VIETNAM, NEWS ANALYSIS, JULY 22, 2000

At last, after four years of negotiation, the trade agreement between Hanoi and Washington was formally signed on July 13.

Hanoi's state-controlled media announced the news with cheerful appraisal. All welcomed the event as a sign of better relations between the U.S. government and the Vietnamese Communist regime. However, there are a number of issues that should be taken into considerations.

It is obvious that Hanoi only signed the agreement under high pressure from Washington and other Western capitals. The tactic often used by Hanoi leaders in negotiations is showing obstinacy to force the impatient party on other side of the table to make concessions. Disagreement among their top leaders - the Politburo - is the reason Hanoi negotiators often claim for such delaying tactic.

This time, Washington seems to have learned several lessons from talking with Hanoi Communists. The Americans explained provisions which may have been unintelligible, but allowed no rediscussion of any article of the agreement.

In an interview with Radio Hanoi, published in many newspapers, Hanoi Prime Minister Phan Van Khai appreciated the historic agreement. In the Vietnamese version, Khai said no less than three times that the trade agreement "is another step in the process of Vietnam's actively integrating" (at free will) into the world economy."

But in the English version, "actively" is deliberately omitted. The omission once more indicates that the Communist leaders in Hanoi always lie to their people as much as possible, in fear that truth could be damaging to their prestige and power.

Generally, the common Vietnamese people in Vietnam are hopeful. They expect more jobs and better income from prospective American investors who would be coming to Vietnam.

Duong Thu Huong, a woman writer and dissident well known to the world outside for the last 15 years, expressed her opinion on the issue in an interview by telephone with the Radio Free Asia, in Vietnamese.

According to Duong Thu Huong, the agreement is a good news to our "wretched people." The farmers, she says, are toiling all year round on their rice fields. Each farmer harvests a few hundreds kilograms of rice, the greater part of it is for tax, only about one hundred kilograms left for a farmer. Living standards of the farmers are extremely miserable. Recent festivals and celebrations held by the Communist regime "is just a glossy layer of paint to cover up the economic tragedy."

She wishes that the U.S. House Representatives would continue to call for democracy, human rights and legality in Vietnam. Such demand is legitimate and should be serving as a permanent sentence and warning to the Communist regime.

To the doubt about whether Communist leaders will abide by the trade agreement, Thu Huong believes that they will. They don't have supports from the former Soviet Union and China as they had decades ago.

The Vietnam Communist Party and its government, she says, is in fact a Stalinist regime, which was no different from that under Hitler. With props from the two Communist powers, Hanoi could break any agreement, but not now.

Thu Huong's remark agrees with a source from the American side. An American official assures that the agreement includes strong measures designed to prevent frauds, "an agreement that they won't be able to break." According to another official, it is the lengthiest trade agreement with largest details that the United States has ever signed with another country, even with China recently.

It's not certain whether Hanoi could be able to fight corruption and to reorganize the ineffective administrative system successfully. Corruption has long been such an ingrained evil that already reached an incurable degree. Similarly, bureaucracy is a deep-rooted habit, unchangeable as long as the regime still exists.

The most serious issue is about the fact that for a half century, taxpayers have had to pay for the Party's expenses including salary of its officials and leaders at rates equal to government employees. How the party could make such expenses public? How could it really treat foreign and private companies the same way it does to party-owned businesses that are nominally a private company? And if the party-owned (and army-owned) businesses violate the trade agreement especially provisions concerning intellectual copyright?

Another dissident, Lu Phuong, now living in Saigon, disclosed to RFA information from a source close to the VCP Central Committee that VCP General Secretary Le Kha Phieu has secretly visited Beijing many times. Phieu proposed to create a new bloc of remaining Communist countries, and called for Beijing's advice on how to face with the so called "peaceful evolution" and how to deal with the Americans.

Thu Huong said she didn't know and didn't care about the information. She is certain that Hanoi leaders would always cling to socialism and to the Chinese.

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Meanwhile, on Thursday, July 20, the stock exchange in Saigon was launched after years of hesitation at the party top level.

Initially, only four companies have registered. The new stock market will open for trade with a market capitalization of 600 billion VN "dong" (VND) or about US$43 million. It will offer VND150 billion worth of shares in Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Co., or REE, and VND120 billion in Saigon Telecoms Cable & Materials Joint Stock Co., or Sacom, Transport & Warehouse Service Co., or Transimex - registered capital VND22 billion - and Haiphong Paper Co., or Hapaco, which has capital of VND10 billion. VCP government bonds worth VND300 billion will also list.

Another stock exchange will be launched in Hanoi according to an official at the newly inaugurated Saigon Securities Trade Center, its official name.

The most difficult problem in the operation of the new stock market is the lack of public understanding about how a stock market works which most common businessmen and government employees in the financial sector have heard of for the first time.

For five decades, "for the interests of the Party and the government" has been the guiding principle for government employees. So it requires a rather long time to re-educate them with the free market concept.

Another problem is the lack of what Mr. Nguyen Duc Quang, chairman of the State Securities Commission mentioned as "closely co-ordination between relevant ministries, industries and organizations to perfect the legal framework, develop the market structure, improve staff training and raise public awareness of securities and stock markets, and enhance international co-operation."

He also admitted that "limited experience and knowledge of stock markets, the small number of listed companies, the majority of the public unprepared for participation due to little understanding about the stock market, and the incompleteness of the financial- monetary system could prove stumbling blocks."

There are signs indicating that the Communist government would hold strict control over the stock market by imposing limitations on the prices.

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