An interview with Vietnam's first and only astronaut

Today the Financial Times has published a special edition magazine to commemorate the 50th anniversary of man going into space.

Below is an extract of my interview with Pham Tuan, Vietnam's first and only astronaut.

Pham Tuan was the ideal candidate to become the first Asian in space, as far as Vietnam’s hard-line communist leaders were concerned. From humble beginnings in a poor village, he had already risen to the rank of national hero. Defending his homeland from sustained US attacks during the Christmas Bombings of 1972, Tuan was credited with becoming the first Vietnamese fighter pilot to shoot down a B52 in air-to-air combat – a feat many US aviators still insist was impossible.

During his eight-day sojourn at the Salyut 6 space station, Tuan beamed back messages hailing Vietnam’s long struggle for independence and thanking the Communist party “for having trained me and given me wings to fly into space”.

Back on planet Earth, the hungry Vietnamese people were not so easily taken in. A popular rhyme at the time pondered: “We have no rice, we have no noodles, so why are you going into space Mr Tuan?”

Read the rest of my profile here.

The Financial Times is recruiting a News Assistant in Hanoi

Vacancy – News assistant for the Financial Times, Hanoi

The Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organisations, recently opened a bureau in Hanoi in order to expand its coverage of Vietnam.
We are looking to recruit a Vietnamese national to work as a news assistant alongside our resident foreign correspondent.
The successful candidate will be a dynamic and enthusiastic self-starter, with experience in journalism and strong news judgement.
You will help the correspondent to cover a wide range of stories involving economics, investment, politics, climate change, health and social issues. As we are a new and small bureau, you must be flexible and able to work independently and as part of a team.
When covering breaking news, you will have to work under pressure to tight deadlines.
This is an exciting opportunity for an ambitious individual to gain experience working at a leading international news organisation and to help shape our coverage of Vietnam.

Job description

Setting up and carrying out interviews with government officials, business leaders and others
Scanning the Vietnamese press for important stories and monitoring other news sources
Generating and developing story ideas
Carrying out in-depth research
Translating and interpreting
Some travel within Vietnam will be required

Essential Qualifications/Experience/Qualities

Bachelors degree or higher
Experience in journalism
Fluent in Vietnamese and English
A good understanding of economics, business and politics
Confident and good at making new contacts
Able to find information quickly

Preferred

Good existing contacts among government officials and in the business community

Competitive salary

To apply, please send your CV and a covering letter explaining why you're the right person for this position to Ben Bland at ftvietnamjob@gmail.com.

Comparing corruption in India and Vietnam

My colleague David Pilling has written a great column in today's FT, arguing that, despite much hand-wringing, Indian companies are as much to blame for corruption as government officials.

India is said to grow at night while its government sleeps. The quip, beloved of Indian businessmen, is often invoked to rubbish a corrupt and incompetent state and to praise a supposedly heroic entrepreneurial class. But there is something wrong with this picture. In many sectors, Indian entrepreneurs make money not in spite of government interference, but precisely through colluding with a state that provides the land, licences and rent-seeking opportunities on which they thrive.

A number of Vietnamese contacts have persistently made the same point to me here: when it comes to corruption, it takes two to tango.

Many Western businesses are also guilty of double standards, criticising the dominance of the state in the economy, while themselves seeking patronage, licences and rents from the government.

Has the Philippines fallen victim to too much democracy?

That is one of the major questions posed by David Pilling, the Financial Times' Asia editor, in an editorial examining the ambiguous legacy of Cory Aquino and the outlook for the Philippines.

In east Asia, a region "with too few compelling examples of successful democracies", the Philippines adds grist to the mill of those who argue that democracy and individual liberties are not conducive to economic development, Pilling argues.

As he puts it, "those who seek to equate Asia’s strong growth record with authoritarian governments – conveniently forgetting the economic wreckage stemming from dictatorships in Burma, Cambodia and pre-Deng Xiaoping China – routinely offer the Philippines as an example of the alleged economic costs inherent to democracy".

Pilling's concludes that the dominance of patronage politics (or cacique democracy as it is also known) has undermined economic development and that, rather depressingly, there is little hope for change in the immediate future.

The Philippines is left with all the trappings of democracy – an argumentative press, free elections and regular transfers of power. Yet it has broken less decisively with the past than many other Asian countries. That has left it, rather like many Latin American countries that lurch from one caudillo to another, too reliant on what Raul Pangalangan, a law professor, calls “raw politics”. Today, in the eyes of a nation in mourning, the only thing that could truly redeem Philippine democracy would be another Cory Aquino. Yet, if truth be told, even she was not able to do that.

But it seems to me that any generalisation about the success of the Philippines will ultimately depend on how highly you value what Pilling calls "the trappings of democracy". Some would argue that an argumentative press, free elections and regular transfers of power are the essence of democracy, rather than mere "trappings".