[An Nahar] Four decades after the Vietnam war ended, US fast-food giant McDonald's opened its first restaurant in the communist country Saturday, aiming to lure a rising middle class away from rice and noodles.
"Y'want nuoc mam with that?"
The arrival of one of the most potent symbols of US capitalism in southern Ho Chi Minh City -- known as Saigon when American troops dramatically withdrew in 1975 -- is the result of a partnership with the son-in-law of Vietnam's powerful Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
McDonald's is following US rivals Burger King, KFC and coffee giant Starbucks into Vietnam -- a country many Americans associate more with an unpopular war than a newly wealthy middle class. But with its 90 million-strong population and average per capita income of more than $1,500, "Vietnam is on the radar now" for US franchises, said Sean Ngo, managing director of consulting firm Vietnam Franchises Ltd.
Critics
...and there are always critics...
say that Vietnam's rapid economic growth since "Doi Moi" reforms opened up the country in the early 1990s masks rising inequality and inefficiencies in an economy still dominated by state-owned enterprises.
| But every minimum wage graduate of McDonald's front and back lines will have learnt important lessons in becoming a successful capitalist. So that's ok. |
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