When I visited Ho Chi Minh City three years ago, I couldn’t meet enough angry people. Factory bosses in the industrial parks outside town complained of lazy workers who would pull wildcat strikes for higher pay. Inflation was 21% and the Vietnamese dong falling. Every third expatriate you met on a Friday night in happening central Ho Chi Minh talked about getting out, a market researcher said then. Investors from Taiwan, a top source of export manufacturing bases in Vietnam, were studying whether to relocate to Bangladesh or Cambodia. In May this year anti-China protesters indiscriminately targeted 460 factories run by ethnic Chinese, often from Taiwan or Singapore. Twenty people died. I expected more angry people when I visited Ho Chi Minh this month.
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