While much of Vietnam’s manufacturing boom has happened in the Mekong Delta in its South, government officials from a province along the Chinese border visited Atlanta to present local investors with a “northern option.”
Lang Son province, north of the national capital of Hanoi, is sparsely populated by Vietnamese standards, with just 800,000 people in a country approaching 100 million in population spread across 58 provinces.
But during a forum at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce’s 1818 Club organized by Global Atlanta, the province’s equivalent of a state governor said opportunities abound as Lang Son develops the infrastructure needed to become a key conduit for trade between China and the rest of Southeast Asia.
“Lang Son is exploiting a plan for the construction of a high-speed railway and road system connecting inter-regions as well as connecting China to major urban centers of Vietnam and ASEAN countries that have many important seaports and dry ports,” Mr. Ho said in a speech in Vietnamese interpreted by local real estate professional Erica Nguyen.
China’s Belt and Road initiative includes plans to link southern China with Singapore via high-speed rail lines, freight corridors and expressways.
Mr. Ho noted that a 600-hectare (1,500 acre) Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park is under construction in the province, part of a plan to develop seven parks by 2050.
“The orientation to 2030 is to attract foreign investors in the fields of high-tech, sustainable manufacturing and processing,” he added.
That learning, the chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee said, goes both ways. The nine government officials on the trip, leaders from Lang Son departments ranging from planning to agriculture and education, also sought to learn from Georgia on the deployment of clean-energy solutions, agro-processing and logistics and infrastructure management.
The chairmen of two Vietnamese companies, rubber supplier Sao Vang Joint Stock Company and transportation firm Bao Nguyen Transportation Trading Joint Stock Company, also joined the delegation.
Van Le, an economic counselor at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, accompanied the group for her second trip to Atlanta in three years, noting the opportune moment in U.S.-Vietnam economic ties as many U.S. factories shift away from China by many U.S. manufacturers.
The U.S. upgraded its relationship with Vietnam, she noted, to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” after President Joe Biden met with Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, in Hanoi in September 2023.
According to the White House, the leaders focused on jointly driving inclusive and sustainable economic growth, with Vietnam pushing for a review that could see it designated as a market economy under U.S. law.
Dr. Van from the embassy emphasized during her opening remarks that Vietnam has emerged as a “safe and attractive destination” amid regional upheaval.
“We currently live in a complex and unpredictable period in global politics and economy,” Dr. Van said. “The lingering impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, persistent inflation, supply chain instability, strategic competition between major powers, US-China tensions that have expanded from the realms of politics and defense to economics, science, and technology — these factors have led to the ‘China plus one’ trend and the reshaping of supply chains.”
Vietnam is well positioned, she noted, participating in regional blocks that have emerged from the China-led RCEP to the CPTPP, the former Trans-Pacific Partnership that the U.S. negotiated but then exited.
The patchwork of overlapping agreements gives businesses locating in Vietnam access to 60 key markets around the world, she said.
Vietnam, she added, is focused on moving up the labor value chain and embracing digitization, a goal backed by the U.S., through its inclusion of Vietnam in both the International Technology Security and Innovation Fund and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
An array of U.S. and other Western investors, particularly in the semiconductor space, are offering their seals of approval by pouring billions of dollars into the country, she added.
“Tech giants such as Amkor, Marvell, Inteland Nvidia have made notable market entry announcements, signaling their confidence in Vietnam’s potential as a hub for advanced technology manufacturing and innovation,” Dr. Van said.
Along with this comes energy demand, which Mr. Ho, the Lang Son chairman, says will increasingly met by renewable sources. By 2030, Lang Son has plans to develop 10 hydropower projects totaling 103.7 megawatts, wind power projects of 6.5 gigawatts and biomass and waste projects with capacities of 30 and 11 megawatts, respectively.
The province also sought investors in health care, tourism, water technology and forestry and agricultural equipment.
“We also wish to promote investment cooperation opportunity trade, tourism, cultural exchange and workforce development between Lan Song and U.S. localities and businesses, said Trinh Tuyet Mai, who heads up the province’s foreign affairs department.
Stella Xu, director of Southeast Asia initiatives for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, ended the event by highlighting how the state’s trade and investment relationship with Vietnam has advanced.
Container traffic from Vietnam through the Savannah port, she noted, has increased 87 percent in the last five years, and she’s currently working on two inbound prospects from Vietnam.
“But we want more Vietnamese projects. We want to export more to Vietnam, and we want to welcome more Vietnamese companies to state of Georgia,” Ms. Xu said.
Dr. Van told Global Atlanta that the country is more than just a sourcing destination and that many of its companies are looking to establish operations in the United States, which is why the country fielded one of the largest delegations to the SelectUSA summit in June. She anticipates bringing another group back to Atlanta next year.
Gwinnett Chamber CEO Nick Masino welcomed guests at the outset, pointing to the chamber’s strong relationships with its Vietnamese community, including an MOU with the Georgia Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce, which had many members present at the event.
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To learn more about the province, contact Trinh Tuyet Mai, Deparment of Foreign Affairs of Lang Son province.
To learn more about investing in Vietnam, contact Economic Counselor Van Le at the Vietnamese Embassy in the United States.
See copies of the speakers’ remarks below:
Ho-Tien-Thieu-English-and-Vietnamese Van-Le-Remarks
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