The 32nd WORKSHOP
 14 April 2007 (Sat), GRIPS Campus in Tokyo, 14:00-17:00

Subject:
"The Needs for Endogenous Development in the Era of Globalization:
The Case of Thanh Hoa Province (Vietnam)"

by
Ms. Do My Hien
(PhD student, Nagoya Univ.)

 

Summary

In this workshop, VDF-Tokyo welcomed Ms. Do My Hien, a PhD student of Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University. The main objectives of the presentation were to review endogenous development theories with some practical applications, and discuss how to design a such development model for Thanh Hoaa north central coast province in Vietnam.  

Ms. Hien began the presentation by explaining her research motivation. Her surveys in 2004 at some villages in Thanh Hoa province showed that, although most of the people living there were facing poverty due to various reasons, they all agreed that their lives would have been better if they could get more resources to improve human development through education. Moreover, changes in local policies also did change poverty incidence of many people there. Ms. Hien then made an overview of Thanh Hoa’s potentials in terms of geography, population and economy to show possible conditions for an endogenous development model in this province.  

Going further with the possible application of endogenous development models under globalization, Ms. Hien proposed three hypotheses, in which human resources would play an important role. These hypotheses also showed that, with globalization advantages, endogenous development would bring more fruitful results than it could. From these hypotheses, Ms. Hien then raised three main research questions, which would see how endogenous development factors and globalization context interact with each other.   

Before reaching the case study for Thanh Hoa province, the presenter made a literature review about endogenous development theories, which were proposed by a number of scholars from Japan, Europe, and Latin America. Also, the presentation provided a list of countries applying these development models with different experiences. Among them were Bangladesh, Malaysia and the Philippines in Asia; and Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Guatemala in Latin America. All these theories and examples showed that good human resources and stable and good macroeconomic policies were the determinants of successful endogenous development. For the case of Thanh Hoa, Ms. Hien proposed a development model, in which good public-private partnership (PPP) would be central factor. It indicated that “Win-Win-Win” process between local government, local producers and local consumers would be gained under market economy and globalization. The presenter also said that, in order to achieve such expected process, numerous types of policy formulations, such as “bottom-up” or “top-down”, needed to be considered. At the end of her presentation, Ms. Hien admitted that this was only initial idea for developing such endogenous development model in Vietnam, particularly in Thanh Hoa province, and therefore she would like to discuss and receive more comments from participants to make her research more concrete.

Starting the Q&A session, Prof. Kenichi Ohno (GRIPS&VDF) asked Ms. Hien to explain more concretely about her analysis on the relation between endogenous development and globalization because these two aspects seemed to be contrary. More importantly, Prof. Ohno wondered how the presenter’s model would work as endogenous development ideas were usually anti-globalization. In response, Ms. Hien said that her model would deal with two aspects: on the one hand, how local areas could use their own resources, especially human resources, for development; and on the other hand, how these areas could take advantage of globalization to promote further development. 

Regarding resource allocation, Prof. Ohno also suggested Ms. Hien consider the case of labor migration and the growing role of remittances in the development of many local areas in Vietnam. Moreover, he also provided some experiences of “one village, one product” in Japan to see advantages and drawbacks of such model in different development stages, in which opportunity costs and externalities would be obvious. He also emphasized that globalization would always create winners and losers, so that any countries and local areas needed to know their positions in the global games. To work with endogenous development under globalization in the local areas like Thanh Hoa in Vietnam, we must need local innovators or dynamic leaders. Overall, in addition to good human resources, the most important factor would be stable and good policy choices as they would support local development under rapid globalization process. 

Mr. Vu Tuan Khai (Yokohama National University [YNU] & VDF-Tokyo) commented that the proposed model seemed to be only short-term solution for development because he thought that exchanges of goods and services in both domestic and international markets would definitely provide people better lives. In her answer, Ms. Hien said that she agreed with him to some extent. In her model, however, policy options for using human and other resources would be dependent on the current context of local areas as well as short-term and long-term development strategies.  

Mr. Vu Hoang Nam (GRIPS) also sent to Ms. Hien some questions about her presentation, though he could not participate in the workshop. In particular, he wondered about the comparative study on endogenous development between Thanh Hoa province and Nagano and Nagasaki (Japan) because they had very different characteristics and development levels. In addition, he would like to know how Ms. Hien would integrate analysis of globalization, which was usually understood at national level, with local development framework. For the first question, Ms. Hien elucidated that the cases of Nagano and Nagasaki would be explored to see how the use of local resources and national and local policies under globalization had influenced the development of these areas. From their experiences, some lessons would be proposed to Thanh Hoa province's area with some similar geographic characteristics. For the second question, Ms. Hien responded that the scope of framework might be different, but the core factors, such as human resource and appropriate policy options, must be considered similarly at any level.        

At the end of the presentation, Ms. Hien thanked all the participants for comments and suggestions. She said that more concrete information would be exchanged in the coming time. We then had a half hour for informal meeting, in which some research activities, including forthcoming VDF-Tokyo Third Conference and books, were announced.   

 Paper (PDF 201KB) | Slides (PDF 204 KB)                  

 (By Giang Thanh Long) revised on 22May07

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