Is it the ‘Development of Underdevelopment’ All over Again? Internet Development in Vietnam

Abstract

The reform process doi moi (Engl.: renovation) in Vietnam has brought profound changes for the Vietnamese economy. Most notably the opening of a formerly centrally planned economy to the capitalist world market has made the country more accessible to foreign direct investment and integrated the country more strongly into the capitalist world system. Part of the overall modernisation and global integration strategy in Vietnam is the development of the Internet. However, the Internet in Vietnam is not a ubiquitous and widely available technology, rather it is a piece of infrastructure that is unevenly available across social and regional spaces. Aided by a regulatory environment that presents itself as providing opportunities for all, the Internet provides a business tool for a transnational capitalist class and its local affiliates to access the resources of Vietnam's periphery type economy. The Internet has contributed to a shift in economic control functions away from the state territorial level to a network of dispersed actors. The paper suggests close links between dependency and world-systems theories and Internet research and argues that the theories remain valid in their principle argument, but that the level of analysis needs to be shifted away from the state territorial unit to these dispersed sets of actors.

El proceso de reforma doi moi [renovación] en Vietnam ha traído profundos cambios a la economía vietnamita. Particularmente, la apertura de una economía de planificación anteriormente centralizada al mercado capitalista mundial, ha hecho al país más accesible a la inversión directa extranjera y lo ha integrado a un sistema capitalista mundial con mayor fuerza. En términos generales, parte de la estrategia de modernización e integración global en Vietnam es el desarrollo de la internet. Sin embargo, la internet en Vietnam no es una tecnología omnipresente y extensamente accesible, más bien es una pieza de infraestructura que se ofrece desigualmente a través de los espacios sociales y regionales. La internet provee un instrumento de negocios a la clase capitalista trasnacional y a sus afiliados locales, para tener acceso a los recursos de la economía de tipo periférico de Vietnam, ayudado por un medioambiente regulador que se presenta tal y como ofreciendo oportunidades para todos. La internet ha contribuido a un cambio en las funciones de control económicas, del nivel del estado territorial a una red de actores dispersos. El artículo sugiere enlaces estrechos entre las teorías de dependencia y de sistemas mundiales y la investigación de internet y sostiene que las teorías siguen válidas en su argumento de principio, pero que el nivel de análisis debe distanciarse de la unidad del estado territorial a esos grupos de actores dispersos.

Keywords:

• internet
• Vietnam
• economic development
• world systems theory

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Andre Gunder Frank's Legacy of Critical Social Science Conference in Pittsburgh in April 2008. I wish to thank the conference participants for their constructive comments during and after the session. I also wish to thank Jim Glassman, Elvin Wyly, and two anonymous reviewers for their insights and guidance in completing this paper. All errors remain my own.

Notes

r = 0.82; Telephone Density: mean = 6.60, standard deviation = 5.05; Urbanisation: mean = 22.62, standard deviation= 16.36.

Own calculation from General Statistics Office Vietnam (2006) Data.

GDP by province is not a standard variable in the annually published statistical yearbook or other regular publications. The 1999 census data are therefore used.

r = 0.86; Telephone Density: mean = 6.60, standard deviation = 5.05; Retail Sales: mean = 3.46, standard deviation = 2.66.

Although the source does not specify the term municipality, it most likely refers to centrally administered cities that are administratively at the level of a province.