Welcome to the Wild East

By JAMES R. GAINES

IT IS EASTER WEEK IN VIETNAM, and there are those who say the skies are full of portents. Certainly the streets are. In Hanoi the open-air markets are bustling with customers and abundant with beautiful vegetables. The boulevards are choked with Honda minibikes. In a speech to Asia watchers, Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet sets forth as first among his administration's goals a distinctly noncommunist priority: "to make our people rich."

In Saigon, where park benches are named for Viet Cong war dead, some martyrs to the revolution share their sign space with Kronenbourg beer ads. The place isn't called Ho Chi Minh City as much anymore. The old Saigon is back, and it will meet you, sometime after midnight, at the Apocalypse Now bar.

To the north in Beijing, China too is on a capitalist splurge. Every block has its own office tower and luxury hotel under construction, and everybody is an entrepreneur. On a visit with American journalists to the Great Wall, where you can now get a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, two middle-aged former Marxists share their experiences of trying to make it big in the new China. One is marketing a spray said to kill hiv, the virus that causes aids. The other is trying to develop a Buddhism theme park.

East and Southeast Asia these days are capitalism unbound, the "communist" world as America's Wild West, complete with its own snake-oil salesmen and robber barons. The People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam have seen the Wild East, and they like what they see.

One year from now, Americans and Vietnamese will celebrate, if that is the word, the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. It is safe to predict that we will take the occasion to ask ourselves, again, why we went to war, why we lost, what it was we lost. The rise of free-market economics here makes that question especially slippery. When Saigon seems just as it was before the fall, just as boisterous and kitschy, when a billboard at Hanoi airport advertises VIETNAMERICA EXPO '94, it is easy to conclude that the war in Vietnam must have been the ultimate adventure in futility. Like many easy conclusions, this one bears further examination.

America's lifting the embargo on Vietnam has people in both countries talking about reconciliation, even friendship. Let us be clear. Vietnam wants the U.S. in the region as a counterweight to China. The profit motive drives America's wish for relations with Vietnam. Anyone susceptible to the sentimental image of the U.S. and Vietnam as lion and lamb lying down together can be cured by a visit to the war museum in Saigon, where the propaganda about American atrocities is ham-handed and offensive, and where G.I. gear is sold at souvenir stands. A great deal of history stands between the U.S. and Vietnam, as between the U.S. and China. Ideology stands between us too. Communism is dead in both China and Vietnam, but authoritarianism thrives.

As we argue about most-favored-nation status for China -- and soon, inevitably, for Vietnam -- we will have occasion to be reminded that America's commitment to human rights is not just some kind of unfortunate national twitch: we can't turn away from the wish for freedom from authoritarianism because that wish is our country's fundament. The problem is that the hammer of MFN, rather than beating China into submission on human rights (not likely in any case), could deal a serious blow to its movement toward democracy. That fact is hard to face in light of such events as the detention last week of dissident Wei Jingsheng, but it is nevertheless a fact. Like Vietnam, China is setting loose an economic system in which individual effort will yield individual rewards, and it is the commonest truth of Western development that such a system creates the best conditions for individual liberties. Given our heritage and beliefs, America is obliged to encourage that process. In this light, opposition to MFN for China -- as well as, ultimately, for Vietnam -- seems at best to be wrongheaded, and most likely a force for further repression.

When we see free-market economics at work in the North and South of Vietnam, we are entitled to feel, instead of futility, a certain sense of vindication. There are reliable people in Saigon who will say (not too loudly, certainly not for attribution) that if a plebiscite were held today, the South would choose independence from the North. This is not because people in the South oppose union; in fact, they favor it. They would choose independence because they despise their oppressive form of government. We fought to help them avoid this predicament. There were many good reasons to oppose the war, but that basic American motive was not among them. This more than anything explains why so many Vietnamese in the South seem genuinely happy to see Americans back in Vietnam. They express gratitude for what we did, and they see America's return as a promise of change. Let us hope they are right. Free enterprise is not all they need, but it is a step in the right direction, and it brings along other notions.

For example, thanks to public pressure and the government's commitment to doi moi, the program of free-market and other reforms, the authorities in southern Vietnam seem to have become a little more tolerant of religion lately. Who knows to what counterrevolutionary extremes such small openings might lead?

It was Palm Sunday, and outside the cathedral in Saigon a girl of nine or 10 was selling postcards. These children with their souvenir postcards are everywhere now in the South, tugging at sleeves, beseeching with practiced but adorable smiles, the authorities having become gradually reconciled to such small-scale enterprise. On this particular Sunday, this particular young capitalist was particularly beguiling, and had an advantage: her customer was at loose ends, having missed Palm Sunday services. The cathedral would not open again for hours. At the end of protracted negotiations, she got her asking price, one U.S. dollar, for a package of 10 postcards. She offered her palm for free.