“April 30 marked the 33rd anniversary of Saigon’s fall to the North Vietnamese Communists. The former capital of South Vietnam is now called Ho Chi Minh City, a name that better reflects Vietnam’s past than its present and future. As John O’Sullivan has observed, ‘A Martian landing in Saigon or Hanoi today with no knowledge of history since 1970 would assume that the South must have won the war. These cities have all the boutiques and designer labels of London or Venice — and more homegrown entrepreneurial vitality than both.’ Though it is much smaller than China, and thus gets far less global attention, Vietnam has become one of the developing world’s great economic success stories. Over the past two decades, it has transformed itself from an impoverished basket-case into a robust Asian tiger.” (05/15/08)