrepreneur and ethnic Chinese was a doubly dangerous combination. It grew even worse the following year when the Chinese army attacked on the northern border to "punish" Vietnam for its invasion of Cambodia and its toppling of Pol Pot's Khmers Rouges, Beijing's ally. Ethnic Chinese "were told it would be very difficult for them to live under the new regime," said one trader in Cholon. "Revolutionary officials told us we should leave." "No one wanted to stay," said another.
Thousands upon thousands did leave. When American officials began negotiations for an "Orderly Departure Program" to halt the sea-borne exodus in which untold numbers died at the hands of pirates and in storms, they asked for a list of people the communist government was prepared to let go. The first list they received, known jokingly among U.S. diplomats as "The Cholon Telephone Directory," was seen as evidence of how strong the new government's desire was to see the back of the ethnic Chinese.
Many had reasons not to go. Some were too poor to buy their way onto a boat for a passage which had to be paid for in gold. Others were married to Vietnamese and felt that would afford protection. Some were too old for the arduous journey. For those who stayed, life became miserable. They were forced to join cooperatives,, trade was slight and incomes tiny, said some of those who remained behind. Things began to change in the late 1980s when the government began to liberalize a state-run economy which was not working. Change accelerated in the early 1990s as the reforms began to kick in.
Ever growing numbers
Viet Kieu started to come back from the United States, France, Canada, Australia and other countries which had taken them in. Quach Hung Tong was one of them. An ethnic Chinese, he left on a boat with his parents and four brothers and sisters in 1979 from their home in Bac Lieu, south of Ho Chi Minh City, and reached Indonesia. They were taken in by the United States and ended up in San Jose, California, where they used the overseas Chinese network to set up a business importing food from Thailand.
In 1989, Tung returned to visit relatives for the first time. He brought dollars and the relatives set up a food processing business in the days before foreign investment was permitted. Now he has a $2 million, 320,000 square-foot factory in Cu Chi, 15 miles from Ho Chi Minh City, making Vietnamese condiments and food for export. He still has his American passport and his parents still live in California. But they come every year for a visit.
There are many others like him. More than 1,000 Viet Kieu businesses have been established in Ho Chi Minh City, says the Overseas Vietnamese Business Association, which was established in 1999 with 48 members and now has 155. The wealthy among them, said the 62-year-old ethnic Chinese owner of a small shoe store in Cholon, set up factories making textiles, shoes or parts for the millions of motorcycles which now clog the streets of Vietnam's cities.
The less wealthy open restaurants or karaoke bars, he said. In fact, so many have returned that property prices in his corner of Cholon have tripled in the past two years, he said.
By Michael Battye - Reuters - March 30, 2005
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