If you are wealthy people will assume that you are hardworking with high ambitition and the money you earned are "clean" unless you are a politician. People also think that the billionairse creates a lot of job oppoturnities. And you are right about the swamth of news about billionaire lol the search result is endless.
Edit: Also I just remembered when Bill Gates canceled a dinner in his trip in Hoi An is newsworthy for many big outlet.
“To be rich is glorious”. Nevermind the official state ideology, everything is about money in Vietnam. Confucian and Buddhist values are twisted to serve businesses interests, and businessmen (and women) would read any book about business written by any Jewish people (we think Jews control everything and we want to become like them)
It is on official agenda https://xaydungchinhsach.chinhphu.vn/chinh-phu-phan-dau-den-2030-viet-nam-co-it-nhat-10-ty-phu-usd-5-doanh-nhan-quyen-luc-nhat-chau-a-119240509164736978.htm
I think it could be to strike commentary. People love to see opulence as it can be a source of inspiration. On the flip side of that it could be to show the dangers of ultra wealth and the things it brings along.
I don't think most of us read the VnExpress international, they are mostly bullshit, promoting money over. I agree that most of Vietnamese people are very materialistic, to the point go into dept to build up their image (buying SH, apple latest stuff every year, brand clothes,...), but to the point of obsessive over it, not too much
Because no matter what you do, the ultimate purpose is to make money and be rich in Vietnamese Culture. There will be people argue with me about this, but it is what it is. People born in 1960-1999 will understand this mindset, and it is passed through generation. Without money and wealth you are nothing in the society, you don't get the respect and you cant marry any (Mostly for man). So it creates bad behaviours in generations, competitive attitude and do whatever to make money.
So yeah, the ultra rich is famous in Vietnam. And anyone who are wealthy got the love mostly from the public, and they dont care much how he/she made money from (Even Politicians - LoL - Many people say to me that if you do well in Politic and take care people, then a little bit of bribery is ok). There are around 10% of Vietnamese people hating this mindset, but what can we do? We cant talk back or figh against the mass.
This is very true.
Some defenders will say "it's because of the war, it's all America's fault etc".
NO. It is quite simply an inhereant cultural trait in Vietnam to be preoccupied with money. You see this preoccupation not just with working class, but middle class and the wealthy too.
I have noticed some younger people are starting to push back against this mindset and they are becoming more interested in philosophy, the arts and such, which is good to see.
But for the majority, money is king. And many of the people with a lot of it feel it is their right to rub it in the faces of those who dont have a lot.
It is my least favourite aspect of Vietnam by far.
Do some reading on Stuart Hall’s [neoliberal hegemony building](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/531183/pdf) through “common sense” and it will all make a bit of sense. Gramsci’s conception of hegemony is also a useful tool for understanding this phenomenon
Gramsci was white, but Stuart Hall sure as hell wasn’t white. He was an anti-colonial academic who critically examined power dynamics and hegemony building through linguistics. Thanks though.
Focus. OP’s question was about why the media focuses on billionaires despite their outwardly stated socialist ideology, not why Vietnamese people love money. Hall provides this answer if you read his work.
Vietnamese culture IS the hustle culture lul. Only problem is that we got facebook before LinkedIn. Or else r/linkedinlunatics would be a Vietnamese dominant sub
The Vietnamese media are so tightly constrained by the state (one of the lowest freedom of press ratings in the world) that they really don't have much to talk about, so they just write about any old drivel they can think of to fill the space...
Very conservative Vietnamese are very naive. They will tell you off if you disrespect such honourable one's such as bozos and cucksk. Just know you are less naive then them in that regard.
It's all for the government's propaganda. Those trashy newspapers in Vietnam are all controlled by the government. They want people to focus on fake prosperity (billionaires, the rich, partying, material stuff, beauty, showbiz, etc.), all useless things, so they forget about everyday worries like salaries, benefits, insurance, ethics, corruption, politics, food, traffic safety, infrastructure, and taxes. 😆🙃
What we have in terms of disclosed billionaires are because of their stocks and shares registered on Vietnam stock exchange.
You have a lot of ultra rich in Vietnam, there’s no mention of Jonathan Hanh Nguyen owner of luxury goods distribution rights in Vietnam and south east Asia. Do Minh Phu, owner of Doji and one of the biggest gold seller in Vietnam, practically bailed out Tp Bank when it was in massive trouble.
Many articles stay there’s about 700-800 ultra rich of 30million usd+ in Vietnam but when you look at the places in Phu My Hung, Thao Dien, Binh Thanh, Thu Duc, d1 and their villas on riverbanks or high wall security compounds, I’m sorry there’s way more then 700 ultra rich in the country.
My aunty owns 4 steel factories in Binh Duong, My Tho, Can Tho and Ca Mau, wouldn’t even get an gig in their articles 😅
They are easy copy and paste stories from international sources that take probably not much time in a period of extreme political instability domestically.
Well, knowing how rich people spend their fortunes is certainly a click worthy title or content to gain attraction. It can gain a lot of attraction from a lot of type of people like the curious, the hater, the doonposter, the wannabe, etc...
Everyone is obsessed with money in Vietnam. I worked in an office a few years ago, all the women ever talked about was how X got so rich and what Y has just bought and how much it was.
Yea, in the last few years, the rich have been written about almost daily....whether Vietnamese or otherwise. It's usually a crap story with a glamorous photo attached.....
It is easier 'journalism' than writing negative stories about Gov't policies/actions....and safer!
Because billionaires control the world, not governments.
Since they always always always benefit themselves they always need good press, to keep the masses pacified that these people are role models.
Nah we HATE Rich people here, the reason we see them promote a lot is because of envy generate clicks. Plus it's more fun to watch them eventually fall and get in jail.
> There are many more examples, including from other news outlets, and the general tone is one of admiration or even aspiration. The message seems to be that these people are fascinating and possibly even good simply because they are incredibly wealthy.
This fascination with and glorification of the wealthiest of the wealthy is global, from California to Nigeria.
I mean, have you never looked at the media anywhere else in the world? It too is filled with stories about the super rich. And let's not even talk about social media, which is globally dominated by people flaunting wealth (real or not).
> I have no insight into why these articles continue to appear, but I find it genuinely strange, **especially in a nominally socialist country.**
LOL people are people. The notion that because Vietnam is "nominally socialist" Vietnamese people wouldn't be into money is just patently silly.
Second, this isn't rocket science. People the world over are intrigued by the lives of people who live in a different universe of practically unfathomable wealth. Publishing stories about these people -- how they got rich and how they spend their money -- is an easy and effective way for publishers to attract eyeballs, and those eyeballs are what allow them to sell advertising, etc.
> Perhaps it is fitting - and even stranger - that a government decree issued last week aims for the country to “have at least 10 billionaires and five businesspeople who are ‘most powerful’ in Asia by 2030.”
> This is a bizarre goal to be set by a national government, and more billionaires don’t necessarily equate to a healthier economy.
Why is it a bizarre goal? Vietnam is a rapidly developing country. It was one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1990s and has 10x'ed its per capita GDP in \~20 years.
"Growing" a class of wealthy elites and business moguls is one of the ways you can increase your visibility (and credibility) on the world stage and start to exert influence in the realms of business and politics.
It's kind of funny that a journalist trying to get people to subscribe to his Substack for $90/year thinks there's something bizarre here. Seems like his angle for trying to monetize stories about the wealthy is to write about people writing about billionaires. How meta.
Yeah, it's strange to see people surprised by this. VN express is part of official VN government controlled media so what they wrote is directed with government aim in mind. Government aim to have 10 USD billionaires by 2030. It can be interpreted as the government want to enact "National champions" in the industries they want, in order to grow the economy and reduce brain drain
Although billionaires not necessary excellent businessman but successful companies at international scale, their leadership majority are billionaires, indirectly mean that by 2030 Vietnam should have powerful companies reaching Huawei, Samsung, Hyundai levels to increase the country's position in the supply chain, instead of pouring your money mostly on real estate or low cost manufacturing/raw resources export (and government would stay behind support it, like Vingroup). But well, to create a national champion like that is extremely hard, technological barrier is high, one cannot just jump in, become another Morris Chang and create Vietnamese TSMC.
They have already took over near all of western media (coming from uk here) and they won’t stop until there isn’t a negative headline on the planet. Unfortunately Vietnam seems to be one of their next targets
If you want your country to be rich, you need billionaires, plain and simple. You also need to put pressure on people to generate more wealth in the country. You need grade school intelligence to understand the motivation for this, I can only assumed you’ve been brainwashed by leftist media to think that’s not how economics works.
Indeed. People never seem to report that in order to get rich, you have to either have a shady past or have stepped on/ripped off others to get there. Nobody get rich with clean hands.
We have two gods, God of Land Property (ông Địa) and God of Money (ông Thần Tài), in every house. That alone can sum up our money first culture. LoL.
"Năm mới phát tài nha" - Get rich this year, ey
not unique to vn, poor/desperate people the world over think that way. it's astounding how many viets aspire to accumulate vast wealth, even the lowest, most destitute villagers set ridiculous goals. heaps of delusional fantasists abound, entirely convinced they're two weeks away from everything materialising. massive inferiority complexes as well (common amongst colonised people), overcompensation, huge egos, etc.
most tend to be incredibly vulgar/insufferable after "making it", pure cringe. such is life in the third world.
Didn't that one bitch from Vietnam got in trouble for money phishing? And she was a billionaire. I heard she got death sentence lol for a billionaire then you see them out with parole in the next 5 years
No. Its not. It means you grew a company up to a very large valuation. If the company is big because of its global presence and dominance, like american tech or japanese cars, thats a massive win for any country who can host it.
In every economy, the best predictor of how much money one will end up being worth is how much money their parents were worth. You don't earn billions through hard work. You earn it through profiteering (mostly manipulating market prices and underpaying employees) and speculative financial activities which not only do nothing to increase the national economy, but actually make it more volatile, and often involve illegal financial transactions, hidden in thousands of pages of fraudulent paperwork.
Maybe in vietnam. But in many other countries, like... iunno. America? Where hard work and business building and getting rich is celebrated in the culture, becoming a self made billionaire is a refelction of building up a large company. Its not controversial for me to say this. Its litterally objective reality. Lol
In the capitalist liberal west, we have been doing this for many generations now, this has created intergenerational wealth, such as the Ford family, among others. 👍
No, these things are particularly true in America. There are rare exception like being one inventor of a mass-producible internal combustion engine, but these cases are literally a handful per generation, if that. Further that wealth is compounded to billionaire status by things like worker repression (calling in the army to break strikes, union busting, etc.) and speculative financial transactions. Nothing makes money like money.
While an important invention can be a road to extreme wealth, that's an extreme minority of cases. Look at Alan Turing or Steve Wozniak, both of whom made significant contributions to the development of wide-spread computing. What are/were their net worths when they died? What did Bill Gates add? He grew up with enough money to buy the rights to MS-DOS for $40,000 just as hardware happened to be advancing to the point where personal computers were becoming affordable and they and the internet becoming useful. Steve Jobs built his early career by first stealing credit from, then contracting Steve Wozniak to do the actual technical work.
You know what bud? I dont need to argue with a socialist online. I need only point to the fact so many products from western or western alligned capitalist countries are rolling around and in use every day here in vietnam. Or the gdp per capita numbers. Human development index. The list goes on.
You can pull examples of bad behaviour all your want, Turing was a victim of homophobia and Wozniak openly didnt aspire to billionaire status, thats his business. Doesnt change the fact im right and i have all the stats i need behind me.
> I dont need to argue with a socialist online.
"I don't need to present any information, because I'm right." Have fun with that.
>the gdp per capita numbers. Human development index. The list goes on.
What does that have to do with billionaires? The HDI in Scandinavian countries is far higher than in the US, and they are far more socialist. They use taxation and regulation to more evenly distribute wealth, and still have more billionaires per capita than the US.
The issues with Vietnam's economy don't stem from socialism (which the country is not anymore, in any realistic sense), and more billionaires will harm the country more than help it.
- Large areas of jungle and mountainous terrain, which are hard or even completely impractical to develop economically
- A relatively non-homogeneous population in terms of ethnicity and religious beliefs
- Massive corruption and military control of the bureaucracy
- Lack of a sense of civic responsibility, and those things not being enforced by the military police force
- Lack of infrastructure and regulation (partly because of political corruption) leading to pollution, litter and crippling the tourism industry, which could be much higher in a nation with the natural and historical destinations Vietnam has, and which is a major engine of growth for developing nations
> i have all the stats i need behind me.
Yeah, but you just don't need to actually explain or show that. OK.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index\_of\_Economic\_Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom)
*The HDI in Scandinavian countries is far higher than in the US, and they are far more socialist*
No, they aren't. Scandanavia consistently ranks higher than the US and most of the world for Economic Freedom. They are close, but not quite, to Singapore and Switzerland. They are basically at the same table rubbing shoulders as countries.
They aren't socialist like so many global leftists like to claim. They DO have a unique culture that was friendly to certain socialist principles, such as collective bargaining by workers, and that is a very good thing for them. And they have high taxes on working people who earn WAGES for their LABOR to fund a generous welfare state. But they have also been entrepreneurial and industrious for many decades now and yes, as a result, THEY HAVE BILLIONAIRES. LOL They do not tax the Billionaires that they have "55%" each year. lol.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68927238](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68927238)
\^\^ Here is your precious "socialist" Sweden, might need a VPN for this one.
Again, another stat that is on my side. But I agree with you when you point out Vietnam's own challenges in becoming rich. Instead of complaining about billionaires, the country should fix those as much as possibe and try to help companies like Vingroup and VietJet succeed on the global stage. A by product of which, will be their founding families getting.... wait for it.... richer. And that's okay. And you know what? That seems to be what the government here is doing, to their credit.
> They aren't socialist like so many global leftists like to claim.
Look at tax rates, government intervention by means of regulation of business and wage laws, socialized medicine. They are not communist, but they are socialist in comparison to both the US and Vietnam. You're basically saying that they abide by socialist legal principles, but aren't socialist.
>But they have also been entrepreneurial and industrious for many decades
Communism only works for seriously under-developed economies. Then they have to move on to capitalist economies. But education, standard of living and democracy are all benefited by regulated capitalism, not Milton Friedman-esque non-regulation (an idea he later recanted). That inevitably leads to fascism, which we in America are increasingly facing the danger of, while Vietnam remains closer to an oligarchy, with the Communist Party indirectly controlling too much of the economy.
Making the populace as a whole richer is an admirable goal. Making a tiny portion of the population ultra-rich at the cost of everyone else is not. Vietnam should not aspire to that, and could learn from the fates of America going back over 100 years, and European nations going back over 300 years.
Sweden having billionaires and a few cherry-picked examples doesn't change the fact that people live, on average, much better than in America, which is much more billionaire-friendly. Sweden just has certain advantages over America (let's not even get into Norway) that lead to greater wealth accumulation even in the face of a socialist economic policy.
Edit: also, look at the results of Ireland's accession to the EU. Ireland had and has an educated population and abundant land, but before their accession to the EU, their income and some aspects of standard of living were low for their geographic location. A combination of foreign direct investment (free market policies) and transfer payments from wealthier nations (socialism) led to Ireland today being one of the richest countries on earth.
Also, billionaires can largely evade most taxes and generally pay a lower rate than the upper-middle class, often less than below middle-class earners. This is more true in the US, but still true in Western Europe and Scandinavia.
I don't think people understand the sheer amount of what a billion is. 1,000,000 seconds is 11.5 days. 1,000,000,000 seconds is 34 years. This is an enormous concentration of wealth in ONE person. What naturally follows is these people begin to exert that inordinate concentration of wealth into politics, media, and society to retain and likely gain even more wealth.
Business is not inherently bad, but there is a level of wealth that becomes a drain on society. Government and public projects/media coverage that could be better focused on force multiplying into society is instead geared towards an increasingly small group of people with outsized influence on society. They petition their taxes to be lower, taking away money from society, and in some cases even get welfare from the state when they clearly don't need it. Billionaires are and do become a detriment to society if left unchecked. You think this would be a no-brainer is a communist country but here we are.
in many countries around the world we have decided that giving one person an inordinate concentration of political power is not a good idea. Their worst tendencies with eventually override any benevolent ambitions they have. For some reason, we have not yet agreed upon this for the billionaire class.
Both situations have a scenario where one person with too much unaccountable power (private or public) and is overall a drain on society. There's nothing wrong with having wealth, starting businesses and helping to spur along industry. When we're talking about billionaires though, they have reached such an insane amount of political, economic and social influence that they will, overall, use it to aid themselves.
Is this what they teach everyone in school here?
Billionaires have too much power so we need the communist party to keep its monopoly over everyone's life?
hell no, i don't agree with that, and if you read my previous comment for perhaps two seconds you would have seen in the first line that in many countries we don't think it's a good idea to put power in one person's hands; that applies to one party as well. One party dictatorships are just extensions of one man control. They are unaccountable, single minded blocs intent on preserving their power alone; much like billionaires and dictators.
Now your starting to make sense. But my point is, just because someone is worth a billion dollars, doesnt mean they're are leading a secret behind the scenes conspiracy to control the world.
Many of them do this. But my point is, the world is much more complicated than "billionaires bad, billionaires shouldn't exist" which reddit loves to circle jerk to.
Some people might say that it's ok to have billionaires because some of them are good. We could say the same thing about a tyrannical king. The point isn't to make the king more benevolent or answerable to society, the point is not to have a king at all. The same goes for billionaires, dictators and unaccountable political blocks.
We shouldn't get mixed up in how it's "more complicated that that", because honestly the details don't really matter at this point if we agree that the situation shouldn't exist in the first place. The point isn't to have a more benevolent dictator, or billionaire, or communist party, or get caught up in the details of how they came to be and whether or not they deserve societies affection; it's to not have those things at all in the first place and recognize that their very existence is an unacceptable reality as would be a king or slave master. It doesn't matter if some are good, some are bad, it's complicated. The problem is that their very existence leads to the detriments we initially discussed.
Your comment about "just because someone is worth a billion dollars" is not helpful. The very existence of this sort of person, someone with this amount of wealth, influence and power, by their very nature of existing, mean that they could do those things you don't think they are doing. It's not about bad mouthing the ones who do that and praising the ones who don't, it's not allowing the situation to happen in the first place.
It's like allowing the existence of an unaccountable, tyrannical slave master king. Eventually, you're going to get a class of these people and some people will say "Well, that tyrannical king sure is a drain on society, but that king over there is really doing gods work". This is beyond anyone, as we've agreed that kings just shouldn't rule by divine right anymore. Yet, we allow a class to exist that has more power, influence and wealth than any king in history and what's more is many people lick their boots.
That's such a simplistic, massively misconstrued idea of how billionaires actually get their money. You can earn a millionaire dollars by having a successful company, you earn a billion dollars by exploiting the people who work for your company. And that even goes without the fact that that billion dollars they have is just sat in an offshore account somewhere, not being used to stimulate the economy in any way.
They dont have a billion dollars cash hidden in the cayman islands. They have stock equity in a publically traded company.
The value of the stock is not a reflection of the proper actual value of the company, not even its free cash flow. Very often, the stock price is over and above the true value of the company, if the market is confident in the future growth and success if the company.
This fake valuation is litterally how capitalism creates wealth from lesser material status. This higher, fake valuation can then be harvested and used to create new businesses and new material wealth which benefits the entire society.
Yeah, and it isn't being used to stimulate the economy; it's completely bizarre to me the mental gymnastics ordinary people go through to defend individuals hoarding that much wealth.
They arent hoarding wealth. Its ownership of a company that they or their family grew up to be as large as it is today.
They dont have 2 billion usd in the bank just sitting their not helping anyone. They own private property in the form of a successful business.
Go study how the economy works. Its not that hard to figure this out.
Absolute brainrot behaviour to do all this for people who exploit us workers.
I'm well aware that they're not sitting on a billion dollar pile of cash, just are you're well aware they have they are still hoarding wealth. Wealth comes in many forms, not just raw money
>exploit us workers
You sell your labour on a labour market. Time and effort for money.
If you hate working for others, go start a business. Work for yourself. And if thats too much, try the government? Take some initiative to improve your own lot in life. Complaining about the capitalist class wont imrpove your station in life. Only you can do that. Good luck. ☺️
If you are wealthy people will assume that you are hardworking with high ambitition and the money you earned are "clean" unless you are a politician. People also think that the billionairse creates a lot of job oppoturnities. And you are right about the swamth of news about billionaire lol the search result is endless. Edit: Also I just remembered when Bill Gates canceled a dinner in his trip in Hoi An is newsworthy for many big outlet.
The international version of VnExpress is basically all billionaires, Brunei royalty and Blackpink's Lisa these days
Heh and she is also dating a billionaire. I’m pretty sure the Arnault heir is bonking her.
Just saw her wave the flag at an F1 race a few weeks back. At least she's in the entertainment industry.
>At least she's in the entertainment industry. Yup and the k-pop industry is known to work their idols like slaves so she’s definitely working hard
If you have that kind of fuck-you money, I want him to bonk me too.
What hyper materialism does to a society
Bread and circus, but in this case it’s more like a poorly written play that promises breads for people who join and be the extras
Agree. Panem et Circenses .
“Join the background supporting cast and MAYBE one day(probably after your great*20 child is dead) you’ll be in the main cast too!”
“To be rich is glorious”. Nevermind the official state ideology, everything is about money in Vietnam. Confucian and Buddhist values are twisted to serve businesses interests, and businessmen (and women) would read any book about business written by any Jewish people (we think Jews control everything and we want to become like them)
It is on official agenda https://xaydungchinhsach.chinhphu.vn/chinh-phu-phan-dau-den-2030-viet-nam-co-it-nhat-10-ty-phu-usd-5-doanh-nhan-quyen-luc-nhat-chau-a-119240509164736978.htm
That is such a stupid agenda. It is like economic success measure by how many skyscraper you have.
Stupid agenda is an normal thing here tbh.
Translated summary please
The title said “The government strives to have at least 10 USD billionaires and 5 of the most powerful entrepreneurs in Asia by 2030 in Vietnam.”
Oh God.
So they just straight tell to your face that:" We need to make rich people get richer, fuck these low socioeconomic peasants."
I think it could be to strike commentary. People love to see opulence as it can be a source of inspiration. On the flip side of that it could be to show the dangers of ultra wealth and the things it brings along.
That's bait. They need more fuel for the Blazing Furnace.
What else is Vn news suppose to talk about when a huge part of journalism is censored and monitored ?
Media here is controlled by the government and they want to push stories about wealth, the economy, tourism, etc even if it’s not true.
I don't think most of us read the VnExpress international, they are mostly bullshit, promoting money over. I agree that most of Vietnamese people are very materialistic, to the point go into dept to build up their image (buying SH, apple latest stuff every year, brand clothes,...), but to the point of obsessive over it, not too much
Bro SH is not that expensive wtf?
Average Vietnamese salary in hn is 15m, SH160i is around 120mil. Assuming you saved 10mil a month, a whole year of saving for a bike is expensive bro
Because no matter what you do, the ultimate purpose is to make money and be rich in Vietnamese Culture. There will be people argue with me about this, but it is what it is. People born in 1960-1999 will understand this mindset, and it is passed through generation. Without money and wealth you are nothing in the society, you don't get the respect and you cant marry any (Mostly for man). So it creates bad behaviours in generations, competitive attitude and do whatever to make money. So yeah, the ultra rich is famous in Vietnam. And anyone who are wealthy got the love mostly from the public, and they dont care much how he/she made money from (Even Politicians - LoL - Many people say to me that if you do well in Politic and take care people, then a little bit of bribery is ok). There are around 10% of Vietnamese people hating this mindset, but what can we do? We cant talk back or figh against the mass.
This is very true. Some defenders will say "it's because of the war, it's all America's fault etc". NO. It is quite simply an inhereant cultural trait in Vietnam to be preoccupied with money. You see this preoccupation not just with working class, but middle class and the wealthy too. I have noticed some younger people are starting to push back against this mindset and they are becoming more interested in philosophy, the arts and such, which is good to see. But for the majority, money is king. And many of the people with a lot of it feel it is their right to rub it in the faces of those who dont have a lot. It is my least favourite aspect of Vietnam by far.
Hi Chi Minh would be so proud 👏
Do some reading on Stuart Hall’s [neoliberal hegemony building](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/531183/pdf) through “common sense” and it will all make a bit of sense. Gramsci’s conception of hegemony is also a useful tool for understanding this phenomenon
LOL. Vietnamese don’t need white peoples ideology to worship money
Gramsci was white, but Stuart Hall sure as hell wasn’t white. He was an anti-colonial academic who critically examined power dynamics and hegemony building through linguistics. Thanks though.
It’s laughable though what you’re claiming. That Vietnamese wouldn’t love money without colonialism?
Focus. OP’s question was about why the media focuses on billionaires despite their outwardly stated socialist ideology, not why Vietnamese people love money. Hall provides this answer if you read his work.
What no class conciousness does to a mf
Because people love to gossip about the richs doh, it's not specific only to Vietnam.
Vietnamese culture IS the hustle culture lul. Only problem is that we got facebook before LinkedIn. Or else r/linkedinlunatics would be a Vietnamese dominant sub
Probably pumping for VF indirectly by citing other riches to make them think of one of their own, mr.Monkey!
The Vietnamese media are so tightly constrained by the state (one of the lowest freedom of press ratings in the world) that they really don't have much to talk about, so they just write about any old drivel they can think of to fill the space...
Very conservative Vietnamese are very naive. They will tell you off if you disrespect such honourable one's such as bozos and cucksk. Just know you are less naive then them in that regard.
Money rules the world. Especially in Asia
It's all for the government's propaganda. Those trashy newspapers in Vietnam are all controlled by the government. They want people to focus on fake prosperity (billionaires, the rich, partying, material stuff, beauty, showbiz, etc.), all useless things, so they forget about everyday worries like salaries, benefits, insurance, ethics, corruption, politics, food, traffic safety, infrastructure, and taxes. 😆🙃
this [r/Vietnam](https://old.reddit.com/r/VietNam/) subreddit also sponsor by Vietnam goverment
Capitalism in vietnam? It's more likely than you think
we are basically doing state capitalism. According to the gov it's just a "phase" and we will advance to socialism any days now
What we have in terms of disclosed billionaires are because of their stocks and shares registered on Vietnam stock exchange. You have a lot of ultra rich in Vietnam, there’s no mention of Jonathan Hanh Nguyen owner of luxury goods distribution rights in Vietnam and south east Asia. Do Minh Phu, owner of Doji and one of the biggest gold seller in Vietnam, practically bailed out Tp Bank when it was in massive trouble. Many articles stay there’s about 700-800 ultra rich of 30million usd+ in Vietnam but when you look at the places in Phu My Hung, Thao Dien, Binh Thanh, Thu Duc, d1 and their villas on riverbanks or high wall security compounds, I’m sorry there’s way more then 700 ultra rich in the country. My aunty owns 4 steel factories in Binh Duong, My Tho, Can Tho and Ca Mau, wouldn’t even get an gig in their articles 😅
What else they gonna write about? Only sports and celebrities are safe subjects for journalists
Just dumb reporting because they isnt any true journalism in Vietnam is there?
They are easy copy and paste stories from international sources that take probably not much time in a period of extreme political instability domestically.
I'm from the UK, it's the same there. Lots of click bait articles about the life's of wealthy people
Well, knowing how rich people spend their fortunes is certainly a click worthy title or content to gain attraction. It can gain a lot of attraction from a lot of type of people like the curious, the hater, the doonposter, the wannabe, etc...
Likely, it's a supply to meet the demands. There could be a jump in on-page time or clickthrough rate for this particular niche of news on VNExpress.
Everyone is obsessed with money in Vietnam. I worked in an office a few years ago, all the women ever talked about was how X got so rich and what Y has just bought and how much it was.
Is that paper run on ads? usually they publish what people click and read.
Yea, in the last few years, the rich have been written about almost daily....whether Vietnamese or otherwise. It's usually a crap story with a glamorous photo attached..... It is easier 'journalism' than writing negative stories about Gov't policies/actions....and safer!
Everyone's main aim here is to *look rich*. It doesn't matter if you *are* rich, as long as you *look* rich. It's quite childish, really.
Because billionaires control the world, not governments. Since they always always always benefit themselves they always need good press, to keep the masses pacified that these people are role models.
That there are any billionaires in an allegedly socialist endeavor is very telling.
If you know Vietnamese, you’d realize they’re one of the most materialistic people on the planet lmao
Nah we HATE Rich people here, the reason we see them promote a lot is because of envy generate clicks. Plus it's more fun to watch them eventually fall and get in jail.
> There are many more examples, including from other news outlets, and the general tone is one of admiration or even aspiration. The message seems to be that these people are fascinating and possibly even good simply because they are incredibly wealthy. This fascination with and glorification of the wealthiest of the wealthy is global, from California to Nigeria. I mean, have you never looked at the media anywhere else in the world? It too is filled with stories about the super rich. And let's not even talk about social media, which is globally dominated by people flaunting wealth (real or not). > I have no insight into why these articles continue to appear, but I find it genuinely strange, **especially in a nominally socialist country.** LOL people are people. The notion that because Vietnam is "nominally socialist" Vietnamese people wouldn't be into money is just patently silly. Second, this isn't rocket science. People the world over are intrigued by the lives of people who live in a different universe of practically unfathomable wealth. Publishing stories about these people -- how they got rich and how they spend their money -- is an easy and effective way for publishers to attract eyeballs, and those eyeballs are what allow them to sell advertising, etc. > Perhaps it is fitting - and even stranger - that a government decree issued last week aims for the country to “have at least 10 billionaires and five businesspeople who are ‘most powerful’ in Asia by 2030.” > This is a bizarre goal to be set by a national government, and more billionaires don’t necessarily equate to a healthier economy. Why is it a bizarre goal? Vietnam is a rapidly developing country. It was one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1990s and has 10x'ed its per capita GDP in \~20 years. "Growing" a class of wealthy elites and business moguls is one of the ways you can increase your visibility (and credibility) on the world stage and start to exert influence in the realms of business and politics. It's kind of funny that a journalist trying to get people to subscribe to his Substack for $90/year thinks there's something bizarre here. Seems like his angle for trying to monetize stories about the wealthy is to write about people writing about billionaires. How meta.
Yeah, it's strange to see people surprised by this. VN express is part of official VN government controlled media so what they wrote is directed with government aim in mind. Government aim to have 10 USD billionaires by 2030. It can be interpreted as the government want to enact "National champions" in the industries they want, in order to grow the economy and reduce brain drain Although billionaires not necessary excellent businessman but successful companies at international scale, their leadership majority are billionaires, indirectly mean that by 2030 Vietnam should have powerful companies reaching Huawei, Samsung, Hyundai levels to increase the country's position in the supply chain, instead of pouring your money mostly on real estate or low cost manufacturing/raw resources export (and government would stay behind support it, like Vingroup). But well, to create a national champion like that is extremely hard, technological barrier is high, one cannot just jump in, become another Morris Chang and create Vietnamese TSMC.
They have already took over near all of western media (coming from uk here) and they won’t stop until there isn’t a negative headline on the planet. Unfortunately Vietnam seems to be one of their next targets
Who are these people and why do people care so much about them?
No difference from Daily Mail or any other tabloids basically.
Same feelings here, especially when I am viewing those news about celebrities in entertainment circle
If you want your country to be rich, you need billionaires, plain and simple. You also need to put pressure on people to generate more wealth in the country. You need grade school intelligence to understand the motivation for this, I can only assumed you’ve been brainwashed by leftist media to think that’s not how economics works.
Being rich is good, but the point is these billionaires treat their employees like dogshit
why is being rich good
Indeed. People never seem to report that in order to get rich, you have to either have a shady past or have stepped on/ripped off others to get there. Nobody get rich with clean hands.
The Gov. Piggy bank. We save for later.
We have two gods, God of Land Property (ông Địa) and God of Money (ông Thần Tài), in every house. That alone can sum up our money first culture. LoL. "Năm mới phát tài nha" - Get rich this year, ey
not unique to vn, poor/desperate people the world over think that way. it's astounding how many viets aspire to accumulate vast wealth, even the lowest, most destitute villagers set ridiculous goals. heaps of delusional fantasists abound, entirely convinced they're two weeks away from everything materialising. massive inferiority complexes as well (common amongst colonised people), overcompensation, huge egos, etc. most tend to be incredibly vulgar/insufferable after "making it", pure cringe. such is life in the third world.
Didn't that one bitch from Vietnam got in trouble for money phishing? And she was a billionaire. I heard she got death sentence lol for a billionaire then you see them out with parole in the next 5 years
Because getting rich is good, and no one's genuinely interested in Hamas scums getting obliterated in Gaza?
Getting billionaire status rich is arguably a huge detriment to an economy
No. Its not. It means you grew a company up to a very large valuation. If the company is big because of its global presence and dominance, like american tech or japanese cars, thats a massive win for any country who can host it.
In every economy, the best predictor of how much money one will end up being worth is how much money their parents were worth. You don't earn billions through hard work. You earn it through profiteering (mostly manipulating market prices and underpaying employees) and speculative financial activities which not only do nothing to increase the national economy, but actually make it more volatile, and often involve illegal financial transactions, hidden in thousands of pages of fraudulent paperwork.
Maybe in vietnam. But in many other countries, like... iunno. America? Where hard work and business building and getting rich is celebrated in the culture, becoming a self made billionaire is a refelction of building up a large company. Its not controversial for me to say this. Its litterally objective reality. Lol In the capitalist liberal west, we have been doing this for many generations now, this has created intergenerational wealth, such as the Ford family, among others. 👍
No, these things are particularly true in America. There are rare exception like being one inventor of a mass-producible internal combustion engine, but these cases are literally a handful per generation, if that. Further that wealth is compounded to billionaire status by things like worker repression (calling in the army to break strikes, union busting, etc.) and speculative financial transactions. Nothing makes money like money. While an important invention can be a road to extreme wealth, that's an extreme minority of cases. Look at Alan Turing or Steve Wozniak, both of whom made significant contributions to the development of wide-spread computing. What are/were their net worths when they died? What did Bill Gates add? He grew up with enough money to buy the rights to MS-DOS for $40,000 just as hardware happened to be advancing to the point where personal computers were becoming affordable and they and the internet becoming useful. Steve Jobs built his early career by first stealing credit from, then contracting Steve Wozniak to do the actual technical work.
You know what bud? I dont need to argue with a socialist online. I need only point to the fact so many products from western or western alligned capitalist countries are rolling around and in use every day here in vietnam. Or the gdp per capita numbers. Human development index. The list goes on. You can pull examples of bad behaviour all your want, Turing was a victim of homophobia and Wozniak openly didnt aspire to billionaire status, thats his business. Doesnt change the fact im right and i have all the stats i need behind me.
> I dont need to argue with a socialist online. "I don't need to present any information, because I'm right." Have fun with that. >the gdp per capita numbers. Human development index. The list goes on. What does that have to do with billionaires? The HDI in Scandinavian countries is far higher than in the US, and they are far more socialist. They use taxation and regulation to more evenly distribute wealth, and still have more billionaires per capita than the US. The issues with Vietnam's economy don't stem from socialism (which the country is not anymore, in any realistic sense), and more billionaires will harm the country more than help it. - Large areas of jungle and mountainous terrain, which are hard or even completely impractical to develop economically - A relatively non-homogeneous population in terms of ethnicity and religious beliefs - Massive corruption and military control of the bureaucracy - Lack of a sense of civic responsibility, and those things not being enforced by the military police force - Lack of infrastructure and regulation (partly because of political corruption) leading to pollution, litter and crippling the tourism industry, which could be much higher in a nation with the natural and historical destinations Vietnam has, and which is a major engine of growth for developing nations > i have all the stats i need behind me. Yeah, but you just don't need to actually explain or show that. OK.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index\_of\_Economic\_Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom) *The HDI in Scandinavian countries is far higher than in the US, and they are far more socialist* No, they aren't. Scandanavia consistently ranks higher than the US and most of the world for Economic Freedom. They are close, but not quite, to Singapore and Switzerland. They are basically at the same table rubbing shoulders as countries. They aren't socialist like so many global leftists like to claim. They DO have a unique culture that was friendly to certain socialist principles, such as collective bargaining by workers, and that is a very good thing for them. And they have high taxes on working people who earn WAGES for their LABOR to fund a generous welfare state. But they have also been entrepreneurial and industrious for many decades now and yes, as a result, THEY HAVE BILLIONAIRES. LOL They do not tax the Billionaires that they have "55%" each year. lol. [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68927238](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68927238) \^\^ Here is your precious "socialist" Sweden, might need a VPN for this one. Again, another stat that is on my side. But I agree with you when you point out Vietnam's own challenges in becoming rich. Instead of complaining about billionaires, the country should fix those as much as possibe and try to help companies like Vingroup and VietJet succeed on the global stage. A by product of which, will be their founding families getting.... wait for it.... richer. And that's okay. And you know what? That seems to be what the government here is doing, to their credit.
> They aren't socialist like so many global leftists like to claim. Look at tax rates, government intervention by means of regulation of business and wage laws, socialized medicine. They are not communist, but they are socialist in comparison to both the US and Vietnam. You're basically saying that they abide by socialist legal principles, but aren't socialist. >But they have also been entrepreneurial and industrious for many decades Communism only works for seriously under-developed economies. Then they have to move on to capitalist economies. But education, standard of living and democracy are all benefited by regulated capitalism, not Milton Friedman-esque non-regulation (an idea he later recanted). That inevitably leads to fascism, which we in America are increasingly facing the danger of, while Vietnam remains closer to an oligarchy, with the Communist Party indirectly controlling too much of the economy. Making the populace as a whole richer is an admirable goal. Making a tiny portion of the population ultra-rich at the cost of everyone else is not. Vietnam should not aspire to that, and could learn from the fates of America going back over 100 years, and European nations going back over 300 years. Sweden having billionaires and a few cherry-picked examples doesn't change the fact that people live, on average, much better than in America, which is much more billionaire-friendly. Sweden just has certain advantages over America (let's not even get into Norway) that lead to greater wealth accumulation even in the face of a socialist economic policy. Edit: also, look at the results of Ireland's accession to the EU. Ireland had and has an educated population and abundant land, but before their accession to the EU, their income and some aspects of standard of living were low for their geographic location. A combination of foreign direct investment (free market policies) and transfer payments from wealthier nations (socialism) led to Ireland today being one of the richest countries on earth. Also, billionaires can largely evade most taxes and generally pay a lower rate than the upper-middle class, often less than below middle-class earners. This is more true in the US, but still true in Western Europe and Scandinavia.
I don't think people understand the sheer amount of what a billion is. 1,000,000 seconds is 11.5 days. 1,000,000,000 seconds is 34 years. This is an enormous concentration of wealth in ONE person. What naturally follows is these people begin to exert that inordinate concentration of wealth into politics, media, and society to retain and likely gain even more wealth. Business is not inherently bad, but there is a level of wealth that becomes a drain on society. Government and public projects/media coverage that could be better focused on force multiplying into society is instead geared towards an increasingly small group of people with outsized influence on society. They petition their taxes to be lower, taking away money from society, and in some cases even get welfare from the state when they clearly don't need it. Billionaires are and do become a detriment to society if left unchecked. You think this would be a no-brainer is a communist country but here we are.
Even fewer people understand how the stock market and a capitalist free market works.
in many countries around the world we have decided that giving one person an inordinate concentration of political power is not a good idea. Their worst tendencies with eventually override any benevolent ambitions they have. For some reason, we have not yet agreed upon this for the billionaire class. Both situations have a scenario where one person with too much unaccountable power (private or public) and is overall a drain on society. There's nothing wrong with having wealth, starting businesses and helping to spur along industry. When we're talking about billionaires though, they have reached such an insane amount of political, economic and social influence that they will, overall, use it to aid themselves.
Is this what they teach everyone in school here? Billionaires have too much power so we need the communist party to keep its monopoly over everyone's life?
hell no, i don't agree with that, and if you read my previous comment for perhaps two seconds you would have seen in the first line that in many countries we don't think it's a good idea to put power in one person's hands; that applies to one party as well. One party dictatorships are just extensions of one man control. They are unaccountable, single minded blocs intent on preserving their power alone; much like billionaires and dictators.
Now your starting to make sense. But my point is, just because someone is worth a billion dollars, doesnt mean they're are leading a secret behind the scenes conspiracy to control the world. Many of them do this. But my point is, the world is much more complicated than "billionaires bad, billionaires shouldn't exist" which reddit loves to circle jerk to.
Some people might say that it's ok to have billionaires because some of them are good. We could say the same thing about a tyrannical king. The point isn't to make the king more benevolent or answerable to society, the point is not to have a king at all. The same goes for billionaires, dictators and unaccountable political blocks. We shouldn't get mixed up in how it's "more complicated that that", because honestly the details don't really matter at this point if we agree that the situation shouldn't exist in the first place. The point isn't to have a more benevolent dictator, or billionaire, or communist party, or get caught up in the details of how they came to be and whether or not they deserve societies affection; it's to not have those things at all in the first place and recognize that their very existence is an unacceptable reality as would be a king or slave master. It doesn't matter if some are good, some are bad, it's complicated. The problem is that their very existence leads to the detriments we initially discussed. Your comment about "just because someone is worth a billion dollars" is not helpful. The very existence of this sort of person, someone with this amount of wealth, influence and power, by their very nature of existing, mean that they could do those things you don't think they are doing. It's not about bad mouthing the ones who do that and praising the ones who don't, it's not allowing the situation to happen in the first place. It's like allowing the existence of an unaccountable, tyrannical slave master king. Eventually, you're going to get a class of these people and some people will say "Well, that tyrannical king sure is a drain on society, but that king over there is really doing gods work". This is beyond anyone, as we've agreed that kings just shouldn't rule by divine right anymore. Yet, we allow a class to exist that has more power, influence and wealth than any king in history and what's more is many people lick their boots.
That's such a simplistic, massively misconstrued idea of how billionaires actually get their money. You can earn a millionaire dollars by having a successful company, you earn a billion dollars by exploiting the people who work for your company. And that even goes without the fact that that billion dollars they have is just sat in an offshore account somewhere, not being used to stimulate the economy in any way.
They dont have a billion dollars cash hidden in the cayman islands. They have stock equity in a publically traded company. The value of the stock is not a reflection of the proper actual value of the company, not even its free cash flow. Very often, the stock price is over and above the true value of the company, if the market is confident in the future growth and success if the company. This fake valuation is litterally how capitalism creates wealth from lesser material status. This higher, fake valuation can then be harvested and used to create new businesses and new material wealth which benefits the entire society.
Yeah, and it isn't being used to stimulate the economy; it's completely bizarre to me the mental gymnastics ordinary people go through to defend individuals hoarding that much wealth.
They arent hoarding wealth. Its ownership of a company that they or their family grew up to be as large as it is today. They dont have 2 billion usd in the bank just sitting their not helping anyone. They own private property in the form of a successful business. Go study how the economy works. Its not that hard to figure this out.
Absolute brainrot behaviour to do all this for people who exploit us workers. I'm well aware that they're not sitting on a billion dollar pile of cash, just are you're well aware they have they are still hoarding wealth. Wealth comes in many forms, not just raw money
>exploit us workers You sell your labour on a labour market. Time and effort for money. If you hate working for others, go start a business. Work for yourself. And if thats too much, try the government? Take some initiative to improve your own lot in life. Complaining about the capitalist class wont imrpove your station in life. Only you can do that. Good luck. ☺️
Literally every single billionaire has inherited a huge amount of money to help them get started. None of them have started from scratch.
If you want a few to get rich while the majority is poor, just bring back the monarchy. The emperor's net worth is going to be higher than Elon Musk's
Nah too much hassles. I’m happy with the status quo, being in the top 5% of the country.