ISSN : 2092-738X
Just as globalization has many aspects and has developed in various, sometimes contradictory ways with both positive and negative impacts, so too would the reverse process of deglobalization have wide-ranging effects for individuals, communities, and nations. Some parts of globalization began to fray during the coronavirus pandemic (e.g. failing supply chains and disarray in the global shipping industry). Deglobalization would bring about much more significant changes in focusing on local production and consumption, eschewing non-essential flights and international tourism, and replacing personal experience with virtual presence. These impacts would be particularly severe for Vietnam, since its government has placed intensive connectivity with global production at the center of its model for the rapid development on which much of its legitimacy rests and it has joined as many international, multilateral organizations, and protocols as it has been able to do. Through critical analysis of secondary data from a wide range of sources, this paper examines the motivations that people, institutions, and governments might have to pursue deglobalization and then seeks evidence for whether the changes that would bring have started to affect Vietnam. While it is difficult to be too certain about this while the pandemic continues, it is evident that pressures are building in the global north to reconfigure supply chains for greater security, to reduce carbon emissions through regulating long-distance exchanges, and to withdraw from personal contacts. It is argued that a focus on digitalization in economy and society will help to mitigate the negative effects of deglobalization on Vietnam, at least in the medium-term.
China launched the Digital Silk Road (DSR) in 2015 as part of the existing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to expand its influence in digital and technological development across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Southeast Asia is one of the key targets of the Digital Silk Road due to its geographical proximity to China and the rapid growth of the digital sphere. Although the DSR opens several potential opportunities for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states to foster the digitalization process in the region, how each country reacts to projects under the DSR is varied. Secondly, Vietnam is the only ASEAN member state that has not signed any official agreement under the BRI framework, and thirdly, Vietnam opted out of Huawei technology. This paper aims to understand the perspective of Vietnam and how Vietnam has responded to the growing technological presence of China in Southeast Asia until 2021. By using qualitative methods, the author argues that the DSR has allowed Beijing to overcome the limitations of the original strategy, BRI, and strengthen its influence in the field of information and communication technologies, particularly fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications. Furthermore, the paper examines Vietnam’s digital development and digital diplomacy and how the Vietnamese government has responded to DSR projects. In light of both the potential threats and economic benefits that the DSR has brought to Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries, in the last section, the policy implications for cooperation are discussed.
This paper reports the findings of a multimodal study conducted on 10 travel blog posts about Vietnam by seven British professional travel bloggers. The study takes a sociolinguistic view to tourism by seeing travel blogs as a source for linguistic and other semiotic materials while considering language as situated practice for the social construction of fundamental categories such as “human,” “society,” and “nation.” It borrows concepts from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics for interpersonal metafunction to develop an analytical framework to study how the co-occurrence of text and still images in these travel blog posts formulated the portrayal of Vietnam as a tourism destination and indicated the main sociolinguistic features of the blogs. The analysis of appreciation values and interactive qualities encoded in evaluative adjectives and still images show that Vietnam is generally portrayed as a country of identity and diversity. It provides tourists with positive experiences in terms of places of interest, food and local lifestyles and is cost-competitive. Strangerhood and authenticity are two outstanding sociolinguistic features exhibited in these travel blog posts. The findings of this study also underline the co-contribution of the linguistic sign, in this case evaluative adjectives, and the visual sign, in this case still images, as interpersonal meaning-making resources. To portray Vietnam, still images served as integral elements to evidence the credibility of verbal narrations. To unveil sociolinguistic characteristics of travel blogs, still images supported the linguistic realizations of authenticity and strangerhood on the posts, and in some case delivered an even stronger message than words. Not only does the study present a source of feedback from international travelers to tourism practice in Vietnam, but it also provides insights into multimodal analysis of tourism discourse which remains an under-researched area in Vietnam.
In analyzing the Chinese diaspora, this paper explores losses that are encountered within the family in the nation. It argues that increased social and spatial mobilities that contribute to losses can be reconfigured through the productive lens of supermobility, as Laurence J. C. Ma conceptualizes it. Supermobile identities are significant avenues to consider the way that losses traditionally associated with migration and assimilation are revisited in view of new flows of migration and identification. In examining K. H. Lim’s debut novel Written in Black (2014), this study addresses pathways from debilitating losses to productive losses journeyed by the family from the child’s perspective. It offers a critical analysis of the Anglophone Bruneian novel in terms of its exclusive portrayal of an ethnic Chinese family. Departing from a fixed notion of home as cultural and physical rootedness, it explores flexible identities that are tied to shifting concepts of belonging. Rather than a magnification of social and spatial losses, the analysis highlights the way that the literary imagination of ethnic Chinese in Brunei Darussalam accommodates progressive ideas of the agency and advancement of the Chinese diaspora as a supermobile community.
This paper aims to identify the shifts of masculine domination, illuminating Vietnamese men and women's actual position in society through surveying the mixed and hybrid characteristics described in the feminist texts in the early twentieth century. This paper concentrates on the feminist writings of the two exceptionally male intellectuals Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh (1882–1936) and Phan Khôi (1887–1959). in order to implement these goals, the paper first examines the popular phenomenon of ventriloquism among Vietnamese male intellectuals, whose dominant attitudes may still be unveiled in feminist texts. Secondly, the paper focuses on surveys of men's direct discourse in constructing the model of women's liberation. From these two contents, this paper answers the following questions: Why have Vietnamese men become feminists? What were the causes, purposes, and effects of this phenomenon? To look at the nature of Vietnamese feminism, this paper will show the shifts of masculine domination in Vietnam as another form of protecting men's privileges. All analyses in this study will ground discussion on the economic, political, and social contexts and conditions of Vietnam in the early twentieth century.
As migrants develop businesses abroad, entrepreneurship needs specific strategies due to some barriers when establishing and doing businesses. This paper examines the kinds of problems that have been faced in Indonesian migrant entrepreneurships in Taiwan and how the entrepreneurs cope with the difficulties. They use structural and cultural strategies for survival, seize the opportunities for self-development, and develop future careers. Research result shows that the limitations of Indonesian entrepreneurships in Taiwan are related to institutional issues, migrant status, business regulations, resource-providing institutions, language barriers, competition among migrants and locals, and capital. Hence, migrant entrepreneurs must conduct strategic actions to continue their businesses by developing innovations to grow and survive. Some measures include changing from offline to online marketing especially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, product diversification using migrants and local people's assistance and networks, and setting competitive prices. This paper is based on qualitative research. The data were obtained through interviews in East Java-Indonesia and in Taiwan in 2022. The data were analysed using the descriptive analysis with sociological perspectives.
This study analyzes the effect of macroeconomic indicators such as foreign direct investment (FDI), domestic investment, trade, inflation, unemployment, population, and governance indicators on economic growth and points out the GDP growth rate in 2002- 2019 among ASEAN countries. Data were compiled from the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and the World Bank, and the effect of variables on GDP was predicted using the pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), fixed effects model (FEM), and random effects model (REM) methods. As a measure of growth, the GDP growth rate has been taken; FDI and domestic investment, trade, inflation, and governance indicators are positively connected and have an influence on economic growth in these ASEAN countries; domestic investment, population, and unemployment have a negative relationship to economic growth. The macroeconomic indicators and institutional stability of the nation have an effect on its economic growth. Comprehensive institutional stability and well-laid macroeconomic policies are required for growth to materialize.
Many publications of ecocritical research papers and translations of ecocriticism occur in Vietnam in recent years. This paper examines ecocritical scholarly writing in Vietnam, understanding how it corresponds to—reflects and attends to —contemporary Vietnamese society and politics. Specifically, this paper contextualizes Vietnamese ecocriticism in contemporary social and political concerns—embodied in journalistic and administrative documents—about the modernity-oriented postcolonial nation-building of Vietnam. In revealing critiques of political and social degenerations implied in ecocritical writings in Vietnam, this paper suggests that the emergence of ecocriticism in present-day Vietnam indicates a recent “political turn.” More importantly, such emergence reflects and engages with the continuing Marxist perspective of literature as an instrument for social criticism and cultural revolution in Vietnam. Vietnamese ecocritics bear the mission of prophets of the time, public educators, and soul engineers, writing is an act of engaging with and influencing reality. Writing (literary and scholarly) still forms an idealized ideological instrument in the struggles for national homogeneity and sovereignty and social democracy in present-day Vietnam.
In 1991, Malaysia, under the leadership of then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, launched an ambitious 30-year national development program known as Vision 2020. The goal of this program was to transform Malaysia into a First World developed nation by the year 2020. One of the aspirations of the program was to create a psychologically liberated, secure, ethical, and mature democratic society. Vision 2020 is a failure and Malaysia is still not a mature democracy. This article identifies four main areas that make up a flawed democracy practiced in Malaysia, and shows how they work against the country's aspirations to become a developed nation. The electoral system is rigged to help the incumbent remain in power. The widespread practices of money politics have become a curse to the country. The press and media organizations are restricted. Civil society activities are suppressed. As a result of these issues, Malaysia will not be able to achieve the status of a developed nation, lacking democratic accountability and inclusive institutions.