Abstract: On April 30, 1975, South Vietnam ceased to exist. In one day, my father, a South Vietnamese officer, found himself without a country to defend. He was apprehended by communist forces and sent to a “reeducation camp.” His own youth lost, my father was determined that his sons would have a better future. Knowing that Communist persecution would make this impossible, he applied for political asylum in the United States. More than two decades later, the story came to a full circle as I had an opportunity to return to Hanoi, (formerly North) Vietnam to do research. I conducted a survey at the University of Foreign Affairs (Dai Hoc Quan He Quoc Te), a school that attracts the brightest students of international relations from across Vietnam. The respondents’ answers reflected the government’s current foreign policy, which seeks closer ties with the West to balance the growing hegemony of the People’s Republic of China.

On April 30, 1975, South Vietnam ceased to exist. In one day, my father, a South Vietnamese officer, found himself without a country to defend. He was apprehended by communist forces and sent to a “reeducation camp.” For six excruciating years, he was imprisoned in the midst of a tropical jungle, living an ascetic, brutal existence. When my father was released in 1981, he was an emaciated skeleton of his former self and had to battle to regain his health as well as adjust to the new socialist society where he was disenfranchised and blacklisted. His own youth lost, my father was determined that his sons would have a better future. Knowing that Communist persecution would make this impossible, he applied for political asylum in the United States. Back then he thought that if he could just “breathe the air of freedom” he would die a happy man. In the summer of 1992, when I was seven years old, my family immigrated to America. My father’s dreams to raise his family in a free society were finally realized.

More than two decades later, the story came to a full circle as I had an opportunity to return to Hanoi, (formerly North) Vietnam. This provided me with a unique opportunity to visit a city that that is very foreign to me in respect to local dialect, customs, politics and regional history. My family is from Saigon, which is in the South, but my root is also in the North. My paternal grandmother was a North Vietnamese Catholic who emigrated to the South early in the war.

Much has changed since the end of the Vietnam War, as proven by the diplomatic and trade links between the current Vietnamese government and the U.S. While many war wounds have yet to be healed, especially psychologically for South Vietnamese like my father, a new generation of Vietnamese-American youths must grapple with how to deal with the legacy of the war and to look beyond to a better future that includes, hopefully, a more prosperous and democratic Vietnam.

As part of my experience, I was given the opportunity to go into the field to research Vietnamese society. Vietnam is a unified country undergoing rapid modernization powered by an economic engine that grows at an annual rate of 7% GDP per year. Vietnam’s modernization provides a unique opportunity to research a communist society in transition to a capitalistic economy and the political/sociological implications. In my research, I focused on young people, especially college students. They are a generation whose own life experience imprints and reflects the various changes taking place in Vietnam’s dynamic society. Moreover, they are also the future faces of the leaders of Vietnam.

For my main research site in the North, I chose the University of Foreign Affairs (Dai Hoc Quan He Quoc Te), a school that attracts the brightest students of international relations from across Vietnam. A year earlier, I also visited a university in Saigon. It was relatively easy to get access to this campus in the south so I thought it would be similarly easy to visit a university here in the north and conduct my research. However, at the entrance to Dai Hoc Quan He Quoc Te, circumscribed by a peeling greenish iron fence, I was stopped by four security guards.

I showed them my Duke Card and explained that I was a university student from America interested in speaking with the students here to learn more about the university. The guard took my card and peered at it intently. He then made a call to someone in the university. After the call he told me bluntly, “You cannot come in.” My plans thwarted, I asked if it was possible to speak with students in the canteen area. “You’re not allowed anywhere on campus,” the guard told me. “If you want to enter you have to call ahead to a government bureau and explain the nature of your visit.” I persisted and asked if I could speak with students who were leaving the campus grounds. The guards told me that I could only do so in his presence. I had rejected early on the idea of going through any government office to get permission to do research because I did not want to deal with government minders following me around. Also, because my questions were of a political nature, I wanted my subjects to be able to answer them as freely as possible. To do so in the presence of a minder or in this case, the security guard, would undermine my ability to ask questions freely and hinder the student from giving straight-forward answers.

I did not give up, but decided to wait outside in the canteen area where college students, sinh vien, sometimes congregated to eat lunch. With luck I met Ky, a senior in college. After explaining that I was a university student here to conduct research, I showed him a survey I had prepared to serve as an icebreaker. I waited as he read my list of questions, pretty sure that he would give me some excuse and make a hasty exit. There was long stretch of silence as he sat and pondered my questions. I broke in gingerly that if he felt uncomfortable, he did not have to answer any of the questions. Nodding slowly, he looked at me gravely and told me that these questions would interest a great deal of his fellow students. Ky then offered to take the rest of my surveys to his friends since I could not enter the university. After 30 minutes, he offered to meet me outside.

As promised, Ky did bring the completed survey and introduced me to a group of his friends. We decided to go get some desserts in a nearby shop. In a similar fashion I met other college students by hanging outside campus in eateries and desserts places in Hanoi. In the south of Vietnam where I visited a similar social science institution, I had a much easier time conducting research as there were less stringent security requirements. It appears that because the best “political” schools are in the North and the students in these schools are being groomed to take up government posts, the government regards this as a sensitive area that deserves tighter ideological control. This was confirmed in my interview with Ky who cited for example that during the American Presidential Debate of 2004, the general public was allowed to view the debate while the students from his university were prohibited from watching.

Not all of my interviewees were as easy-going and responsive to my questions as Ky, who happens to be a southerner. Some interviewee stuck stringently to the political line deemed correct by the Communist Party. For example, one interviewee (a northerner) who majored in Domestic and Party Politics told me that the person he admired the most was Karl Marx. When I asked him to elaborate on why he admired Marx, he told me it was because of the man’s vision. This same interviewee when asked about how he views the capitalistic market reforms taking place in Vietnam (anti-thesis to Marx’s vision), without hesitating, said he wholeheartedly supported it.

In total I was able to conduct 21 surveys or interviews with college students from across Vietnam. The college students I interviewed or surveyed were aware of the problems and challenges facing the country as it transition into capitalism. Respondents listed corruption and graft as the greatest obstacles to Vietnam’s development. When asked about the person they admired the most, most answered Ho Chi Minh, the father of the Vietnamese Communist Party although Bill Gates did come in a surprising second. When asked which countries they liked the most, almost all respondents picked countries like the US, Europe and Singapore. China came on top of the list as the countries that the students dislike the most despite People Republic’s greater similarity with Vietnam’s political and social institutions. Ideological differences aside, the respondents seem to prefer Western countries as partners versus the People’s Republic, with which Vietnam fought a war as recently as 1979. The respondents’ answers reflect the Vietnamese government’s current foreign policy which seeks closer ties with the West to balance the growing hegemony of the People’s Republic.

Out of curiosity, I did ask some students about their views on the legacy of the Vietnam War. The answer from the student who said he admired Karl Marx was representative of most interviewees. He said, “I like the U.S. because it is a strong country that Vietnam can be a partner with. The war is in the past and best forgotten.”

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