“Lien, don’t eat lying on the bed. And you always have earphones in your ears. Have the earphones stuck to your ears?”
Chun, the father, scolded his daughter Lien, who had just returned home. Lien was eating potato chips, swaying to the music coming from her earphones.
“K-pop again?” Chun asked, a hint of resignation in his voice.
“No, it’s Japanese '80s pop,” Lien replied, barely looking up.
Chun sighed, the sound a heavy weight in the small apartment, and went to his room. He was tired, bone-weary from another day at the rural industrial promotion bureau. Dealing with guests from the central government always drained him, their pronouncements echoing like a broken record over the decades.
Today’s bureaucrat had been particularly enthusiastic, his words sharp and unyielding. “The semiconductor industry will be Vietnam’s main industry from now on. Therefore, you must restructure the industrial structure in this region as well. It’s simple: stop lending to the textile industry.”
Chun remembered his boss recounting a similar visit from 30 years ago. “The era of agriculture is over,” the economic bureaucrat had declared then. “From now on, the textile industry will support Vietnam. Destroy farmland and build garment factories.”
The irony wasn’t lost on Chun. Both the textile and now, it seemed, the burgeoning semiconductor industries, were pushed with such fervor. Yet, he knew, beneath the optimistic projections of a US$31.28 billion market value by 2027 and an 11.6 percent CAGR, the reality on the ground was often different. Many businesses in these sectors, particularly in his rural region, still shriveled and remained unprofitable, their only true competitive edge being low labor costs.
“It’s Vietnam,” Chun muttered to himself, the phrase a bitter mantra. He envisioned the sleek, intricate microchips, so unlike the simple cotton threads he’d once been told would be the nation’s salvation.
All names of people and organizations appearing in this story are pseudonyms
Vietnam’s Semiconductor Industry: Progress and Outlook Beyond 2025
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