Report on Visit to Vietnam by Professor Colin Mackerras
School of International Business and Asian Studies
Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland

The joint Academies of Social Sciences and Humanities granted me an exchange visit to Vietnam under the exchange programme the Academies have with the Vietnam National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities. I stayed in the northern part of Vietnam, especially the capital Hanoi, from 27 December 2001 to 11 January 2002. I was in Ho Chi Minh City and surroundings from 11 to 16 January 2002. The joint Australian Academies paid for my return air ticket from Brisbane to Hanoi, then to Ho Chi Minh City, to Sydney and back to Brisbane. The National Center in Vietnam provided me with accommodation and gave me a small daily allowance. I covered the rest from my research account at Griffith University.

In Hanoi the Centre for China Studies, which is under the Vietnam National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities, looked after me. In fact, I did not see very much of the people from the National Center. However, the Centre for China Studies was extremely generous and helpful, arranging all the things I asked for promptly and efficiently. I have only praise of their work. The Director of the Centre Dr Do Tien Sam and a young scholar Mr Hoang The Anh did the most work for me, but others were also helpful.

My main research aim was to explore relations between China and Vietnam from the point of view of Vietnam. From the Centre for China Studies and elsewhere I gained a considerable amount of material. I also bought numerous relevant books. I interviewed scholars at the Centre for China Studies and also the Institute of International Relations in Hanoi. In the south, I was able to get a good idea of the Chinese community in Ho Chi Minh City and the economic participation of China and Chinese people in the city and its surroundings. One of things the Centre for China Studies undertook was to take me to the town of Meng Cai, which is directly on the border with Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. This was very useful indeed from the point of view of what I could find out about border trade and about how people in Vietnam now regard China. Given that there was a war involving this border area (as well as many other places along the border) in 1979, this is a matter of considerable interest to me.

I stated in my application that I wished to update my knowledge of the Vietnamese theatre. However, I was not able to find out much on this subject. The little I found was that the Vietnamese theatre is currently not in a lively situation. The traditional theatre is not popular with the public. The water puppets, which are one of the main traditional forms of theatre in Vietnam, have become a prominent tourist attraction in Hanoi.

On the other hand, I was also keen to learn something about ethnic minorities in Vietnam. The China Studies Institute was helpful to me in this area. The Institute of Ethnology under the National Center of Social Sciences and Humanities was very helpful as well. The study of ethnology has grown significantly in Vietnam in the last few years and I was also able to buy quite a bit of material in English (and a bit in French) on the subject.

I gave two papers in Hanoi. One was at the Centre for China Studies and concerned the politics and economics of the minorities in China. This one lasted about 90 minutes, including a brief question time. The other was at the Department of Socialist Culture at the National Ho Chi Minh Institute of Politics. This focused more on cultural survival among the minorities of China, but included quite a bit of political coverage as well, especially on the situation with Islam in the west of China at present. It lasted about 150 minutes, including about half an hour of questions, which were more interesting and penetrating than at the Centre for China Studies. At the specific request of my hosts, I gave both these seminars in Chinese, and they were then translated into Vietnamese. Both were reasonably well attended.

I also attended two seminars at the Centre for China Studies given by other scholars. As it happened, one was by a Vietnamese scholar from the Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University and concerned the Institute. The other was about Sino-Indian relations and was given by Professor Manoranjan Mohanty, of the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi. He was in Hanoi for the celebrations of thirty years of full diplomatic relations between India and Vietnam.

I was able to help scholars at the Centre for China Studies by doing quite a bit of work towards their applications for funding from the Ford Foundation. One interview I had with the Institute of Social Sciences at Ho Chi Minh City turned into an interview with me concerning Chinese in Australia. Although I make no pretence to be a specialist on that subject I may have been able to offer some insights the interviewee/interviewer had not heard.

My assessment of the success of the visit is quite positive. I certainly learned a great deal. I was able to collect quite a bit of material on the main topic of concern for my visit, as well as on minorities. The Centre for China Studies was very helpful to me. They organized interviews I requested and visits to other units, such as the Institute of International Relations and the Institute of Ethnology. They also organized a visit to the border with China, including a visit to Halong Bay, perhaps Vietnam's premier tourist resort. They were also very efficient in making arrangements for the hotel where I stayed. The arrangements for paying the hotel and a small daily allowance were all very well carried out. In the south, it was the Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City that made the arrangements and these were also very effective in terms of arranging for and paying the hotel. However, this part of the visit was much less effective in terms of gathering research material, and two of the five days were spent entirely as a tourist. While I enjoyed this and learned quite a bit, I would have preferred more concentrated research effectiveness.

I was very happy to be able to find out something about the ethnic minorities. Though I did not include this in my original application, it was something that has great interest for me, and the material I gathered was considerably more than I expected. On the other hand, it was disappointing to be able to gather so little meaningful material about the theatre, certainly not enough to write a research article about it. In some ways, the visit to the Chinese border was a bit more like a tourist visit than I would have liked. But it was both pleasant and instructive.

Hanoi is an extremely pleasant city, with its lakeside cafes and restaurants, its parks and its French-influenced architecture, including a fine and recently restored opera house and a cathedral, both built by the French and in French style. I am less keen on Ho Chi Minh City, but the south and the Mekong Delta area are very important for Vietnam both socially and economically, and well worth a visit. I hope to write at least one article on Vietnam's relations with China, possibly two. Since I don't know Vietnamese I doubt I'll be able to write a good research article on the ethnic minorities. However, I certainly learned a considerable amount about them, and shall use this material in a course I teach on minorities questions in Asia. I may undertake a study comparing and contrasting the situation with minorities in China and Vietnam, including both government policy and realities.

As for recommendations for future participants in the exchange, my main plea is to continue the scheme. I have heard that it has been difficult to get scholars from Vietnam to take part in the scheme. I actually took this up when I was in Vietnam, asking the Center to arrange for return scholars. Several of the people I dealt with in Vietnam has worked in Australia and I am under the very strong impression that Vietnamese trust Australians somewhat more than other Western countries, possibly because Australia cannot possibly be a threat to Vietnam, as several other countries (not only Western) have been in the past. I probably made a mistake to think I could achieve more than one research objective in Vietnam and would suggest that future participants confine themselves to one. But my overall evaluation is positive, and I personally both enjoyed my stay in Vietnam tremendously, especially the section in the north, and learned an enormous amount from it.

18 January 2002