Raymond F. Burghardt Speeches

Ambassador Raymond F. Burghardt Interview with Gia Dinh Va Xa Hoi

3 September 2004

Ambassador Burghardt: Ask me whatever you want to ask and I'll try to answer it.

Q: The first question is please tell about your impressions with regard to economic and social changes in Vietnam during the three years you've worked here. What is the development most impressive to you? For example, the image of Vietnam through the 22nd SEAGames or development in negotiations for WTO membership?

A: When you're looking at any society that's in rapid transition there are two ways of looking at it. One is like a still picture, a snapshot, which you take at different points; and the other is like a movie in which as you look at it things very slowly evolve while you're looking at it.

So as we live here and are in a rapidly changing society, we don't always notice the changes that are happening. But if I look back at Hanoi when I first arrived in 2001 or Hanoi when I visited in 1982 or Haiphong when I visited in 1973, I can see profound changes.

I think I see the young people, the young people I meet in Vietnam now it seems to me are willing to talk about the world, willing to ask questions about the world. They are willing to ask questions about their own society, and I think there's more of that kind of open thinking by young people now than even three years ago.

Vietnam is rapidly integrating with the rest of the world. I think you can see noticeable progress in that even in the last three years. Events like the SEAGames or Vietnam's negotiations to enter the WTO are part of that bigger process, but every day that integration happens in thousands of small ways also. Interaction with tourists and other visitors and business visitors. And Vietnamese traveling much more overseas. There's greater access to information, either through the Internet or on television. There are students who studied overseas who are now coming back to work in Vietnam. So all of that is a very positive trend. Although I read in your newspapers that it makes some people frightened. It makes some people afraid and they worry about peaceful evolution which is kind of like being afraid of the sun coming up every morning. [Laughter] There's nothing you can do about it.

Q: So you mean that in the past young Vietnamese people rarely want to talk and ask about the world?

A: I think that they are more willing now to ask, to talk to foreigners, more willing to make critical comments about their own system and society.

Q: You said about the positive changes. What are the things which change very slowly?

A: As a society moves toward a market economy there is in the transition phase, there are often a number of problems. In Vietnam there are still a lot of problems of corruption by officials at all levels. It's a difficult problem for you to deal with because some of the political structures which other societies have to deal with corruption are not here.

So in a political system like Vietnam it is more difficult to deal with a problem like corruption. When you have a mix of state-owned and market economy existing at the same time, that also creates problems. It's particularly a problem when you have a relatively immature financial system, still dominated by state-owned banks. So you have a rapidly growing private sector but they find it hard to have access to capital and you have a lot of failing state companies which still can get capital even though they can't use it very well. This is not a problem unique to Vietnam.

Q: You mentioned that in Vietnam it lacks an adequate political structure to deal with corruption. Can you suggest what kind of system or structure should Vietnam adopt to deal with that situation?

A: It's up to Vietnam to decide how to deal with it. I can only tell you how it's dealt with in other countries. In other countries the competitive political system between parties acts to expose acts of corruption. Also you have a system of, you have a tradition of investigative journalism. You have newspapers also competing with each other and newspapers which are independent. Then you also have a judicial system which is free from political influence. So all of those would be hard for Vietnam to duplicate. Although the judicial system I think is becoming somewhat more independent.

Then finally, there's another thing which Vietnam can do which would be important. One of the things that creates, one of the many factors that creates corruption is that officials have a lot of regulatory influence and power. In any country. As you reduce the power of officials to issue licenses and grant permits of various kinds you reduce the opportunities for corruption. I think many people in Vietnam recognize that is a solution that can work here.

Q: Low salaries, is that another factor?

A: I should have mentioned that. It definitely is an issue, and I know that the party and the government are trying to raise salaries. I think that's also a very positive step.

Q: Has your perception about Vietnam, the country and its people, changed since you assumed office here? Could you please tell about some memory you have with the Vietnam people.

A: I lived in Vietnam before, in the 1970s. I lived in Vietnam for 2.5 years, from 1970 to 1973. I was in the south at that time, living in Saigon, but also traveled all over the south. But I also in 1973 had the opportunity right after the Paris Peace Agreement to spend three weeks in Haiphong.

So coming back to Vietnam my impressions of the Vietnamese people and their character, their nature, I of course found the Vietnamese people of course hasn't changed, and that my very positive impressions were further reinforced by another three years living in Vietnam. The opportunity to return to Vietnam after 28 years and to in fact meet many people whom I knew before has been one of the really wonderful aspects of this experience. Of course to be in the country in a time when it's finally peaceful and developing and united.

The impressions of the Vietnamese, the nature of the Vietnamese people which I've mentioned many times in my speeches in the last couple of weeks are that I think Vietnamese are by nature very pragmatic. Sometimes their system tries to make them ideological rather than pragmatic, but they always come back to being pragmatic in the end.

You see many times over Vietnamese history, and particularly in the last ten years I think, that there is an ability of Vietnamese people to adjust very quickly to changing circumstances. With the end of the Cold War and with the collapse of the COMECON trading system and the end of the Soviet Union and the end of a very familiar system, the Vietnamese people didn't waste a lot of time mourning the loss of the system. They immediately adjusted. And then very quickly normalized relations with the United States, joined ASEAN, joined APEC, applied to join WTO.

I also, I have great admiration for the ability of the Vietnamese to keep focused on the present and on the future.

Finally I would say the Vietnamese have a very special ability to keep their sense of humor and to see the fun in life even when things are tough.

I think all those three characteristics -- the pragmatism, the ability to adjust to circumstances, and the sense of humor are probably all closely related.

Q: You say that you admire the Vietnamese people for their ability to focus on the present and future. Can you elaborate?

A: Vietnam has had a troubled history and has had conflicts with the French and with Americans, with Chinese, the conflict in Cambodia, but is able to look beyond that history.

Some countries might have refused to normalize with all those former enemies. You look just around Asia today. There are some countries that still are very very focused on their anger over things that happened 50-60 years ago. I'm not saying that Vietnamese have forgotten history and the history of course, the past always is with us. But it's one thing to be conscious of history and it's another thing to be imprisoned by it.

Q: You haven't mentioned any strong memory you have with a Vietnamese person or with some Vietnamese people...

A: Okay. There are so many close friends that I have made. I have gotten to know many people in your artistic and cultural world here. Many painters, musicians, [inaudible] directors. Writers also. And been to the homes of many of these people, and gone drinking with them out in the bars. Those are friendships I will very much treasure and I hope to stay in touch with many of those people. I fact I have been with Vietnamese artists, some of these same artists I know here I've also been with them when they had openings at galleries in New York City.

In addition, I, among your political leaders I leave with some very good memories of not only official work with them but also a lot of contact out of the office as well.

For example, last December I accompanied Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan on his trip to the United States and we with him and with other people in the delegation, like Vice Foreign Minister Le Van Bang and many other leading officials, we've spent a lot of time together on the trip in Washington, in Houston, in California. So on that kind of trip you develop a good personal relationship with people.

I've also had some wonderful experiences of meeting people who I had known 30 years ago. In one case I walked into someone's office. He was very happy to see me. Then I felt as if he was simply picking up the conversation that we had stopped 28 years ago. [Laughter] Just continuing.

I also had a wonderful experience in which the family -- When I was here 28 years ago I lived in an apartment in Saigon on the street leading to Tan Son Nhat. The family who lives there now found out that the current American Ambassador had lived in the apartment so they sent word, and they invited me to visit them and to have lunch there. So I went and I went with my oldest daughter. She had spent the first -- my daughter, Helen is her name -- she had spent the first six months of her life in that apartment, but of course she couldn't remember it. From 1972-1973. And so we went there, we had lunch with the family. They turned out to be a family with very strong revolutionary credentials, and they were very friendly. We talked about what we all had done during the period of the war, what happened after the war, about their family that was in America, their family that was in Vietnam. We took pictures of my daughter standing in the same porch, the room, by the same window where we had taken her baby pictures.

Q: Very interesting.

A: I have used the expression that coming back here has been an experience of finding an unexpected continuity in life.

Q: Last questions. The first one is after Vietnam and the U.S. signed the BTA, after three years what are the significant commitments Vietnam has to fill and what has it not fulfilled? The second question is in the coming year when the service sector is opened under the BTA, will Vietnamese service sector be threatened?

A: I think that in three years there has of course been a tremendous increase in bilateral trade. I think that Vietnam has fulfilled most of its commitments under the BTA. The biggest problems are that in the area of intellectual property rights the laws are very good but they're not implemented. They're implemented very very little. This is a problem. I think it's a problem also for a lot of Vietnamese industries, like the Vietnamese software industry, the Vietnamese recording artists, Vietnamese writers and musicians. They complain to me about it also.

So I think yes, it's a failure under the BTA commitments but I think it's a failure also in terms of your own development.

Then I think the other area we'd like to see some better performance on is what we call transparency meaning that all of the rules and regulations are published, people can comment on them.

There's been some progress there, there has been. That has had more progress than IPR enforcement, but it still could be a little better.

On the issue of opening the service sector, I think the experience in other countries has been that when the service sector is open the performance of the domestic service sector improves and new products are discovered. The domestic service sector ends up doing okay. I mean to take an example, in China when China opened its insurance market, the Chinese insurance companies were very afraid of what would happen, but what ended up happening was that the overall insurance sales have gone up dramatically for both foreign and Chinese companies. So the Chinese companies have ended up doing very well even as they've allowed the foreign companies into the market. And I sincerely believe that's what will happen here also. Because what you find is that there's a tremendous amount of unused potential in the market.

Q: You have some ideas that are not very clear to me. Is that not the transparency, Vietnam has some progress but still [inaudible]?

A: For example, some of the laws, you now have an official Gazette which publishes new laws and regulations. That's a good step. But the next step should be that when a new law or regulation is being considered, has been proposed, it should be made available for people to comment on for the industries that will be affected, both foreign and domestic, to be able to comment on them. That's done in many many countries of the world and would be a very positive step. And it's something that actually is supposed to happen under the BTA.

Q: The last question. Before the BTA the U.S. estimated that the rate of violation in Vietnam, its software, was 99 percent. What is the rate now? Is there any --

A: I think for software, DVDs and CDs, I don't know the exact percentage, but it's well over 90 percent for all three categories.

Q: Are there any groups you still want to do there for the two countries that you haven't finished yet?

A: We have made a lot of progress in a lot of areas, but there always is more to do. I think one of the areas we have not seen much progress is in what I call law enforcement cooperation. Cooperation between the police in both countries on narcotics, on smuggling, on trafficking in persons, on terrorism issues. We have had some training and activities like that but not much operational cooperation. It would help both countries, I think, if we had one. I think it will happen, but that's something for the future.

Q: So I think U.S. and Vietnam, we are very far from each other. The distance. Do you think the cooperation between the two countries’ law enforcement forces is necessary?

A: It's very important and we do it with other countries. Even with China, for example, we have much closer cooperation with their police on things. So we just have to build up the level of trust here to be higher.

Q: Thank you very much.

A: Thank you.