Vietnam has been growing quite well in the past few decades. It has somehow already transitioned from a largely agricultural country to agro-industrial, from poor to middle income. Manufacturing has been continuously expanding. Thanks to the large and cheap labor market, it has become a very good alternative to China. It has really stood up as a great investment country especially in Asia. Personally, I'm amazed that certain brands I really admire like Nike, Deuter, Columbia, Osprey, and others are now coming from Vietnam.
It means that they moved from a country that was primarily oriented towards agriculture to a country that cheaply rents its workers to large global corporations that produce expensive brands for low wages. It is really a great success, especially if we only look at numbers and percentages, but do people live better, are they happy to work in bad conditions for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week?
I'm simply talking of the country's GDP. It's indeed consistently increasing. In short, the country is indeed getting rich. Infrastructures are improving so much.
In terms of agriculture, technologies are also getting a lot better. Vietnam is now exporting agricultural products. But on top of this, they are actually exporting electronics and electrical equipment, mobile phones and telephones as well.
But I'm not talking about the living conditions of the people. It's one thing for a country to have nice GDP figures; it's another to have a high standard of living. China also has a dragon economy. But how's the millions of Chinese at the bottom? They're living in dire poverty.