Quick takes

I don’t know if you are like me, but the way I organize my life is through tabs. I see an article that I want to read and/or write about it, so I open it up. At some point, I try to get back to it and once done with it I close it. And so every so often, I need to clear out my tabs by writing about a few interesting articles. That’s the post today:

Quick hits

Fake “Made in Vietnam” goods are a real problem. This is mostly Chinese manufacturers trying to pass of “Made in China” goods as Vietnamese for the US market. It is hard to monitor, and it really isn’t in the interest of Vietnam to care too much. Until the US gets mad enough that they start going after Vietnamese exporters. Then they will start to care.

Source: World Bank

Coconut producer going gang-busters. Or as the article states: there is “a groundswell for plant-based diets in the West.” As an avid cook, I do think that people are using more plant-based oils and milks than previously. So good for Ben Tre Import & Export JSC for taking advantage of it. Although remember: coconut oil is “pure poison.” [Just a note here: I have written about the weirdest things, but it’s nice to reference my old posts. Saves me time.]

Vietnam is suffering from low birth rates, just like the rest of the world. A replacement level is 2.1 births per woman. Vietnam is below that at 2.04, although that’s up slightly from 1.89 in 2004. In HCMC, it is even worse at 1.33. And more people are moving in to HCMC, which will likely mean lower fertility going forward. Fertility is falling for a lot of reasons: women’s greater autonomy, the high cost of raising children, mothers working, later marriage. These are all trends not specific to Vietnam, and also trends that Vietnam will not sidestep. And government efforts worldwide have been mostly unsuccessful in raising fertility rates.

Vietnam may move away from the 48-hour work week. It couldn’t happen sooner. Microsoft moved to a 4-day work week, and it boosted productivity by 40%! Of course, I doubt this would be the same result for a factory, but it still would be better for the workers’ lives to move to at least a 40-hour work week. Plus, it may help fertility!

PetroVietnam is building a dam on the Mekong. This is a reversal from what had previously been Vietnamese policy on the Mekong. For a long time, the government has been actively fighting dams on the river. There is a good reason for this. If less water flows into the delta, lots of Vietnamese farmers will be hurt, plus you will see more saltwater encroachment. It could be that Vietnam decided that if they own one of the dams (and this is a particularly big one) then at least they would be in the driver seat. Hard to know. I like hydropower, but this doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Interesting point. Vietnam wants power, and so it makes sense that PetroVietnam, SEO, is a part of this, given that their whole reason for being is to fuel Vietnam. But the Vietnamese government is not monolithic. In this article, a government official in fisheries has some doubts on the dam.

Finally, is Vietnam the next China? Spoiler: no.