Shadowing Practice: Can Vietnam be the new Singapore? - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Why did you want to talk about Vietnam today?
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Why did you want to talk about Vietnam today?
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Vietnam is particularly interesting now for a variety of reasons.
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You know, I think the first one that comes to mind is the intersection with tariffs with the U.S.
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and with Trump world.
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Right.
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So, you know, just in May, the Trump organization opened a new golf course not too far from Hanoi.
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And, you know, that's part of a broader strategy in which, you know, Vietnam has been quite savvy in dealing with America under Donald Trump.
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Tholam, the new general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, was one of the first phone calls that Donald Trump took after doing his Liberation Day tariffs.
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And, you know, that reflects kind of a diplomatic savviness on the Vietnamese side, but also the fact that Vietnam is so exposed to what America does on the tariffs front.
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Vietnam's gotten rich with this foreign direct investment for export economic model, you know, in which a lot of the exports are eventually sold to America.
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About 30 percent of GDP is exports to the U.S.
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These are products where the intermediate components are flown in from Korea or flown in from China, assembled in Vietnam, and then sold off primarily to American consumers.
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And if Trump's imposing a 46% tariff, as he's proposed, on Vietnam, that is a fundamental threat to that model.
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Just this week, we had the conclusion of the third round of trade talks between Vietnam and the U.S.
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Supposedly, they're making progress.
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It looks to me pretty inconclusive.
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But I think the trade is the high level stuff that's catching the headlines.
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But I think what's less understood is a lot of the stuff happening domestically within Vietnam.
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And this is the place where Tolan has been the most radical, has been the most ambitious.
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He has proposed and begun enacting a massive restructuring of the Vietnamese bureaucracy, which is this kind of sprawling apparatus.
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It's got a bit of a license raj thing going on where it can be pretty hard to get your project approved in Vietnam.
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That was particularly true under the previous Communist Party secretary general who unleashed a massive anti-corruption campaign, which had the effect of sort of scaring stiff the bureaucracy.
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It was hard to get stuff approved.
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And, you know, Tholam, who was involved in that anti-corruption campaign, has come in and really changed the posture of the Vietnamese state to saying we're going to be a bit more tolerant of bureaucratic mistakes.
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We want higher risk appetite, right, for, you know, in the Vietnamese bureaucracy to enable the private sector to do more and not have to worry so much about regulation and focusing more on doing good business.
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That's a big departure for a party that historically has been focused on control, focused on stability.
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Now they're talking about innovation.
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They're talking about raising R&D spending economy-wide.
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They're talking about lifting up the private sector from half a GDP to 70% of GDP, which is a big departure, again, for, you know, a party that has been lukewarm at best about the private sector.
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So, you know, I think that domestic story is a really big change in the past year.
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And it reflects, you know, constraints that Vietnam's increasingly coming under on a variety of fronts.
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Yeah, because there's a sense that maybe with the tariffs, you know, maybe this sort of export led model.
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And, you know, I encourage listeners to look it up because the numbers on this in exports to GDP and stuff, we think of, you know, Korea as a big exporter or China as a big export.
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Vietnam's on another level relative to the size of the domestic economy.
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There seems to be a sort of sense that even if this hasn't fully run out of steam, even if there's something else still to be had, some growth still to be had, probably the best days are behind it.
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That's exactly right.
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Part of the reason Vietnam was an attractive destination was low labor costs.
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You can do this relatively unsophisticated assembly with Vietnamese workers who are hardworking by all accounts, relatively healthy and educated on kind of basic human development metrics, you know, compared to peer countries.
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And, you know, most importantly, a fourth the labor costs of China.
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Right.
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And so, you know, that was part of that was the fundamental factor in the model.
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Then you put on top of that tax breaks, you know, tax breaks, land access, other kind of state incentives for foreign companies to come in.
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And what you had is big multinationals saw Vietnam as a great place to do the final stage of manufacturing, the assembly process, right?
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One issue with that is domestic Vietnamese businesses are not really getting in on that game, right?
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They're coming and taking advantage of the labor costs to do this pretty simple step.
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And there's not a lot of Vietnamese suppliers.
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The goods are coming from elsewhere.
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And this is not a model that can really thrive if you have rising labor costs as Vietnam has had.
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What they've done over the years is channel rural labor surpluses from the countryside into the cities, into the factories.
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That's a model familiar in other countries, too, like in China.
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But that's starting to lose steam.
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In the latest data, agricultural job destruction, which is sort of a sign of modernization, that's slowed down pretty significantly.
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And we've seen several decades of rising wages.
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It's now competitive to or above other pure countries like India, above poorer countries like Bangladesh or Cambodia.
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And the issue with that is how does Vietnam get from where it is now, lower middle income but dynamic and growing, to that upper middle income and eventually upper income status that it wants to achieve?
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The official goal is by 2045.
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There's no way of explaining Vietnam's growth.
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This shouldn't start with the sort of the fact that this has been astounding.
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Most other countries would, you know, skin their mothers to get this sort of economic performance and this sort of extremely rapid development.
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But it does feel like these things are sort of tapping out a little bit.
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One thing I always liked when I was covering this is that if you look at listed Vietnamese companies, they perform absolutely terribly.
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It's like in terms of the companies that you'd have access to as a public markets investor, if you'd invest in Vietnam, you would have seen none of this growth.
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It's been absolutely terrible.
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Awful, awful time, which again brings us back to the comparison with China, which has a very, very similar problem.
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And I find all of this interesting largely because similar political model to China in some ways.
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It's a communist party.
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It comes with all of the difficulties of running a private sector economy and keeping a sort of authoritarian top-down political system that was designed for a very different sort of economic structure.
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But it's also very different to China in that in China, 15 times the size by population or thereabouts, you could rely to some degree on a domestic market, right?
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This is much more difficult in Vietnam than it is in China, not just because the income levels are low,
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but because in absolute terms 100 million people it's not all that many the market size is never going to be absolutely enormous and i think that's actually
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what makes sometimes i think the economic model looks more like singapore than it does like china in that they've gone all in on the foreign direct
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investment model and they've said no barnacles on the boat we'll give you you we'll get you land we'll set you up in the industrial park we'll we'll
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sort things out for you we'll find you workers we'll do everything we can and sort of trying to turn away from this is like yeah really trying to turn the ship around all at once.
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It will be really interesting to see whether they can do it.
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And I think also to some degree, whether they can pull off what Singapore's done, which is to try and pull higher and higher value added stuff from the foreign direct investment.
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So in Singapore, there's sort of rules around if you're a foreign investing company, you have to hire a certain number of Singaporeans.
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That's not a problem for Vietnam, but maybe they want to say, we want X number of more senior management positions.
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We want you to train a certain number of people in certain new skills.
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Whether there are things they can do around that, I don't know.
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But yeah, I'm very interested to see how it plays out.
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I think it's arguably harder for a middle-income country these days to climb the development ladder, given the global environment we have, right?
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Those high-end sophisticated industries are already dominated by the Asian tigers and by China, right?
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And it's not like they're going away.
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You know, when Korea industrialized, there were niches that it could carve out and there were things available.
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In Vietnam, they have to try to capitalize on new and emerging technologies from a lower baseline.
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The reason that so many people that study Vietnam adopt this baseline attitude of optimism is just the trajectory so far.
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We have to remember that this is a country that literally did not have a formal private sector before the 1980s.
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And even then, really not much to speak of until well into the 1990s.
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So it's had less than three decades to really, you know, build have have compounding and, you know, building on a base of private sector, you know, developing industrial networks and so on and so forth.
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But, you know, something you've written about, Mike, that I think is interesting is in a world where developing through manufacturing has gotten harder and harder.
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You know, what can you do that will generate employment for your 100 million people?
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Right.
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And so this is is a big difference with Singapore.
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Singapore doesn't really have like a rural hinterland where you need to find jobs for, you know, a large swath of people.
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You know, in Vietnam, the factories helped in this way.
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You could migrate from the countryside to the cities and get employment.
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And if that model is losing steam, are there services that can replace that and absorb that labor?
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Are there, you know, can advanced manufacturing, which probably is going to rely a lot on robotics and advanced industrial processes, really employ a broad swath of people in your country?
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And so I think, you know, we have to think about a domestic consumption economy and how to build that.
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To me, these are open development questions where there's not super convincing answers.
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And I think that's obviously a bigger challenge than just in Vietnam, but it's one that definitely looms large.
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About This Lesson

In this lesson, you will practice your English listening and speaking skills through a discussion about Vietnam's economic landscape and its potential evolution towards becoming a new Singapore. You'll focus on key vocabulary and phrases related to international trade, economic restructuring, and the impact of tariffs. Engaging with this content will not only enhance your understanding of current events but will also provide you with practical language skills that are relevant in both business and everyday contexts.

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

  • Tariffs: Taxes imposed on imported goods that can affect trade agreements.
  • Foreign Direct Investment: Investment made by a company or individual in one country in business interests in another country.
  • Export Economic Model: A strategy focused on selling goods to foreign markets to drive economic growth.
  • Bureaucracy: A system of government or business that includes various departments and agencies; often seen as complex.
  • Private Sector: The part of the economy that is run by private individuals or companies rather than the state.
  • Labor Costs: The costs associated with hiring workers, which can impact business operations and profitability.
  • Innovation: The process of introducing new ideas, products, or methods, particularly important in economic growth.

Practice Tips

To effectively use the shadowing technique while learning from this video, pay close attention to the speaker's tempo and intonation. The speaker expresses complex ideas with clarity but at a moderate pace, allowing you to mimic both speed and pronunciation. Try repeating phrases immediately after hearing them, focusing on matching the speaker’s tone and rhythm. Utilizing a shadow speech approach, where you speak along with the audio, can significantly enhance your English pronunciation. Consider using a shadowing app to record your practice sessions and evaluate your progress over time. This method not only aids in improving vocal clarity but also builds your confidence in expressing intricate concepts in English.

As you engage with the material, remember that practice is essential for mastery. Listening multiple times, and refining your shadowing technique will lead to noticeable improvements in your ability to discuss related topics fluently. Happy practicing!

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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