Remarks by Ambassador Michael W. Michalak

Ambassador Michael Michalak
VietnamNet Interview

November 20, 2007

VietnamNet: Welcome to our studio, Ambassador Michael Michalak. Today is Vietnam’s National Teachers Day. Many of our readers are very interested in the issue of education. Vietnam is facing a major problem in that faces great difficulty in developing its human resources and its workforce. The U.S. is a country which has great strength in this issue, so what assistance might the U.S. give Vietnam to better develop its human resources?

Ambassador Michalak: Thank you very much for having me here on VietnamNet. I’m very pleased to be here, and hello to everybody who is watching and everybody who is listening through the internet.

The first question was about human resources and education and National Teachers Day. So let be begin by saying that I would like very much to congratulate and thank all of the teachers out there. I know that you have a very difficult job but it’s an extremely important job. Education is clearly one of the values which I believe that Americans and Vietnamese share and on which we place great emphasis.

Before coming to Vietnam I made a commitment to the Senators at my hearing in the U.S. Senate that I would try to double the number of students coming from Vietnam to study in the United States. We are working on that in several ways. Some of these are ways in which we can help develop human resources here in Vietnam.

I think there are three ways in which I want to help improve educational relations between the United States and Vietnam. The first is to do what we can to augment and expand our Fulbright program, as well as the program of the VEF, the Vietnam Education Foundation. Both of these programs provide for sending students from Vietnam to the U.S. and for sending some students from the U.S. to Vietnam.

The second way in which I would like to try to work on expanding education between the U.S. and Vietnam is to work with the U.S. private sector. Almost every American private sector company that is in Vietnam in a significant way has some kind of educational program.

I plan sometime in January to bring together the U.S. government, educational actors, the people that work on the Vietnam Educational Foundation, as well as American university representatives to sit and do some brainstorming on what kind of resources we have and what kind of programs we can offer and what the needs of Vietnam’s human resource development are. I hope we can come up with a range of programs that might be useful to the government and the people of Vietnam. And after such a conference, I hope that we would get together with the Vietnamese government and talk over some of these projects to see if any of them might be applicable to Vietnam.

A third way that I think is important in expanding our educational relationship is to get the officers in my consular sections, the people that issue visas, to go out and talk to Vietnamese educational institutions and students and faculty, and explain what the procedures are for successfully applying for a student visa to the United States.

In the past 12 months the U.S. Mission here in Vietnam has issued 5,600 educational visas. This is up 54 percent over the previous year, so you can see we’re already working to try to increase the number of students going to the United States.

And I said I have three ways, but there is actually a fourth way. The fourth way is to try to improve English language training within Vietnam. Many students we find are very capable and would be excellent students in the United States but their English language capability is not quite high enough.

We have several ideas for how we might be able to improve that, including introducing the Peace Corps into Vietnam. Members of the Peace Corps are excellent language teachers. We now have on loan to the Ministry of Education an English language fellow to help the Ministry of Education develop and update its curriculum in English language training and we regularly conduct seminars throughout the country for English language teachers.

So I think that, as you can see, we’re working on the U.S. government side, on the private sector side, on the rules and regulations side, and we’re also working on the English language side. I think we’ve got a pretty comprehensive program and we hope to make it even better in the coming years.

VietnamNet: You also already answered all the points of a question sent in by Mr. Hoang Van Hung from Ho Chi Minh City. However, he would like to ask another question; France and Germany are working hard on their plans to establish universities in Vietnam. Does the United States have a similar plan? Will the plan work quickly enough so the U.S. doesn’t lag behind the other two countries?

Ambassador Michalak: I don’t think the United States lags behind anybody. In 1994 the Fulbright Exchange Program was supplemented by the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program - or the FETP - which is in Ho Chi Minh City. I’m sure you're quite familiar with it, Mr. Tuan. It is run by the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh City, but it’s co-chaired by the John F. Kennedy School out of Harvard of which you are a member. Although it’s not a full-blown university it offers a very good one-year course in applied economics and public policy. You and I have talked before about how valuable being able to talk about public policy and economic theory is for the leaders of Vietnam. Furthermore the FETP, the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program, will soon offer an MBA, a Master’s in Business Administration degree which we expect is going to be very useful for the people and the government of Vietnam and the business community.

Even though the U.S. government does not have programs to set up universities, we often help facilitate contact between American universities and Vietnamese universities so that they can form the kind of a partnership that will be of mutual benefit to both sides. So we have a sort of mini-JFK school set up, and we have programs where universities can collaborate to make both stronger and I think that’s just fine.

VietnamNet: So it means that you highly value the program run by Mr. Tom Vallely at the Fulbright Economic Teaching Program.

Ambassador Michalak: Absolutely. I’ve only met Mr. Vallely once, but we had a very long and interesting conversation. If you know him, you know that he is an extremely unique man. It’s always a good time when you sit down and talk to Mr. Vallely. He has great ideas.

VietnamNet: Right now various educational programs of the U.S. government provide only a limited number of fellowships to the Vietnamese people. Do you plan to propose that the U.S. government should give more fellowships both to Vietnamese officials and normal citizens?

Ambassador Michalak: Most definitely. But as you know, I can propose whatever I want, but the budget process has its own limitations. So within the limitations of our budget process we will continue - as we have in the past - to fight for more resources for the Fulbright program for Vietnam.

I mentioned earlier that I was planning to have this big meeting of American education actors sometime next year. One of the things I want to do at that meeting is see if there isn’t a better way that we can more effectively use the existing resources we have to send more students to the United States.

So as I’m sure you learned at the John F. Kennedy School, you always search for new resources but you continuously try to reinvent yourself to make better use of existing resources.

VietnamNet: Resources are available on the internet.

Ambassador Michalak: There are a lot of resources available on the internet. It’s true.

VietnamNet: Mr. Binh Minh asks this question: Vietnamese students are poor and they don’t have a lot of money but they are very capable at learning, they are very good learners. So how can they go to the U.S. to study? Do you have any advice for them?

Ambassador Michalak: You had one good idea just a minute ago by saying that the internet has resources. You can search the internet for American universities and many if not all universities in America do have financial assistance programs for foreign students. So there would be some degree of financial assistance available from universities for qualified students.

There are also a number of resources available on the American embassy web site. The American embassy web site under the education section will have in it places where students can research financial assistance programs, where they can research what kind of scholarships may be available, and where they can research several other ways of getting financial assistance. So I think it’s going to take some work on the part of Vietnamese students, but as you say, they are quite capable of doing that work. So get on the internet, go to the embassy web site or go to the consulate web site in Ho Chi Minh City and you will find a great deal of information there that I hope will be helpful.

VietnamNet: Not only Vietnam gives high emphasis on education. The U.S. is also paying a lot of attention to education. Recently in the swearing in speech when she took office, the President of Harvard, Ms. Drew Faust, she said there should be new thinking with regard to higher education. So as the U.S. Ambassador here, do you have any ideas regarding new thinking on higher education?

Ambassador Michalak: Well, you mean new thinking like should I get some higher education? [Laughter]. Maybe I should.

I think that in the United States there is always room for new thinking. People are thinking about new ways to educate all the time. I think that you're right, the President of Harvard did make a call for some new thinking in higher education and even at her swearing in ceremony, Henrietta Fore, who is the new Director of our USAID program also called for some new thinking in education. Her focus was more on public/private sector partnerships to see how we can work together to improve education around the world. I hope that in the educational meeting that I intend to have when I talk to our universities and when I talk to our companies, that we will be able to come up with some new kind of thinking on higher education.

So I think there’s always room for new thinking in every field and there’s always new thinking going on, certainly within the United States and definitely in other places around the world. I believe also there’s new thinking going on here in Vietnam as the Education Minister calls for 20,000 PhDs over the next ten years. This is very imaginative thinking, very ambitious thinking, and we want to do whatever we can to try and help Vietnam achieve that goal.

VietnamNet: In your opinion how many of those 20,000 doctors will the U.S. train for Vietnam? How many thousand will that be?

Ambassador Michalak: The Minister has asked for 2,500. We’ll see what we can do.

VietnamNet: Last year there was a conference for alumni of Harvard University in New Delhi and Mr. Larry Summers, a former President of Harvard, he said in his speech that the U.S. has to change its thinking and has to change its look at the world. The U.S. should go to other countries to find out what they are like, not just sit there in the U.S. and think about other countries. He also suggested that Harvard professors must do the same thing. What do you think about that?

Ambassador Michalak: Sure, why not? [Laughter]. I think that there have always been people in the United States who believe that the number of internationally minded people in the United States is too small. I must admit I have been one of those people myself, thinking that we do need to become more international. But I’m not sure that this is a new process. I think that over the past five or ten years the entire world has been undergoing the process of globalization. I think globalization is forcing people to become more international, to understand more about the linkages between one’s own country and the outside world than ever before.

I was just reading a press article this morning which said that, at the University of Delaware, 70 percent of students have studied abroad at one time or another. For their MBA program it is a requirement that their students pass at least five courses that are taught in a second language other than English. There are many universities, Duke University is one; I think University of Washington, Washington State, is another. There are many universities now who take their MBA students on a summer program, go to a foreign country, and do case studies on various policy issues or on various industrial issues in those countries. I’m sure you know Harvard professors are forever traveling all over the world.

So I think the kind of process that Larry Summers was talking about is already happening all over the United States and indeed all over the world in countries that want to succeed, countries like Vietnam. People understand you have to travel in order to really be able to call yourself an educated person.

VietnamNet: The process of globalization is very important and also it leads to the concept of the global citizen. VietnamNet has been trying to raise the awareness about the concept of global citizenship among the VietnamNet audience and viewers, about how we live and study and work in this global environment. What is the U.S. doing regarding the same issue now? How does the U.S. educate people about that, for example, how to think about globalization, think about global citizen?

Ambassador Michalak: That’s a really good question. That’s actually a very very big question.

Before I get into that though, I was just passed a note here. Earlier I said that you can go to the American embassy and the American consulate web sites for information. I just happen to have those web site addresses right here. I don’t know if you can see that, but if you can’t it says “http://vietnam.usembassy.gov” and that’s the site for the American embassy here in Hanoi. “http://hochiminh.usconsulate.gov” is the web site for the American consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. So those are the addresses you can go to and you’ll be able to find a lot of information on how to apply for a visa for a university, how to get financial assistance. You’ll be able to look up many different kinds of universities and try to decide which one is right for you. We welcome Vietnamese students and these web sites will be able to help you find a good school in the U.S..

To get back to your question, I believe your question was how does the U.S. now think about global citizenship and how do we think about globalization in the context of the United States.

I think that, well, it kind of depends on what you mean. The internet certainly has made everybody in the U.S. a citizen of more than their own neighborhood. My daughter talks every night to her friends in Washington, D.C. from here in Hanoi. I keep in touch with friends all over the world every day using the internet. If I ever have a question about one of my computer problems, the chances are I will get on the internet and start a chat who somebody could be in India or the Philippines or Nebraska.

So one thing the internet has done is it’s made our world come to us in the size of a computer screen. Just about every university in America now requires that their students have a laptop computer. Even my daughter, going to high school here in Hanoi, has to have a computer to do her homework because the teacher always says your homework is at this web site. Go do it. Whether that web site is in Vietnam or whether it’s in the U.S. or whether it’s in Europe, I have no idea and it really doesn’t matter.

So I think that what globalization has come to mean has been global supply chains where you have bits of product being supplied from all over the world that comes together and is delivered to the final consumer. That product can be a Ford automobile, it can be a pair of Nike shoes part of which are assembled right here in Vietnam, or it can be an educational degree. So the same way that a product manager has to be able to integrate supply from all over the world to produce his final product, I think these days professors and teachers have to be integrators to be able to assemble the knowledge and experience that comes from all over the world into the kind of product that they can deliver to their students. At least that’s my view of it.

VietnamNet: There are too many questions for you. I don’t think you can answer all, but we will filter the questions.

We have another question for you. Before you arrived in Vietnam what do you think about Vietnam and what did you understand about the Vietnamese education sector?

Ambassador Michalak: I understood almost nothing about the Vietnamese education sector. But I have lived in Asia before and I imagined that the Vietnamese people would highly value education.

Before I came to Vietnam, I really did not know what to expect. I had heard that Vietnam was growing very rapidly, particularly after the signing of the bilateral trade agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam, but I never imagined how exciting a place it really is.

When I came to Vietnam I think I was very pleasantly surprised by a couple of things. Number one was the tremendous warmth and outgoing qualities of the people of Vietnam and also their decide to succeed and their desire to work hard and to make Vietnam a better place. I’m very happy that we from the U.S. can help out in that process.

VietnamNet: One of our viewers asks, he’s in Ho Chi Minh City, why to this moment the U.S. has not become the biggest investor in Vietnam?

Ambassador Michalak: [Laughter]. I get that question a lot. A very simple answer is the U.S. doesn’t care, U.S. companies don’t care if they’re the number one investor or not. They don’t make investments to become number one investor. U.S. investors look over the entire world and try to find the best investment opportunities. Right now they’re looking very hard at Vietnam because they’re seeing a lot of investment opportunities here. In fact some people have told me that you have to be careful about those numbers, about the numbers of who’s number one, number two, et cetera.

This is also another example of globalization. For instance, one American company invested a billion dollars in a plant very near Ho Chi Minh City, but that investment came out of its Hong Kong office, so it’s counted as a Hong Kong investment and not a U.S. investment. But this is still an American company. So I don’t really look at the numbers, I look at what kind of American companies are here. You’ve got Intel, a huge company in semiconductors. You’ve got General Electric, a very big company in wind turbines looking at plants, jet engines, looking at a number of different investments. You have CitiBank that definitely wants to be a major player in the financial sector here. We have energy companies. Alcoa wants to get into aluminum. Gannon wants to get into building power plants. There are a lot of companies out there that really are ready to come in. Some of them just need the government’s approval to go ahead on these projects.

I can talk a lot about the investment climate, but maybe you want to get to some other questions here.

VietnamNet: During the visit to the U.S. by President Nguyen Minh Triet at an event at the White House, President Triet and President Bush said that the government of the U.S. and the government of Vietnam will hold hands, look forward to the future, to build a better future for the two nations, for the two people, for the two governments. So as the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam in such a new context, what should be done in order to improve the mutual understanding? And what will the U.S. government do to help Vietnam to develop and grow to become a better country?

Ambassador Michalak: Well, ultimately it is the Vietnamese people and the Vietnamese government that have to decide how they want to grow and what kind of a country they would like to be five or ten years from now. The United States can offer advice and we can offer comments and we usually have advice and comments on pretty much every subject in the world.

When I came to Vietnam, when I talked to President Triet and when I talked with Prime Minister Dzung and many of the high level representatives of the Vietnamese government, I told them all that I have three basic priorities here. I think these three priorities can help very much to improve the quality of life in Vietnam.

My first priority is to continue to encourage the government of Vietnam to make progress on human rights. There is no doubt that the current situation in Vietnam is much better than it was five or ten or fifteen years ago. But we believe there are still many areas in which the government can further improve and even President Triet and Prime Minister Dzung have said sure, we’d like to talk about that.

The second priority is to deepen and strengthen our economic and commercial relationship. The U.S. is now, I believe, the largest market for Vietnamese exports and we very much want to continue to encourage American companies to take a look at Vietnam and invest here. But I think there are a lot of improvements. Vietnam has made some tremendous improvements in the economy up to now, but in order to take it to the next level, I think that Vietnam has to make some more difficult decisions in terms of regulatory reform, anti-corruption, transparency, things like that.

My third priority is education and we’ve already talked about that. But you know that we both believe this is essential for Vietnam’s continued development, and we’re certainly very pleased to be able to work as much as we can with Vietnam on that priority.

VietnamNet: Among your three top priorities, your number one priority is human rights. Vietnam, of course, will have to grow, but Vietnam has a very unique history and Vietnam is very different from other countries. So do you think that Vietnam might be able to take step by step action in the area of human rights rather than follow all the specific criteria regarding human rights as they do in other countries?

Ambassador Michalak: Well, I think there are many people who would like to see multi-party elections in Vietnam tomorrow, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

There are several issues that I could bring up but I think the one that’s the most important is that we don’t believe that people should be put in jail for free expression of political views, even if those political views are not the same as those of the government. That’s why we have joined with other countries in calling for the release of Father Ly and other people who are in prison for what we believe is expression of their own political views.

And remember, we’ve got some differences with the government of Vietnam on this and we will continue our discussions on this. Prime Minister Dzung and President Triet and others in the Foreign Ministry as well have been very willing to continue our discussion and to see if there are areas where we can agree.

VietnamNet: There are many people including American people who think that because Vietnam and the U.S. have different historic conditions, some American standards, some American thinking may not be suitable to Vietnam. Do you share that opinion?

Ambassador Michalak: Well, I think that’s what we have to talk about. There are certain things, for instance in the various international agreements on human rights. Some of those principles are in, for example the International Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We believe that those principles do come out and say that freedom of expression of political views is universal and the government of Vietnam has signed on to those conventions. So somehow there’s a difference in interpretation here. Maybe we have to find out what that is and talk about it some more.

VietnamNet: I agree with you, but there are certain American standards that are not good and America itself is not happy about certain American standards - for example the use of guns. It has led to many killings at several schools. So that’s what I say, certain American standards are not good for Vietnam. Do you think so?

Ambassador Michalak: I think particularly that example, I think that’s a good example. We do have people in the United States who feel both ways. We have people who feel that it is a right under our Constitution to be able to own a gun. They believe that right should be unlimited. There are others who believe that right should be very severely limited. But both can express their views freely, they debate the issues, and in some occasions one side wins, in some occasions the other side wins. So far we have not come to a national consensus on what we need to do about controlling guns. And you’ll notice that I said peaceful expression of political views.

The United States does not support those who advocate violence or violent overthrow of governments or things of that nature. In fact there was a case very recently where a Vietnamese American was convicted of terrorism because he tried to bomb a Vietnamese embassy in the Philippines. He was caught, he was brought to the U.S., we tried and convicted him and he’s in jail. But if that man wanted to have a demonstration and walk in front of the White House and say, “Down with President Bush’s government,” that’s fine.

So we think peaceful expression, okay. Anything that is violent, no.

VietnamNet: In Vietnam now many people can write in their blogs and express their ideas, and in many newspapers there are forums for normal citizens to express their ideas publicly and even criticize some government policies. So what do you think about this fact?

Ambassador Michalak: I think if that’s true it is wonderful and that same idea should be expanded to public statements and to other forms of expression.

VietnamNet: I think developing countries should have their certain priorities, like you, you come here, you have three priorities for your term. Vietnam now is a developing country. Do you think that Vietnam now should give priorities to developing its economy, should give priority to raising the competitiveness and develop its human resources rather than focus on the right of freedom of expression? What do you think?

Ambassador Michalak: I certainly believe that you need to work on all three of these things together. Certainly, I think your government can work on all these things together. The government is working on economic development, it is working on human resource development, and it’s working in the religious field. I think that the government of Vietnam has made some great strides in making it possible for just about anyone to practice their religion freely here. So I think it is possible to work on all three things at the same time and I would certainly encourage the government to do so.

There are still issues. There are issues in economic development, there are issues in education development, and there are issues in human rights development. So I think that one of my jobs here is work on all three of these things at the same time, and so far I’ve found the government, well in some areas it doesn’t move as fast as others but it does at least listen and I hope that we can make some progress in the future.

VietnamNet: I think that governments anywhere work for the benefit of the people, for their welfare. The U.S. government and the Vietnamese government are the same, in that each serves their people. And in Vietnam, VietnamNet conducts some surveys and through these surveys we learned that people care more about economic development; they care more about equal, fair competition between state owned enterprises and private enterprises; they do not care much about political issues; they do not care much about political freedom. They themselves consider that they are free enough. They said they can write their blog and they can discuss political issues at public places like tea stands, tea pubs. So do you think that we should listen to the people rather than making them do what we think they shout do and say that we are doing something for the people, when those are things they do not care about?

Ambassador Michalak: Well, if they don’t care about it then there’s no harm in making it totally free.

VietnamNet: In Vietnam in fact we think that the government does not restrict the right to express or to analyze the situation, but there are some people who are extremists. They use provocative, they have provocative expression and their statements cause instability. So do you think we should support them?

Ambassador Michalak: It seems to me that a government that is providing eight percent annual growth, that has had huge successes in lifting most of its population out of poverty, I don’t think it has anything to fear from a few people who may have somewhat extreme views.

I’ve had congressmen from the U.S. who come to Vietnam and we talk about these kinds of issues. They’ve said “I don’t see why they don’t have elections. In my district, if I had this kind of economic growth and I had this kind of economic force, I could get reelected forever.” [Laughter].

VietnamNet: I think each person has his own thinking. For example, I think you are used to an environment in which competition is free. Everybody has to compete and you feel self confident. But other people, they do not live in such an environment so they have certain fear and they do not have self confidence. They do not know what to expect.

I would like to tell about myself, an example. When I first left Vietnam I also, I was also very careful. I had to test the water. But now I’m very confident. I can talk with you very confidently. So do you think that with these things, we need time for all the natural development?

Ambassador Michalak: Well, it didn’t take you very long to become confident, I know. When I look around in Vietnam I see a lot of confident people. That’s one of the things that is so impressive about Vietnam. That’s why I would say I think you’ve got to trust people and I think people, like you said, maybe they’re very happy. I know they’re much better off now than they have been for some time. That’s why I think that allowing freedom of expression, which is something that I think is in several of these international human rights agreements should not be anything that is scary for Vietnam. I think you’re very much big boys now. You can handle it.

VietnamNet: Recently I had a trip and I talked with many Americans including professors, MBA students and congressmen. I learned that it is amazing that many of them do not have sufficient information on Vietnam and they misunderstood Vietnam. They didn’t know that in Vietnam people can write their blogs freely or many people can discuss political issues freely. They are very surprised when I told them about that. They do not know things that you know. So as the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, what will you do to help the U.S., the American people, the government and the Congress understand Vietnam correctly so that they will have the right decisions toward Vietnam, the right policies toward Vietnam?

Ambassador Michalak: That’s a very good question. What I do is that everyday I send messages back to the United States regarding what is going on here in Vietnam. That is why I need to get out, to travel in Vietnam, to meet the people of Vietnam, so when I report back to Washington I have a good view of what is going on here in Vietnam. But I encourage high level visitors to come to Vietnam because almost everyone that does come leaves with a very different impression of Vietnam. And I would encourage Vietnam to continue to open up, because the more open Vietnam becomes the more other people will be able to see and hear and understand what’s going on.

Some of it is that you get a lot of bad publicity in the United States. People who believe that they were not able to say what they wanted to say or do what they wanted to do. Oftentimes we have to go out and investigate these cases to see, is it true? Mr. X says this happened. We oftentimes hear about it from the United States and we go out and try to check, did this happen. Sometimes it did happen, then we have an issue with the government. But sometimes, it is totally wrong, nothing like that happened.

So by our reporting, by our being able to go wherever we want to freely, we do get a chance to send correct information back to Washington. By encouraging visitors to come from the U.S., they get a generally good impression of Vietnam.

But I also think that Vietnamese need to go to the United States and learn more about the United States. See how confident and strong you’ve become by just going to a great U.S. university.

So this kind of people-to-people interchange is to my mind the best way to expand understanding and to make clearer to both sides what we think.

VietnamNet: I think to make that happen you should give us visas more easily. Do you think that the U.S. embassy will grant visas more easily to Vietnamese people?

Ambassador Michalak: We grant visas to all bonafide visitors without any problem. And like I said, we just increased the number of student visas, it’s just gone up 54 percent. Not bad, I’d say.

VietnamNet: We would like to thank you for participating in this web chat and exchanging your ideas with our viewers and readers. We also would like to wish you success in your term. We hope that it will help to make the Vietnam-U.S. relations grow better and also help to promote better understanding of Vietnam and to help make the relationship to become mutually beneficial, and both sides win in this situation. I think that one of the sources that can help you write a better report is through VietnamNet because we have four million viewers every day and they contribute a lot of ideas.

Ambassador Michalak: That’s great. I would be delighted to come back at any time and continue our discussion. Thank you very much.

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