The edition of The Economist featuring General Secretary To Lam — literally pictured with stars in his eyes — offered more than just sharp analysis of Vietnam’s economic trajectory. It also, indirectly, proffered valuable insights into how Vietnam’s public space for debate operates.
On Friday, it was reported that several magazine distributors had been directed to halt the distribution of any copies of The Economist featuring General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam on the cover.
This edition had been published a week earlier online, accompanied by a bundle of articles on Vietnam, focused on its current economic challenges.
“Vietnam could soon end up too expensive for labour-intensive manufacturing yet too technologically unsophisticated to do much else—a classic middle-income trap,” it read.
Moreover, it went on to suggest that Vietnam’s success might rest on the shoulders of its relatively newly anointed General Secretary To Lam.
“It must find new ways to get rich despite the trade war, and the hard man in charge must turn himself into a reformer,” it said.
This edition of the magazine, however, whether intended or not, would actually say much more than that.
Firstly, for many observers, the significance of this package of articles was not so much about what was written but rather where it was written.
One of the most widely read economic magazines in the world, many observers saw this as a coup for Vietnam, signalling the country had indeed become an important pillar of the global community.
The local media, however, was decidedly mum, which was, broadly speaking, unusual–the 2016 Press Law dictates that at least one of the functions of the press in Vietnam is to “reflect and guide public opinion”, but as discussions began to take-off online, guidance and reflection in the local media were nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the general public was left to their own decision-making as to what could and could not be said.
This meant drawing on past knowledge and experiences – Notably, in Vietnam, whereas people are sometimes jailed for saying the wrong thing in public, people are generally not punished for not saying anything at all.
That is to say, that whereas the social media debate that followed may have seemed largely unfettered, in reality, through self-censorship, it very much likely was.
And this comes at a cost, not just to informal debate, but also to proper state-sanctioned public debates too.
For one, it eats into revenues of the state-sanctioned media as readers turn elsewhere – In the third quarter of last year, falls in revenue as high as 28 percent were reported across a number of key media outlets by the Ministry of Information and Communications.
This also hinders growth, which suppresses wages, which can lead to corruption – Earlier this year, a local editor was charged with 82 counts of extortion after allegedly charging local businesses to have negative coverage deleted.
This, of course, impacts public trust and quality, which in turn sees readers turn away, which sees greater falls in revenue, and the cycle continues.
This is further compounded by foreign news outlets that are not subjected to the same restrictions. In fact, there seems to be a general understanding that these institutions have a pivotal role to play in Vietnam’s economic development.
Notably, The Economist’s website could have been blocked, like the BBC was back in 2002, but it wasn’t.
Moreover, The New York Times was granted a press license late last year, the first local office approval in a long time for a foreign news outlet, with the Financial Times approved earlier this year to reopen its local office, too.
Incidentally, this runs counter to policy designed to level the playing field between domestic and foreign firms as part of the government’s private sector development push. That is to say, local businesses don’t just need tax breaks and access to capital, but also accurate, good-quality information in order to make informed investment decisions.
More to the point, research and development and innovation–the kind of things Vietnam needs to escape the middle-income trap quandary, The Economist identified–also requires the free flow of information.
All of that is to say that public debate in Vietnam is often distorted by government controls and offering critical comment is often a risk versus reward calculation, fuelling a self-censorship regime that also limits what is and is not said.
And this makes determining the value of any particular piece of information emerging from Vietnam’s public sphere very challenging, and that includes information used to properly assess opportunities in local markets.
With this in mind, pause for thought should be a priority when engaging with locally produced content, and consumers should remember to ask themselves who is saying what and why, and who is empowered to speak frankly and who is not.