Old Festering Wounds Hamper Entrepreneurial Development in Vietnam

Although the Vietnam War ended more than 30 years ago, the bad memories have not faded. One of the contemporary battles that is being fought is between those Vietnamese who immigrated to the United States after the war and those who stayed behind out of ideology or hope. Many Vietnamese immigrants settled in California where they, along with other Asian and Indian immigrants, cut their teeth during the great Silicon Valley tech boom. With this knowledge and skill, many of those entrepreneurs have returned to the countries of their or their parents birth.

The influx of intellectual capital has proven to be a boon for India and China, helping to establish their tech sectors as one of the key building blocks in the future economies of those countries and the world. However, Vietnamese-Americans have not been welcomed back with open arms and wallets. Instead, they have encountered a great amount of hostility from the Vietnamese who experienced the war, many of which are now older and hold influential positions within the government.