East is east - get used to it
The Guardian - Friday May 20, 2005
As Japan has shown, and China will too, the west's values are not necessarily universal
Martin Jacques
Not so long ago, Japan was the height of fashion. Then came the post- bubble recession and it rapidly faded into the background, condemned as yesterday's story. The same happened to the Asian tigers: until 1997 they were the flavour of the month, but with the Asian financial crisis they sank into relative obscurity. No doubt the same fate will befall China in due course, though perhaps a little less dramatically because of its sheer size and import.
These vagaries tell us nothing about east Asia, but describe the fickleness of western attitudes towards the region's transformation. A combination of curiosity and a fear of the unknown fuel a swelling interest, and then, when it appears that it was a false alarm, old attitudes of western-centric hubris reassert themselves: the Asian tigers were victims of a crony culture and Japan was simply too Japanese.
During Japan's crisis, western - mainly American - witch doctors advised that the only solution was to abandon Japanese customs like lifetime employment and adopt more Anglo-Saxon practices such as shareholder value. The age-old western habit of believing that its arrangements - of the neo-liberal variety, in this instance - are always best proved as strong as ever: it is in our genes. The fact that the US was at the time in the early stages of its own bubble might have suggested a little humility was in order. In the event, Japan largely ignored the advice and has emerged from its long, post- bubble recession looking remarkably like it did before the crisis. Japan has long been part of the advanced world. It was the only non- western country to begin its industrialisation in the 19th century, following the Meiji Restoration in 1867. It has the second largest economy and enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world. By any standards, it is a fully paid-up member of the exclusive club of advanced nations. Yet Japan is quite unlike any western society. In terms of the hardware of modernity - cars, computers, technology, motorways and the rest - Japan is, unsurprisingly, largely familiar. However, in terms of social relations - the way in which society works, the values that imbue it - it is profoundly different.
Even a casual observer who cannot understand Japanese will almost immediately notice the differences: the absence of antisocial behaviour, the courtesy displayed by the Japanese towards each other, the extraordinary efficiency and orderliness that characterise the stuff of everyday life, from public transport to shopping. For those of a more statistical persuasion, it is reflected in what are, by western standards, extremely low crime rates. Not least, it finds expression in the success of Japanese companies. This has wrongly been attributed to an organisational system, namely just-in-time production, which, it was believed, could be imitated and applied with equal effect elsewhere. But the roots of the success of a company such as Toyota lie much deeper: in the social relations that typify Japanese society and that allow a very different kind of participation by the workforce in comparison with the west. As a result, non-Japanese companies have found it extremely difficult to copy these ideas with anything like the same degree of success.
So how do we explain the differences between Japan and the west? The heart of the matter lies in their different ethos. Individualism animates the west, now more than ever. In contrast, the organising principle of Japanese society is a sense of group identity, a feeling of being part of a much wider community. Compared with western societies, Japan is a dense lattice-work of responsibilities and obligations within the family, the workplace, the school and the community. As Deepak Lal argues in his book Unintended Consequences, the Japanese sense of self is quite distinct from the western notion of individualism. As a result, people behave in very different ways and have very different expectations, and their behaviour is informed by very different values. This finds expression in a multitude of ways.
Following the recent train crash in which 106 people died, the president of the operating company, JR West, was forced to resign: this is the normal and expected response of a company boss when things go seriously wrong. Income differentials within large corporations are much less than in their Anglo-Saxon equivalents, because it is group cohesion rather than individual ego that is most valued. Even during the depth of the recession, the jobless figure never rose much above 5%: it was regarded as wrong to solve a crisis by creating large-scale unemployment. Even those who do the more menial tasks - shop assistants, security staff, station attendants and canteen workers - display a pride in their work and a courtesy that is in striking contrast to the surly and resentful attitude prevalent in Britain and other western societies.
In a survey conducted by the Japanese firm Dentsu, 68% of Americans and 60% of Britons identified with "a society in which everyone can freely compete according to his/her will and abilities" compared with just 22% of Japanese. In the same survey, only 15% of Japanese agreed with the proposition that "it's all right to break the rules, depending on the circumstances", compared with 37% of Americans and 39% of Britons. This finds rather bizarre expression - to an Englishman at least - in the way pedestrians invariably wait for the pedestrian lights to turn to green even when there is not the slightest sign of an approaching vehicle. Even the preferred choice of car reflects the differing ethos: whereas in the US and Britain, the fashionable car of choice is a 4x4 - the very embodiment of a "bugger you and the environment" individualism - the equivalent in Japan is the tiny micro-car, much smaller than a Ford Ka - a genre that is neither made nor marketed in the UK.
The differences are legion, and not always for the better. Japan, for example, is still blighted by a rigid and traditional sexual division of labour. In a survey on the gender gap published last week by the World Economic Forum, Japan came 38th out of 58 countries, an extraordinarily low ranking for a developed nation. Or take democracy, that hallowed and allegedly universal principle of our age. Japan has universal suffrage, but the idea of alternating parties in government is almost entirely alien. Real power is exercised by factions within the ruling Liberal Democrats rather than by the other political parties, which, as a consequence, are largely marginal. We should not be surprised: in a society based on group culture rather than individualism, "democracy" is bound to be a very different kind of animal.
Far from conforming to the western model then, Japan remains profoundly different. And so it has always been. After the Meiji Restoration it deliberately sought to engineer a modernisation that was distinctively Japanese, drawing from its own traditions as well as borrowing from the west. Globalisation notwithstanding, this is still strikingly the case. Indeed, Japan remains unusually and determinedly impervious to many of the pressures of globalisation. The lesson here, perhaps, is that we should expect the same to be true, in some degree or another, of the Asian tigers - and ultimately China too. That is not to say they will end up looking anything like Japan: China and Japan, for example, are in many respects chalk and cheese. But they will certainly be very different from the west because, like Japan, they come from very different histories and cultures.
· Martin Jacques is a visiting professor at the International Centre for Chinese Studies at Aichi University in Japan
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
As Japan has shown, and China will too, the west's values are not necessarily universal
Martin Jacques
Not so long ago, Japan was the height of fashion. Then came the post- bubble recession and it rapidly faded into the background, condemned as yesterday's story. The same happened to the Asian tigers: until 1997 they were the flavour of the month, but with the Asian financial crisis they sank into relative obscurity. No doubt the same fate will befall China in due course, though perhaps a little less dramatically because of its sheer size and import.
These vagaries tell us nothing about east Asia, but describe the fickleness of western attitudes towards the region's transformation. A combination of curiosity and a fear of the unknown fuel a swelling interest, and then, when it appears that it was a false alarm, old attitudes of western-centric hubris reassert themselves: the Asian tigers were victims of a crony culture and Japan was simply too Japanese.
During Japan's crisis, western - mainly American - witch doctors advised that the only solution was to abandon Japanese customs like lifetime employment and adopt more Anglo-Saxon practices such as shareholder value. The age-old western habit of believing that its arrangements - of the neo-liberal variety, in this instance - are always best proved as strong as ever: it is in our genes. The fact that the US was at the time in the early stages of its own bubble might have suggested a little humility was in order. In the event, Japan largely ignored the advice and has emerged from its long, post- bubble recession looking remarkably like it did before the crisis. Japan has long been part of the advanced world. It was the only non- western country to begin its industrialisation in the 19th century, following the Meiji Restoration in 1867. It has the second largest economy and enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world. By any standards, it is a fully paid-up member of the exclusive club of advanced nations. Yet Japan is quite unlike any western society. In terms of the hardware of modernity - cars, computers, technology, motorways and the rest - Japan is, unsurprisingly, largely familiar. However, in terms of social relations - the way in which society works, the values that imbue it - it is profoundly different.
Even a casual observer who cannot understand Japanese will almost immediately notice the differences: the absence of antisocial behaviour, the courtesy displayed by the Japanese towards each other, the extraordinary efficiency and orderliness that characterise the stuff of everyday life, from public transport to shopping. For those of a more statistical persuasion, it is reflected in what are, by western standards, extremely low crime rates. Not least, it finds expression in the success of Japanese companies. This has wrongly been attributed to an organisational system, namely just-in-time production, which, it was believed, could be imitated and applied with equal effect elsewhere. But the roots of the success of a company such as Toyota lie much deeper: in the social relations that typify Japanese society and that allow a very different kind of participation by the workforce in comparison with the west. As a result, non-Japanese companies have found it extremely difficult to copy these ideas with anything like the same degree of success.
So how do we explain the differences between Japan and the west? The heart of the matter lies in their different ethos. Individualism animates the west, now more than ever. In contrast, the organising principle of Japanese society is a sense of group identity, a feeling of being part of a much wider community. Compared with western societies, Japan is a dense lattice-work of responsibilities and obligations within the family, the workplace, the school and the community. As Deepak Lal argues in his book Unintended Consequences, the Japanese sense of self is quite distinct from the western notion of individualism. As a result, people behave in very different ways and have very different expectations, and their behaviour is informed by very different values. This finds expression in a multitude of ways.
Following the recent train crash in which 106 people died, the president of the operating company, JR West, was forced to resign: this is the normal and expected response of a company boss when things go seriously wrong. Income differentials within large corporations are much less than in their Anglo-Saxon equivalents, because it is group cohesion rather than individual ego that is most valued. Even during the depth of the recession, the jobless figure never rose much above 5%: it was regarded as wrong to solve a crisis by creating large-scale unemployment. Even those who do the more menial tasks - shop assistants, security staff, station attendants and canteen workers - display a pride in their work and a courtesy that is in striking contrast to the surly and resentful attitude prevalent in Britain and other western societies.
In a survey conducted by the Japanese firm Dentsu, 68% of Americans and 60% of Britons identified with "a society in which everyone can freely compete according to his/her will and abilities" compared with just 22% of Japanese. In the same survey, only 15% of Japanese agreed with the proposition that "it's all right to break the rules, depending on the circumstances", compared with 37% of Americans and 39% of Britons. This finds rather bizarre expression - to an Englishman at least - in the way pedestrians invariably wait for the pedestrian lights to turn to green even when there is not the slightest sign of an approaching vehicle. Even the preferred choice of car reflects the differing ethos: whereas in the US and Britain, the fashionable car of choice is a 4x4 - the very embodiment of a "bugger you and the environment" individualism - the equivalent in Japan is the tiny micro-car, much smaller than a Ford Ka - a genre that is neither made nor marketed in the UK.
The differences are legion, and not always for the better. Japan, for example, is still blighted by a rigid and traditional sexual division of labour. In a survey on the gender gap published last week by the World Economic Forum, Japan came 38th out of 58 countries, an extraordinarily low ranking for a developed nation. Or take democracy, that hallowed and allegedly universal principle of our age. Japan has universal suffrage, but the idea of alternating parties in government is almost entirely alien. Real power is exercised by factions within the ruling Liberal Democrats rather than by the other political parties, which, as a consequence, are largely marginal. We should not be surprised: in a society based on group culture rather than individualism, "democracy" is bound to be a very different kind of animal.
Far from conforming to the western model then, Japan remains profoundly different. And so it has always been. After the Meiji Restoration it deliberately sought to engineer a modernisation that was distinctively Japanese, drawing from its own traditions as well as borrowing from the west. Globalisation notwithstanding, this is still strikingly the case. Indeed, Japan remains unusually and determinedly impervious to many of the pressures of globalisation. The lesson here, perhaps, is that we should expect the same to be true, in some degree or another, of the Asian tigers - and ultimately China too. That is not to say they will end up looking anything like Japan: China and Japan, for example, are in many respects chalk and cheese. But they will certainly be very different from the west because, like Japan, they come from very different histories and cultures.
· Martin Jacques is a visiting professor at the International Centre for Chinese Studies at Aichi University in Japan
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Why Japan's 'so sorry' won't wash in China
Asia Times Online
30 April 2005
By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - At a recent conference in Indonesia, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized to Asian countries for his country's invasions during World War II. It was certainly a positive gesture, but it is unlikely to appease the Chinese government totally.
The Chinese government does not really want apologies about the past, it wants the Japanese to call their invasion an "invasion" and not minimize it. Beijing also does not want to see future visits of senior politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, where there are buried together veterans of Japanese wars and some convicted Class A war criminals.
It is difficult for Westerners to nail down what Beijing's position vis-a-vis Japan actually is, because West and East are literally a world apart on the matter of confessing to historic mistakes versus burying them. For its part, Beijing no longer calls the Tiananmen movement in 1989 dongluan (riot or major disorder), as did the official rhetoric at the time, but fengbo (disturbance, incident or controversy), or sometimes even simply liusi (June 4); similarly, Beijing no longer brings up the issue of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) or the Great Leap Forward (late 1950s), meaning that Beijing wants these mistakes buried in the past.
The idea of burying mistakes, avoiding bringing them to the open to avoid embarrassment, is hugely different from the Western attitude. In general, Westerners, following Freudian analysis and the Christian concept of confession, think mistakes should be solved by revealing them in public (to the confessor or analyst). Chinese, and possibly East Asians in general, just want to bury them and never mention them again. There is no culture of confession like that which held sway in the West for hundreds of years. There, confession was the first step to redemption; in East Asia, confessions never brought forgiveness or redemption but just swifter punishment.
These sentiments emerge against the backdrop of conflicting ambitions. Both China and Japan are not satisfied with their present role in Asia, and hope for different and greater status.
Japan is fed up with being considered a political dwarf, and wants better representation for its economy, which is still the second-largest in the world, larger that those of China and India put together. (China supported India's request for a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council, while opposing the Japanese bid.)
China is afraid that Japan's ambition for higher profile could be inspired by its imperial past to bully (if not invade, which is now out of fashion) its neighbors, including China. There are concrete instances supporting these fears. Take the issue of iron ore. At the beginning of the year Japan's steel industry and the world's largest iron company, the Brazilian Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, reached an agreement on the price of iron ore: on the basis of the 18.6% global price growth of last year, they increased the price by 71.5%, registering a historic price for iron ore. This increase in price will create great difficulties for the Chinese steel market and industry, which is highly inefficient, but it could be digested by Japan industry, which is more efficient. The Chinese feel this is bullying its steel industry out of the market.
And the troubles continue. The Japanese have made a joint decision with the United States openly to consider Taiwan a troubled area - and a key strategic concern of both nations. That's the truth, but it took away the fig leaf that Taiwan is solely China's domestic issue. Furthermore, on the very days of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, Tokyo declared that Japan would open the area around the Senkaku (in Japanese)or Diaoyu (in Chinese) Islands, controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing, to oil prospecting. All of these are very concrete political and economic issues, which are clouded and muddled by the historical animosity.
If Tokyo gets a permanent seat on the Security Council, will it do worse than this? How much is the bullying on iron related to the issue of the Yasukuni war veterans' shrine? A lot, a little, none at all? China has not publicly linked the two issues of the iron ore and the demonstrations, and neither has Japan. However, officials of both government admit there is a tie. And, to roil the waters, the Chinese claim the Japanese twisted Russia's arms to have their hoped-for oil pipeline go to the north of the Korean Peninsula and bypass China, contrary to Chinese interests. China will be getting a railway spur.
In fact, both rivals shy away from all of this because both have skeletons in the cupboard, embarrassing historical bones that neither wants to display openly and discuss frankly. Chinese steel mills wanted to undercut Japanese mills and gain a larger part of the global steel market; Japanese steel wanted to avoid it and create difficulties for its Chinese competitors. It is a commercial tussle, but in such countries as China and Japan, given their past, any tussle can become overburdened and issues distorted by other feelings and fears.
How to make these undercurrents run smoothly? Westerners, who have an interest in the stability of the region, think they should bring the issues into the open and discuss them frankly. East Asians feel that approach would not work, and besides, they are not accustomed to such openness and shy away from it. They would rather go on shadow-boxing about it, second-guessing each other's movements.
If the West were not involved, then the situation would be simpler. But in this globalized economy, America and Europe are involved, and they should try to get a clear picture and not get hoodwinked by either of the parties, while being aware of Asian sensitivities.
The issues appear to be the following:Japan no longer can endure the perceived role of political dwarf and wishes to fend for itself against a rising China, especially since Japan is not sure to what extent the US economy will still dominate in 10 or 20 years, when China's economy could well be twice or four times as large as it is now. China is pulled by its youth, who want "revenge" against the "arrogant" Japanese; Beijing is also truly worried that Japanese politics is, or will be, hijacked by the right wing that minimizes the past horrors in order to seek some new kind of hegemony in the region. Things are further complicated because there is a new game in town. In the past centuries China was the regional hegemon and Japan paid tribute to the greatness of China. This changed about 100 years ago, when Japan defeated China and took over Korea and Taiwan. Then for the following decades, Japan was the main political, and then economic, force in the region.
This history raises the question: How will the two countries fare against each other? Will it be the old political paradigm, these two countries vying for hegemony in East Asia?
Can there be a new paradigm of relations in Asia without considering "hegemony"?
How large is the region? Should it be considered to include the South Asian subcontinent? What is or will be the role of Southeast Asia, the United States and Europe in strategic geopolitical thinking?
Perhaps these are the some of the real questions behind the wave of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China.
Francesco Sisci is the director of the Institute of Italian Culture in Beijing. This article represents his views alone and not those of the institute.
30 April 2005
By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - At a recent conference in Indonesia, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized to Asian countries for his country's invasions during World War II. It was certainly a positive gesture, but it is unlikely to appease the Chinese government totally.
The Chinese government does not really want apologies about the past, it wants the Japanese to call their invasion an "invasion" and not minimize it. Beijing also does not want to see future visits of senior politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, where there are buried together veterans of Japanese wars and some convicted Class A war criminals.
It is difficult for Westerners to nail down what Beijing's position vis-a-vis Japan actually is, because West and East are literally a world apart on the matter of confessing to historic mistakes versus burying them. For its part, Beijing no longer calls the Tiananmen movement in 1989 dongluan (riot or major disorder), as did the official rhetoric at the time, but fengbo (disturbance, incident or controversy), or sometimes even simply liusi (June 4); similarly, Beijing no longer brings up the issue of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) or the Great Leap Forward (late 1950s), meaning that Beijing wants these mistakes buried in the past.
The idea of burying mistakes, avoiding bringing them to the open to avoid embarrassment, is hugely different from the Western attitude. In general, Westerners, following Freudian analysis and the Christian concept of confession, think mistakes should be solved by revealing them in public (to the confessor or analyst). Chinese, and possibly East Asians in general, just want to bury them and never mention them again. There is no culture of confession like that which held sway in the West for hundreds of years. There, confession was the first step to redemption; in East Asia, confessions never brought forgiveness or redemption but just swifter punishment.
These sentiments emerge against the backdrop of conflicting ambitions. Both China and Japan are not satisfied with their present role in Asia, and hope for different and greater status.
Japan is fed up with being considered a political dwarf, and wants better representation for its economy, which is still the second-largest in the world, larger that those of China and India put together. (China supported India's request for a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council, while opposing the Japanese bid.)
China is afraid that Japan's ambition for higher profile could be inspired by its imperial past to bully (if not invade, which is now out of fashion) its neighbors, including China. There are concrete instances supporting these fears. Take the issue of iron ore. At the beginning of the year Japan's steel industry and the world's largest iron company, the Brazilian Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, reached an agreement on the price of iron ore: on the basis of the 18.6% global price growth of last year, they increased the price by 71.5%, registering a historic price for iron ore. This increase in price will create great difficulties for the Chinese steel market and industry, which is highly inefficient, but it could be digested by Japan industry, which is more efficient. The Chinese feel this is bullying its steel industry out of the market.
And the troubles continue. The Japanese have made a joint decision with the United States openly to consider Taiwan a troubled area - and a key strategic concern of both nations. That's the truth, but it took away the fig leaf that Taiwan is solely China's domestic issue. Furthermore, on the very days of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, Tokyo declared that Japan would open the area around the Senkaku (in Japanese)or Diaoyu (in Chinese) Islands, controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing, to oil prospecting. All of these are very concrete political and economic issues, which are clouded and muddled by the historical animosity.
If Tokyo gets a permanent seat on the Security Council, will it do worse than this? How much is the bullying on iron related to the issue of the Yasukuni war veterans' shrine? A lot, a little, none at all? China has not publicly linked the two issues of the iron ore and the demonstrations, and neither has Japan. However, officials of both government admit there is a tie. And, to roil the waters, the Chinese claim the Japanese twisted Russia's arms to have their hoped-for oil pipeline go to the north of the Korean Peninsula and bypass China, contrary to Chinese interests. China will be getting a railway spur.
In fact, both rivals shy away from all of this because both have skeletons in the cupboard, embarrassing historical bones that neither wants to display openly and discuss frankly. Chinese steel mills wanted to undercut Japanese mills and gain a larger part of the global steel market; Japanese steel wanted to avoid it and create difficulties for its Chinese competitors. It is a commercial tussle, but in such countries as China and Japan, given their past, any tussle can become overburdened and issues distorted by other feelings and fears.
How to make these undercurrents run smoothly? Westerners, who have an interest in the stability of the region, think they should bring the issues into the open and discuss them frankly. East Asians feel that approach would not work, and besides, they are not accustomed to such openness and shy away from it. They would rather go on shadow-boxing about it, second-guessing each other's movements.
If the West were not involved, then the situation would be simpler. But in this globalized economy, America and Europe are involved, and they should try to get a clear picture and not get hoodwinked by either of the parties, while being aware of Asian sensitivities.
The issues appear to be the following:Japan no longer can endure the perceived role of political dwarf and wishes to fend for itself against a rising China, especially since Japan is not sure to what extent the US economy will still dominate in 10 or 20 years, when China's economy could well be twice or four times as large as it is now. China is pulled by its youth, who want "revenge" against the "arrogant" Japanese; Beijing is also truly worried that Japanese politics is, or will be, hijacked by the right wing that minimizes the past horrors in order to seek some new kind of hegemony in the region. Things are further complicated because there is a new game in town. In the past centuries China was the regional hegemon and Japan paid tribute to the greatness of China. This changed about 100 years ago, when Japan defeated China and took over Korea and Taiwan. Then for the following decades, Japan was the main political, and then economic, force in the region.
This history raises the question: How will the two countries fare against each other? Will it be the old political paradigm, these two countries vying for hegemony in East Asia?
Can there be a new paradigm of relations in Asia without considering "hegemony"?
How large is the region? Should it be considered to include the South Asian subcontinent? What is or will be the role of Southeast Asia, the United States and Europe in strategic geopolitical thinking?
Perhaps these are the some of the real questions behind the wave of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China.
Francesco Sisci is the director of the Institute of Italian Culture in Beijing. This article represents his views alone and not those of the institute.
Thirty years after the fall of Vietnam, the celebrations can begin
Saturday April 30, 2005 The Guardian
Jonathan Watts in Ho Chi Minh City
Le Duy Ung was two days, 20 miles and a single anti-tank rocket away from sketching Vietnam's proudest victory and one of the most embarrassing debacles in the history of the United States. As a battlefield artist for the communist army, he spent four years using pencils and watercolours to record a conflict that had become known in the west by a very different set of images, as the world's first televised war.
But he never got to see - let alone draw - the fall of Saigon, which ended one of the most politically divisive conflicts of the 20th century. Two days before that historic moment, he lost his sight when the tank he was riding on was blown to pieces, sending shards of metal into his eyes.
On April 30 1975, when a communist army tank crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon, the battlefield sketch artist was in hospital, injured, blind and wondering how to cope with a strange new thing called peace.
Thirty years on, he and tens of millions of Vietnamese are finally getting used to the experience, having been far more traumatised by victory than the US was by defeat. Poverty, recriminations and subsequent wars with China and Cambodia are only now starting to be overcome.
Today, the 30th anniversary celebrations for "liberation day" are in keeping with a country that is belatedly starting to enjoy the fruits of peace.
In Ho Chi Minh City - the postwar name for Saigon - the country's first laser show will light up a huge stage erected for today's festivities. The gates in front of the presidential palace - renamed Reunification Hall - have been thrown open to a parade of gaudily decorated floats. Streets once filled with sandbags and barbed wire are lined with red banners and the gold stars of the Communist party.
Bloody
Vietnam, a focus of campus protests, groundbreaking reportage and the miserably surreal cool of films such as Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and Platoon, was one of the most bloody wars of our age. At the peak of US involvement in 1969, there were half a million American troops in Vietnam. By the war's end, 58,183 had died - double the body count in the Korean war - at a cost of $165bn. Vietnamese losses were far greater - more than 1.3 million fallen soldiers, most of them communists, and 4 million civilians killed or wounded.
Vietnam is still one of the poorest countries in Asia, but compared with the misery of the past, it is going through a golden age. The economy has doubled in 10 years, the streets buzz with mopeds, and the proportion of the population living in poverty has declined from 85% in 1998 to 15% today.
The change is most evident on the 17th parallel, the former demilitarised zone which once divided the communist north and the capitalist south. During the war, the 5km band on either side of the Bien Hai river was a free-fire zone where anything that moved was killed. Today it is an idyll of lazy water buffalos, paddy fields and children laughing as they paddle canoes under Hien Luong bridge, once one of the most bombed structures in the world, now rumbling only with buses and lorries that ferry tourists and commodities across the old dividing line.
The Ho Chi Minh trail - the communists' wartime supply route from north to south - is being upgraded to a national highway and renamed. "We're supposed to call it the Ho Chi Minh Road now," said our guide. "But nobody does. There's too much nostalgia still for the old name."
It is now as much of a tourist trail as a supply route, traversed by an increasing number of former veterans returning to their former battleground and a generation of younger foreign sightseers drawn as much by glorious beaches as the grim history of Hamburger Hill.
Underground
North of the DMZ, a child of the war sells drinks and chewing gum to tourists who come to gawp at the Vinh Moc tunnels, where her entire village sheltered from US bombs for six years.
"I spent most nights of my third year underground," recalls Nguyen Thihong Xiem. "It was hard. Our family had one dark, little room. There were other children, but we couldn't meet. There was nowhere to play. We just sat in the room waiting for the next meal and listening to the planes and the bombs."
When they heard news of the fall of Saigon, her father swam across the DMZ to buy clothes for his family. But life has only really improved in the past five years, since Xiem set up her stall. "I only earn enough to feed and educate my four sons, but this is the most money I've ever had in my life," she says.
Risks remain in the form of the 300,000 tonnes of ordnance that the US rained on Vietnam - more than all the bombs dropped in the second world war.
Xiem's brother was one of 17 babies born 15 metres underground in a dark, clay-walled "maternity ward" barely wider than a coffin. Seven years after the war, he lost a toe and his friend died when they set off an unexploded bomb. Five thousand people have suffered a similar fate in and around the old DMZ since 1975, a third of them under 16.
For the increasing numbers of American veterans who return, clearing ordnance is one way to reconcile mixed emotions about the war. Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, has helped to persuade the US Congress to provide $5m (about £2.6m) to the clear-up operation and programmes to raise awareness among local people.
Open wound
"We are here to commemorate the end of hostilities between our two countries and remove the things left over from the war that continue to have a heavy human and economic cost," he says at the end of a day taking a group of old soldiers back to their former battlefield near the DMZ in Quang Tri province. "Vietnam continues to be an open wound for the United States. It is an undigested experience for the country and it is going to stay that way for a while."
On the tour, they have met and hugged Vietnamese veterans they once shot at and wandered around roads and villages where they lost friends and killed enemies.
Christos Cotsakos is returning for the first time since he was wounded in house-to-house fighting during the Tet offensive in 1968. "The smells bring back the flavour of war," he says. "The water buffalos, the sight of the hillsides. It made it very real. It was not painful, but thoughtful - a good but strained experience."
Perhaps the biggest unresolved problem from the war is continuing discrimination against former supporters of the south, who find it difficult to get jobs in the government or army. Several of their cemeteries have been turned into parks and industrial centres. "I'm glad there is peace, but I won't be celebrating on the anniversary," says a veteran from the south's army who asks to remain anonymous. "We were promised jobs and equal treatment, but it was a lie."
There are signs, however, of a rapprochement. Hundreds of thousands of former boat people who fled the country in the 70s and 80s return annually to celebrate the lunar new year. They are also one of the bigger boosts to the economy, remitting about $3.8bn in 2004.
Vietnam has gone from strength to strength since the end of the cold war. The nominally communist government has pursued an ultra-capitalist economic policy. With salary levels lower even than China, it is working. Annual growth of more than 7% has doubled gross domestic product per head since 1995. In the next 10 years it is on course to double again. In the first four months of the year, foreign investment tripled to $2.1bn from the same period in 2004.
Government advisers speak openly of their desire to attract foreign capitalists to exploit the local workforce, a process that could be speeded up this year, if Vietnam succeeds in its bid to join the World Trade Organisation. "WTO accession is an imperative," says Le Dang Doanh, an economist. "It's the only way to continue high growth. Foreign investors want to use Vietnam as an export base because of its cheap, skilled labour."
The change is apparent across the country and the generations."When we opened 10 years ago, we used to get mostly foreigner customers, but now it's almost all Vietnamese," says Binh Ton That, the owner of the country's first nightclub, Apocalypse Now, in Hanoi.
"Most of them don't know what our club's name means. You're not allowed to see Hollywood movies about the war here. But I don't think our customers are interested in history. They just come here to relax."
Affection for US
For the first time in a long time, Vietnam lacks a real enemy. More than half of the 90 million population were born after the war with America. Despite widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, most people express affection for the US. A poll in Vietnam's Youth Magazine showed Bill Gates was seven times more respected than any member of the politburo.
But other aspects of modern Vietnamese life are less familiar. More than 30 years after his death, Uncle Ho - the popular name for Ho Chi Minh - remains the most revered figure in the country. His bearded, wrinkled face will provide the backdrop for many of today's festivities.
It is an image that is also etched into the memory of Ung, the artist who became a national hero in those final days of liberation with his last battlefield sketch. Children throughout the country are now taught how Ung - blind, bleeding and convinced he was going to die - dipped his fingers in his own blood to trace a portrait of Ho. It is a story that remains as inspiring to many Vietnamese as it is incredible to many foreigners.
These days, Ung works in the army museum in Hanoi, where the leading exhibit is Tank 390, the Chinese-made war engine that crashed through Saigon's presidential palace and on to millions of TV screens 30 years ago.
His life has changed. After eight years of darkness after 1975, he regained a little sight in one eye with a cornea operation, and can now sketch again. It is not easy. He must use his hands to feel the faces of his subjects and his false eye often pops out and rolls across the floor.
Having missed the victory 30 years ago, he plans to spend today painting the anniversary. Like increasing numbers of people in this dynamic country, he has several private projects on the go, including the possible sale of his wartime sketches, and new works of art that reflect a personal and national change of mood.
At his home, he proudly shows a half-completed carving of two young lovers under a tree. "This is what I'm working on now," he says with a grin. "I call it the mating season."
The contentious legacy of Agent Orange
The biggest outstanding issue between the US and Vietnam is the effect of Agent Orange, according to Vietnamese veterans who blame the defoliant for deformities in hundreds of thousands of children born after the war.
Although American plaintiffs won a £100m out-of-court settlement against the chemical companies that produced the herbicide, US judges recently dismissed a claim for compensation by Vietnamese victims, saying defence contractors are not liable for the use of the herbicide by the US government, which has sovereign immunity. An appeal is expected to be heard in June.
Between 1966 and 1971, at least 10m gallons of Agent Orange, which contains dioxin, were dispersed to clear foliage used as cover by Vietcong guerrillas.
The US government covers medical costs for veterans who develop prostate cancer, but many more problems are blamed on the chemical in Vietnam, where dozens of care centres have been established for veterans and children born with disabilities.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Jonathan Watts in Ho Chi Minh City
Le Duy Ung was two days, 20 miles and a single anti-tank rocket away from sketching Vietnam's proudest victory and one of the most embarrassing debacles in the history of the United States. As a battlefield artist for the communist army, he spent four years using pencils and watercolours to record a conflict that had become known in the west by a very different set of images, as the world's first televised war.
But he never got to see - let alone draw - the fall of Saigon, which ended one of the most politically divisive conflicts of the 20th century. Two days before that historic moment, he lost his sight when the tank he was riding on was blown to pieces, sending shards of metal into his eyes.
On April 30 1975, when a communist army tank crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon, the battlefield sketch artist was in hospital, injured, blind and wondering how to cope with a strange new thing called peace.
Thirty years on, he and tens of millions of Vietnamese are finally getting used to the experience, having been far more traumatised by victory than the US was by defeat. Poverty, recriminations and subsequent wars with China and Cambodia are only now starting to be overcome.
Today, the 30th anniversary celebrations for "liberation day" are in keeping with a country that is belatedly starting to enjoy the fruits of peace.
In Ho Chi Minh City - the postwar name for Saigon - the country's first laser show will light up a huge stage erected for today's festivities. The gates in front of the presidential palace - renamed Reunification Hall - have been thrown open to a parade of gaudily decorated floats. Streets once filled with sandbags and barbed wire are lined with red banners and the gold stars of the Communist party.
Bloody
Vietnam, a focus of campus protests, groundbreaking reportage and the miserably surreal cool of films such as Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and Platoon, was one of the most bloody wars of our age. At the peak of US involvement in 1969, there were half a million American troops in Vietnam. By the war's end, 58,183 had died - double the body count in the Korean war - at a cost of $165bn. Vietnamese losses were far greater - more than 1.3 million fallen soldiers, most of them communists, and 4 million civilians killed or wounded.
Vietnam is still one of the poorest countries in Asia, but compared with the misery of the past, it is going through a golden age. The economy has doubled in 10 years, the streets buzz with mopeds, and the proportion of the population living in poverty has declined from 85% in 1998 to 15% today.
The change is most evident on the 17th parallel, the former demilitarised zone which once divided the communist north and the capitalist south. During the war, the 5km band on either side of the Bien Hai river was a free-fire zone where anything that moved was killed. Today it is an idyll of lazy water buffalos, paddy fields and children laughing as they paddle canoes under Hien Luong bridge, once one of the most bombed structures in the world, now rumbling only with buses and lorries that ferry tourists and commodities across the old dividing line.
The Ho Chi Minh trail - the communists' wartime supply route from north to south - is being upgraded to a national highway and renamed. "We're supposed to call it the Ho Chi Minh Road now," said our guide. "But nobody does. There's too much nostalgia still for the old name."
It is now as much of a tourist trail as a supply route, traversed by an increasing number of former veterans returning to their former battleground and a generation of younger foreign sightseers drawn as much by glorious beaches as the grim history of Hamburger Hill.
Underground
North of the DMZ, a child of the war sells drinks and chewing gum to tourists who come to gawp at the Vinh Moc tunnels, where her entire village sheltered from US bombs for six years.
"I spent most nights of my third year underground," recalls Nguyen Thihong Xiem. "It was hard. Our family had one dark, little room. There were other children, but we couldn't meet. There was nowhere to play. We just sat in the room waiting for the next meal and listening to the planes and the bombs."
When they heard news of the fall of Saigon, her father swam across the DMZ to buy clothes for his family. But life has only really improved in the past five years, since Xiem set up her stall. "I only earn enough to feed and educate my four sons, but this is the most money I've ever had in my life," she says.
Risks remain in the form of the 300,000 tonnes of ordnance that the US rained on Vietnam - more than all the bombs dropped in the second world war.
Xiem's brother was one of 17 babies born 15 metres underground in a dark, clay-walled "maternity ward" barely wider than a coffin. Seven years after the war, he lost a toe and his friend died when they set off an unexploded bomb. Five thousand people have suffered a similar fate in and around the old DMZ since 1975, a third of them under 16.
For the increasing numbers of American veterans who return, clearing ordnance is one way to reconcile mixed emotions about the war. Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, has helped to persuade the US Congress to provide $5m (about £2.6m) to the clear-up operation and programmes to raise awareness among local people.
Open wound
"We are here to commemorate the end of hostilities between our two countries and remove the things left over from the war that continue to have a heavy human and economic cost," he says at the end of a day taking a group of old soldiers back to their former battlefield near the DMZ in Quang Tri province. "Vietnam continues to be an open wound for the United States. It is an undigested experience for the country and it is going to stay that way for a while."
On the tour, they have met and hugged Vietnamese veterans they once shot at and wandered around roads and villages where they lost friends and killed enemies.
Christos Cotsakos is returning for the first time since he was wounded in house-to-house fighting during the Tet offensive in 1968. "The smells bring back the flavour of war," he says. "The water buffalos, the sight of the hillsides. It made it very real. It was not painful, but thoughtful - a good but strained experience."
Perhaps the biggest unresolved problem from the war is continuing discrimination against former supporters of the south, who find it difficult to get jobs in the government or army. Several of their cemeteries have been turned into parks and industrial centres. "I'm glad there is peace, but I won't be celebrating on the anniversary," says a veteran from the south's army who asks to remain anonymous. "We were promised jobs and equal treatment, but it was a lie."
There are signs, however, of a rapprochement. Hundreds of thousands of former boat people who fled the country in the 70s and 80s return annually to celebrate the lunar new year. They are also one of the bigger boosts to the economy, remitting about $3.8bn in 2004.
Vietnam has gone from strength to strength since the end of the cold war. The nominally communist government has pursued an ultra-capitalist economic policy. With salary levels lower even than China, it is working. Annual growth of more than 7% has doubled gross domestic product per head since 1995. In the next 10 years it is on course to double again. In the first four months of the year, foreign investment tripled to $2.1bn from the same period in 2004.
Government advisers speak openly of their desire to attract foreign capitalists to exploit the local workforce, a process that could be speeded up this year, if Vietnam succeeds in its bid to join the World Trade Organisation. "WTO accession is an imperative," says Le Dang Doanh, an economist. "It's the only way to continue high growth. Foreign investors want to use Vietnam as an export base because of its cheap, skilled labour."
The change is apparent across the country and the generations."When we opened 10 years ago, we used to get mostly foreigner customers, but now it's almost all Vietnamese," says Binh Ton That, the owner of the country's first nightclub, Apocalypse Now, in Hanoi.
"Most of them don't know what our club's name means. You're not allowed to see Hollywood movies about the war here. But I don't think our customers are interested in history. They just come here to relax."
Affection for US
For the first time in a long time, Vietnam lacks a real enemy. More than half of the 90 million population were born after the war with America. Despite widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, most people express affection for the US. A poll in Vietnam's Youth Magazine showed Bill Gates was seven times more respected than any member of the politburo.
But other aspects of modern Vietnamese life are less familiar. More than 30 years after his death, Uncle Ho - the popular name for Ho Chi Minh - remains the most revered figure in the country. His bearded, wrinkled face will provide the backdrop for many of today's festivities.
It is an image that is also etched into the memory of Ung, the artist who became a national hero in those final days of liberation with his last battlefield sketch. Children throughout the country are now taught how Ung - blind, bleeding and convinced he was going to die - dipped his fingers in his own blood to trace a portrait of Ho. It is a story that remains as inspiring to many Vietnamese as it is incredible to many foreigners.
These days, Ung works in the army museum in Hanoi, where the leading exhibit is Tank 390, the Chinese-made war engine that crashed through Saigon's presidential palace and on to millions of TV screens 30 years ago.
His life has changed. After eight years of darkness after 1975, he regained a little sight in one eye with a cornea operation, and can now sketch again. It is not easy. He must use his hands to feel the faces of his subjects and his false eye often pops out and rolls across the floor.
Having missed the victory 30 years ago, he plans to spend today painting the anniversary. Like increasing numbers of people in this dynamic country, he has several private projects on the go, including the possible sale of his wartime sketches, and new works of art that reflect a personal and national change of mood.
At his home, he proudly shows a half-completed carving of two young lovers under a tree. "This is what I'm working on now," he says with a grin. "I call it the mating season."
The contentious legacy of Agent Orange
The biggest outstanding issue between the US and Vietnam is the effect of Agent Orange, according to Vietnamese veterans who blame the defoliant for deformities in hundreds of thousands of children born after the war.
Although American plaintiffs won a £100m out-of-court settlement against the chemical companies that produced the herbicide, US judges recently dismissed a claim for compensation by Vietnamese victims, saying defence contractors are not liable for the use of the herbicide by the US government, which has sovereign immunity. An appeal is expected to be heard in June.
Between 1966 and 1971, at least 10m gallons of Agent Orange, which contains dioxin, were dispersed to clear foliage used as cover by Vietcong guerrillas.
The US government covers medical costs for veterans who develop prostate cancer, but many more problems are blamed on the chemical in Vietnam, where dozens of care centres have been established for veterans and children born with disabilities.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
