Chasing the Tigers: A Portrait of the New Vietnam [Hardcover]

Murray Hiebert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

This work presents an in-depth tour of Vietnam's social, political and economic landscape.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Vietnam's communist rulers embraced free-market economics in 1986, dismantling farm cooperatives and encouraging private investment. Hiebert, a reporter for Far Eastern Economic Review, is guardedly confident that Vietnam-still one of the world's poorest countries-will become the next Asian economic success story, joining "tigers" like Hong Kong and South Korea. He traveled extensively in Vietnam between 1990 and 1994, interviewing entrepreneurs, bankers, peasants, novelists, factory workers, and he limns a hardworking, resourceful people with a remarkable capacity to overcome barriers of all kinds. Although farmers are producing record harvests, industrial managers and workers resist efforts at privatization, and Hiebert identifies key problems-entrenched unemployment, malnutrition, crumbling transportation infrastructure, declining education and health services, massive smuggling-that the nation will have to address. He offers penetrating observations on the revival of traditional religion, the sharp rise in divorce, crime and corruption, the limited new freedoms enjoyed by writers, artists and critics of the regime. This valuable report supplies a more optimistic assessment than Mitch Epstein's somber photoessay, Vietnam: A Book of Changes (Forecasts, Oct. 7). Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this kinder, gentler anti-Communist portrait of the current business climate in Vietnam, references to the Vietnamese revolution and the U.S. war are found mostly in dependent clauses, grudgingly addended to caustic quips about current-day culture that hold Vietnam?predictably?to the Western standard. There is little to suggest that a revolution of significance took place. Hiebert, a relief-agency volunteer during the Vietnam War and journalist for Dow Jones's Far Eastern Economic Review, disposes of the modern history of Vietnam: "Although ravaged by decades of war with France, the United States, Cambodia and China, as well as international isolation and failed communist policies, Vietnam is reviving itself with remarkable speed." If by failed "Communist" policies Hiebert means revolutionary policies, it would help to have given a few examples rather than unsupported impressions. A better choice is Truong Nhu Tang's Viet Cong Memoir (Harcourt, 1985).?Toba Singer, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 258 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc; First Edition edition (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568361394
• ISBN-13: 978-1568361390
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,115,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A general overview of recent changes in Vietnam., March 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Chasing the Tigers: A Portrait of the New Vietnam (Hardcover)

This book is Hiebert's contribution to the "Is Vietnam the next Asian dragon?" discussion; contents are based on his experiences in Vietnam from 1990-94 as a Far Eastern Econoimc Review bureau chief. While covering a lot of issues, and using interview material to add personal drama, the book does not delve very deeply into any of the economic and political problems plaguing Vietnam. Hiebert instead prefers a rather upbeat spin on the situation, forecasting that although many difficulties lie ahead for the Vietnamese people, solutions exist and those who have the power to implement them will actually do so. The theme of "rapid change in Vietnam" without in-depth analysis of where current trends might lead also makes the material in the book somewhat outdated already. I would recommend this book to anyone with a general interest in Vietnam--it is easy and enjoyable to read--but it is too general to be useful to those familiar with post-1975 Vietnam.