Will you laugh happily at this?

I don't know the exact story but I was told that the little arrogant and irritating Tris was beaten up by some random guys who didn't want to hear his bullshit.

I was delighted to hear that story and decided to share this on my blog (as Sam doesn't want to invade Tris' "privacy"). By doing this, I believe I will create a great deal of positive externalities ...

So have fun laughing at this little rat !!! (oops sorry, I shouldn't insult the rat)

Also, I am not aware of any retarded person who proudly posted his photos of being beaten up in his personal page. I guess he wanted us to enjoy the scene.




Come on, you guys have to admit that looking at these faces makes us feel much better than looking at his normal face.

Several journalists arrested in Vietnam

May 13, 2008

President Nguyen Minh Triet
Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Office of the State
1 Bach Thao
Hanoi, Vietnam

Via facsimile: +84 4 823-1872

Dear President Nguyen:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by the recent spate of arrests, detentions, and trials of journalists in Vietnam. Even though Article 69 of your country’s constitution broadly protects press freedom and freedom of expression, your government has continued to use criminal and national security laws to arbitrarily stifle these essential freedoms.

There are several current cases that are cause for our concern:

Somsak Khunmi, a long-time news assistant and contributor to Chan Troi Moi (Radio New Horizon) was sentenced today to nine months in prison and three years probation following a six-hour trial today on terrorism charges at the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City. He was first detained on November 17 along with French-Vietnamese reporter Nguyen Thi Thanh Van and a group of political activists associated with the pro-democracy Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party). At the time, he was working as a sound recordist for Radio New Horizon. Nguyen was released in December after international pressure.

Authorities say Somsak, a Thai citizen whose Vietnamese name is Nguyen Quoc Hai, attempted to distribute pro-democracy fliers in violation of Article 84, Section 3 of Vietnam’s penal code. But we are concerned that his detention has more to do with his and Nguyen’s reporting on an earlier protest held in Ho Chi Minh City by aggrieved farmers who had been pushed off their land by state authorities.

On Monday, Nguyen Van Hai and Nguyen Viet Chien, who work respectively for the Vietnamese-language daily newspapers Tuoi Tre (Youth) and Thanh Nien (Young People), were arrested and imprisoned. The two local reporters were instrumental in breaking news in 2006 about the “PMU-18” scandal, in which senior transport ministry officials allegedly embezzled state funds to wager on international football matches. The officials eventually stepped down. At the time, the case was seen as a possible indicator of your government’s acceptance of a freer role for the media. Now, the two journalists have been charged with “abuse of power” and could be held for as long as four months while authorities conduct their investigations, according to news reports.

A third case of concern is the April 29 arrest of a U.S. citizen, Le Hong Thien, who was apprehended by security police in Ho Chi Minh City while covering the Olympic torch relay. Thien is the U.S.-based editor of the Gia Dinh, according to a joint statement released by both publications. He is also a contributor to the Japan- and U.S.-based Chan Troi Moi, which is broadcast on AM and heard throughout Vietnam.

According to the publications’ statement, Thien has been interrogated for several days by police and is currently being held under house arrest at his brother’s home in Saigon. Police have also confiscated his passport even though no formal charges have been lodged against him.

President Nguyen, Vietnam has continued to detain, harass, and jail journalists, and stifle reporting critical of the government. We call on you to reverse these policies as Vietnam enlarges its role on the world stage, and work to promote and protect—rather than undermine—the basic democratic principles of press freedom and freedom of expression.

Thank you for your attention. We anticipate your prompt reply.

Joel Simon
Executive Director

Two wheels good, four wheels better (The Economist)

The rich are ever more visible--but where are the poor?

As ostentatious gestures go, splashing out $1.5m (including taxes) to have a custom-made Rolls-Royce Phantom air-mailed to you half-way around the world takes some beating. But Duong Thi Bach Diep, one of Vietnam's new breed of property tycoons, was tiring of being driven round in a mere BMW. "I cried when I first saw it," she told reporters in January. "All the security and customs officials at the airport shared the joy with me when it arrived." Naturally her motives were patriotic and noble: "This will show the world that Vietnam is not a country of poverty and war but a lucrative market."

So it is, these days. And despite remaining nominally communist, Vietnam, like China, is now a country where it is all right to flaunt what you have. Ms Diep's Roller arrived two months after the first consignment of Porsches landed in Vietnam. In the cities, sleek black Mercedes cars glide among the buzzing swarm of motorbikes on the ever more congested streets. The Mercedes factory in Ho Chi Minh City has a five-month waiting list for some models. The country's state-controlled press enthusiastically prints league tables such as the top 20 stockmarket tycoons and the 50 richest women in Vietnam (Ms Diep is not even in the top ten).

Even in the countryside, signs of wealth are becoming increasingly visible. Visiting Quang Ngai, a quiet town set among rice paddies, your correspondent was startled by a snappily dressed young Vietnamese couple flashing down the main street in an open-topped red Ford Mustang. The town has quite a few bank branches (farmers are coining it, thanks to high rice prices) and smart shops selling fancy clothes.

Watch the extremes

All this prosperity is hard to square with the official figure for Vietnam's GDP per person, a mere $839. Even after allowing for higher purchasing power in a low-cost country, the World Bank puts national income per person at only $3,300, below that of several sub-Saharan African states. There must be huge numbers of dirt-poor people to bring the average down, but where are they? Despite waves of migration to the cities, there are no shanty-towns to be found on their peripheries. There are a few beggars and pavement-dwellers on the city streets, but notably fewer than in officially richer Bangkok.

Ralf Matthaes, the boss in Vietnam of TNS, a market-research firm, thinks there must be something amiss with the figures. In a recent survey of the country's "deep rural" zones he found surging numbers of consumers: one-third of the people in such areas already have mobile phones, which cost at least $100 apiece--a whole month's income for this slice of the population, according to the official figures. More than nine out of ten rural homes now have cookers and televisions.

The explanation may lie in Vietnam's age-old tradition of hiding wealth from the authorities. When TNS asked a sample of consumers to keep spending diaries, the incomings and outgoings of the very poorest roughly tallied but better-off consumers were spending up to seven times their declared incomes. Plenty of people run micro-businesses alongside their formal jobs. Until 2000, when private firms were officially recognised, many prosperous people had no legal way to explain their wealth, so they got used to hiding it.

A big rural electrification programme has brought power supplies to more than 90% of Vietnamese homes. Almost all children now enter lower secondary school and nearly two-thirds stay on to upper secondary level. Increasingly, deep poverty is confined to small communities of ethnic minorities in remote mountain areas. Health services are expanding, though from a low base: a recent study by the Lancet, a medical journal, found that around a third of Vietnamese children under five years old were still below their expected height because of poor nutrition.

A welfare system along European lines is slowly emerging. In 2003 the social-security system, providing cover against sickness and work accidents as well as pensions, was extended from state employees to private-sector workers. A national unemployment-insurance scheme is due to start up next year. A 2006 study by the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences concluded that the country could now afford a universal old-age pension.

Over the past decade or so of rapid growth, the country's Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, has hardly budged. But then the coefficient is an attempt to sum up all income differences in a single number. In Vietnam it may be the rapid expansion of the middle class that has kept the index steady, despite the creation of so many limousine-buying millionaires. What the government may need to start worrying about in the coming years is not the average but the two extreme ends of the income scale.

In recent months rising world commodity prices and Vietnam's economic boom have sent prices soaring: in the year to February, food prices rose by over 30% and housing and construction costs by more than 20%. Low-income workers who have moved from the country to the city no longer grow rice but still want to eat it. If they are tenants, they are facing steep rent rises and the possibility of eviction, whereas property owners stand a fair chance of compensation when their home is demolished for redevelopment. Rising prices and a growing shortage of affordable housing may be helping to create a new low-paid urban underclass.

A small but visible underclass; an ever more ostentatious millionaire set; and a concerned middle class in-between. Could this one day cause social unrest in placid Vietnam? Richer countries have found that the extreme ends of the income spectrum can cause disquiet even when, overall, everyone is pretty well off and getting more so. Despite its attempts to create social safety-nets, Vietnam's government may increasingly have to contend with this particular problem of success.

Gini Coefficients - Income inequality

The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion most prominently used as a measure of inequality of income distribution or inequality of wealth distribution.

It is defined as a ratio with values between 0 and 1: A low Gini coefficient indicates more equal income or wealth distribution, while a high Gini coefficient indicates more unequal distribution. 0 corresponds to perfect equality (everyone having exactly the same income) and 1 corresponds to perfect inequality (where one person has all the income, while everyone else has zero income). The Gini coefficient requires that no one have a negative net income or wealth.

The Gini coefficient was developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper "Variability and Mutability".

Gini coefficient is measured as the area above the Lorenz Curve and below the diagonal. Because the Lorenz curve is unknown, different approach to approximate the curve produces slightly different Gini coefficients.

Using the Gini can help quantify differences in welfare and compensation policies and philosophies. However it should be borne in mind that the Gini coefficient can be misleading when used to make political comparisons between large and small countries.

Worldwide, Gini coefficients range from approximately 0.249 in Japan to 0.707 in Namibia. While most developed European nations tend to have Gini indices between 24 and 36, the United States' and Mexico's Gini indices are both above 40, indicating that the United States and Mexico have greater inequality.

Poor countries (those with low per-capita GDP) have Gini indices that fall over the whole range from low (25) to high (71), while rich countries generally have intermediate Gini indices (under 40). The lowest Gini coefficients can be found in Japan, Scandinavian countries, and in many recently ex-socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Note that in many of the former socialist countries, the sizeable underground economy hides income for many. In such a case, earning/wealth statistics over-represent certain income ranges (i.e., in lower-income regions), and may decrease the Gini coefficient even in the presence of real inequality.

Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History

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FOR many Tibetans, the case for the historical independence of their land is unequivocal. They assert that Tibet has always been and by rights now ought to be an independent country. China’s assertions are equally unequivocal: Tibet became a part of China during Mongol rule and its status as a part of China has never changed. Both of these assertions are at odds with Tibet’s history.

The Tibetan view holds that Tibet was never subject to foreign rule after it emerged in the mid-seventh century as a dynamic power holding sway over an Inner Asian empire. These Tibetans say the appearance of subjugation to the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, and to the Manchu rulers of China’s Qing Dynasty from the 18th century until the 20th century, is due to a modern, largely Western misunderstanding of the personal relations among the Yuan and Qing emperors and the pre-eminent lamas of Tibet. In this view, the lamas simply served as spiritual mentors to the emperors, with no compromise of Tibet’s independent status.

In China’s view, the Western misunderstandings are about the nature of China: Western critics don’t understand that China has a history of thousands of years as a unified multinational state; all of its nationalities are Chinese. The Mongols, who entered China as conquerers, are claimed as Chinese, and their subjugation of Tibet is claimed as a Chinese subjugation.

Here are the facts. The claim that Tibet entertained only personal relations with China at the leadership level is easily rebutted. Administrative records and dynastic histories outline the governing structures of Mongol and Manchu rule. These make it clear that Tibet was subject to rules, laws and decisions made by the Yuan and Qing rulers. Tibet was not independent during these two periods. One of the Tibetan cabinet ministers summoned to Beijing at the end of the 18th century describes himself unambiguously in his memoirs as a subject of the Manchu emperor.

But although Tibet did submit to the Mongol and Manchu Empires, neither attached Tibet to China. The same documentary record that shows Tibetan subjugation to the Mongols and Manchus also shows that China’s intervening Ming Dynasty (which ruled from 1368 to 1644) had no control over Tibet. This is problematic, given China’s insistence that Chinese sovereignty was exercised in an unbroken line from the 13th century onward.

The idea that Tibet became part of China in the 13th century is a very recent construction. In the early part of the 20th century, Chinese writers generally dated the annexation of Tibet to the 18th century. They described Tibet’s status under the Qing with a term that designates a “feudal dependency,” not an integral part of a country. And that’s because Tibet was ruled as such, within the empires of the Mongols and the Manchus. When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, Tibet became independent once more.

From 1912 until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, no Chinese government exercised control over what is today China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama’s government alone ruled the land until 1951.

Marxist China adopted the linguistic sleight of hand that asserts it has always been a unitary multinational country, not the hub of empires. There is now firm insistence that “Han,” actually one of several ethnonyms for “Chinese,” refers to only one of the Chinese nationalities. This was a conscious decision of those who constructed 20th-century Chinese identity. (It stands in contrast to the Russian decision to use a political term, “Soviet,” for the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.)

There is something less to the arguments of both sides, but the argument of the Chinese side is weaker. Tibet was not "Chinese" until Mao Zedong's armies marched in and made it so.

ODA effectiveness

Doing ODA project - dirty business. Want some evidences:

(1) Project A: millions USD budget, financed by WB and some other big donors. Objectives: capacity building for government officers (all countries). Procurement to find consultants for the project with "implied rate of return" to Project Management Unit (PMU) = 20%. That is: consultants who win the project will get pay from the Project. Then, they need to "return" to PMU 20% of the fee they receive for doing consulting work. Of course, consultants know about this, so they privately negotiate the fee (price) and rate of return with PMU. To make profit, they mark up the consultant fee to include the "return" ... So a part of the ODA money (which is supposed to spend on training or facilities to government offices) is channel into some people's pockets.

(2) Project B: financed by some donors, assigned to Ministry of Justice. PMU negotiated with consultants openly that they need to "cut back" at least 30% of their fee, and payable immediately after each payment.

(3) Project C: financed by ADB, infrastructure project for the poor. Project completed. PMU leaders visited the site for "evaluation". Toward the end of the evaluation meeting, the leader informed that there would be a new project on infastructure for the poor and the Ministry is consider some provinces which might be allocated the project. This implies we will consider you if you are "nice" to us. The result: the evaluation team was invited to best restaurants for the following two days; best hotel arrangment; each delegate of the evaluation team received $200 as "farewell present" (not sure how much the leader received, but no less of course). The evaluation team had 15 members. The "farewell present" money came from provincial budget, under "misc items".

And more ...

The number of project currently implementing (and has been implemented) in this country is thousands. Some simple calculation will tell you how much ODA (development money) has been channeled from donors to the rich officers and people who involved in project management, instead of to the poor - the targeted group of ODA.

Effectiveness !!! Big question

How War Hero John Mccain Betrayed The Vietnamese Peasant Who Saved His Life

Your judgement: How many percent of the story "John McCain betrayed his Vietnamese savior" do you think is true?

In all the tales of wartime courage peppering John McCain's presidential campaign trail, perhaps the most outstanding example of selfless heroism involves not the candidate but a humble Vietnamese peasant.

On October 26, 1967, Mai Van On ran from the safety of a bomb shelter at the height of an air raid and swam out into the lake where Lieutenant Commander McCain was drowning, tangled in his parachute cord after ejecting when his Skyhawk bomber was hit by a missile.

In an extraordinary act of compassion at a time when Vietnamese citizens were being killed by US aerial bombardments, he pulled a barely conscious McCain to the lake surface and, with the help of a neighbour, dragged him towards the shore. And when a furious mob at the water's edge began to beat and stab the captured pilot, Mr On drove them back.

Nearly three decades later, a Vietnamese government commission confirmed he was indeed the rescuer and, in a 1996 meeting in Hanoi, McCain embraced and thanked Mr On and presented him with a Senate memento.

From that brief encounter to his death at the age of 88 two years ago, Mr On never heard from the senator again, and three years after their meeting, McCain published an autobiography that makes no mention of his apparent debt to Mr On.

It is a snub Mr On took to his death.

His widow, Bui Thi Lien, 71, said: “In his last years, my husband was very sad sometimes.
He would say, 'Mr McCain has forgotten me.'

"Mr McCain would be dead if it weren't for my husband. He would never have returned to his family and he wouldn't be in the presidential race today.”

Last week on a visit to Britain to meet Gordon Brown, McCain paid tribute to the role played by British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - comments that carried extra weight in the light of McCain's own wartime exploits.

In his 1999 autobiography, Faith Of My Fathers, which laid the ground for his first, unsuccessful run for president in 2000, McCain wrote a Boy's Own-style narrative of his rescue: “When I came to, I was being hauled ashore on two bamboo poles.

To the rescue: John McCain, lying on his back across a bamboo log, is saved by villagers - including Mai Van On - after his jet was shot down in 1967

“A crowd of several hundred Vietnamese gathered around me as I lay dazed before them, shouting wildly at me, stripping my clothes off, spitting on me, kicking and striking me repeatedly.”

What followed, according to McCain, was five-and-a-half years of torture and brutal beatings as a prisoner of war - an account that has given a steely edge to his candidacy by establishing him as a true American war hero.

But the story is at odds with the version uncovered by Vietnam veteran Chuck Searcy, who lives in Hanoi and is in charge of the Vietnam Veteran Memorial Fund.

“In 1995, Mr On gave me a letter he wanted me to deliver to McCain,” said Searcy.

“'It said, 'I am the guy who pulled you out of the lake and I have followed your progress over the years. I wish the best for you and your family and I hope some day you will be president of the United States.'

“I thought it was endearing. I sent the letter to McCain's office and I got back a sniffy response from some assistant saying, 'Mr McCain isn't interested in these fanciful stories.'“

Indeed, claiming to have saved McCain had by then become something of a cottage industry in Hanoi.

Searcy, 63, recalled: “There had been a lot of preposterous claims, but I asked the neighbours around the lake if it was true and they said that was exactly how it happened.”

The story was also confirmed by the Vietnamese government.

Later in 1995, Searcy met McCain at a veterans' reunion in Washington.

He said: “I mentioned the story of Mr On to him, and told him it was true. He said, 'Hell, I would like to meet this guy - I'll set it up.'“

McCain, then a senator closely involved in rebuilding US-Vietnam relations, visited Hanoi in 1996, and a meeting was arranged with Searcy and Mr On.

Searcy said: “Mr On was a wiry little guy. He looked as if he had only ever shaved once or twice and he had his old uniform on.

“He raced up to McCain and kept repeating his name as he embraced him.”

Then, through an interpreter, Mr On recounted the events of that day as McCain listened.

“He launched into a very emotional description,” said Searcy.

“Suddenly they saw this parachute coming down into their small lake. Everybody was afraid because they knew it was an American pilot and they didn't know what to do.

He said he just instinctively grabbed this big bamboo log and threw it into the water and jumped in after it. One of his neighbours joined him and the two of them swam out to the parachute. Apparently McCain had broken both arms and one leg, and had sunk to the bottom, but they pulled him out of the lake.

When they got to the bank, a couple of men attacked McCain, breaking his shoulder with a rifle butt and stabbing his leg, before Mr On stopped them. That day, he saved McCain from drowning and then from maybe being killed by the mob".

McCain listened but there was no dramatic response. He just nodded, said, "Thank you very much" and gave Mr On a little Senate seal.

“It was the kind of thing you buy in the souvenir shop in the Senate basement.

“But Mr On, to the day he died, treated it as if it were a Congressional Medal of Honour.”

But although McCain appeared to believe the story, it was one he would later seem to ignore in his autobiography and there was no more contact between the two men.

When Mr On died in 2006, an email was apparently sent to McCain's office requesting a message of condolence for the family. There was no response.

Whether or not McCain believed Mr On is unclear.

But his refusal to acknowledge his heroism is likely to fuel other, more damaging allegations that McCain exaggerated elements of his PoW ordeal in Hoa Lo prison.

Phung Van Chung, 70, who was a Communist Party official at the time, claims McCain was quickly singled out for softer treatment, adding: “I found out he was the son of an American admiral, so the top people wanted to keep him as a live witness so they could use him for negotiations.”

Mr On's son-in-law, Nguyen Ngoc Toan, said: “Before he died, he told us not to sell the medal McCain gave him.

He said, "If any of the grandchildren ever go to America, having it might help them".

In 2000, McCain, by then a presidential candidate, visited the lake that almost claimed his life.
“His entourage was outside our house but Mr McCain just passed by,” said Mr On's widow, who insists she bears no grudge. Behind her calm words, however, lies an anxiety to right the injustice she feels her husband suffered.

As we prepared to leave she clutched my hand and said: “Please help us to remind Mr McCain what my husband did. "Just a few words will be enough to let the family know that he is grateful".

Reducing emissions: Is a cap-and-trade system better at reducing carbon emissions than a carbon tax?

Yes

• A cap-and-trade system better encourages companies to cut their carbon emissions: A cap-and-trade system provides companies with credits if they are able to reduce their emissions below an established level. They can then sell these credits for a profit. So, if a company takes action to reduce its carbon emissions below the designated level, than it can make a profit. This is a powerful market incentive that is more likely to cause companies to invest money in finding ways to reduce their carbon emissions. A carbon tax, conversely, only provides the incentive of cutting costs, and does not offer this important profit motive.

• A cap-and-trade system is certain to reduce emissions, which is important in context of the global warming crisis: "Carbon tax vs. carbon market: who would win in a fight?", 9/15/06 - "In a cap-and-trade carbon market, total emissions are guaranteed to go down. The cap is the cap, and assuming some reasonably effective enforcement mechanism, not a pound more carbon can be emitted. A carbon tax, on the other hand, merely encourages people to emit less by making it more expensive to do so. And in the case of fossil fuels, people seem perversely resistant to financial incentives."
  • A post made on economist Greg Mankiw's Blog 4/11/07 - "With the cap-and-trade system, there will be a definite decrease in emissions, while with the tax, the decrease depends on whether the cost of cutting emissions is lower than the potential tax. If it is, emissions decrease, if not, there is no effect."

• The market does a better job of directing investments in the best green technologies: **Bill Chameides, Chief Scientist at Environmental Defense, "Cap-and-trade: more effective than a carbon tax", Grist.org, February 12, 2007 - "Subsidizing one or two targeted technologies with a carbon tax would discourage investment in others that may turn out to be more effective. Which technologies should receive these tax dollars? No one has a crystal ball that can determine for sure which will turn out to be most useful. History has shown that the marketplace does a better job of developing new technologies, and a tax takes money out of the marketplace. The solution is cap-and-trade. A cap-and-trade strategy provides the incentive for all segments of the economy to compete to discover the best ways to cut emissions."

No

• Carbon trading schemes rely on bureaucratic processes to actually reduce emissions. Tax schemes direct the power of market forces towards reducing emissions, rather than merely reducing the price of emissions. Market mechanisms will work far faster.

• A carbon tax would add a clear cost to polluting and create a market incentive to pollute less

• A carbon tax sends a serious and important message about the will to fight global warming

• A carbon tax would shock consumers into needed behavioral changes

• A carbon tax addresses carbon emissions in all industries: Carbon Tax Center, "Carbon Taxes vs. Cap and Trade" - "Carbon taxes address emissions of carbon from every sector, whereas cap-and-trade systems have only targeted the electricity industry, which accounts for less than 40% of emissions."

• A carbon tax would create funds to support environmentally-friendly policies

• A carbon tax provides better incentives for green innovation

• A carbon tax can be implemented immediately While a cap-and-trade system may take a long time to take effect, a carbon tax can be implemented immediately. Due to the urgency of the Global Warming problem, the rapid results of a carbon tax are very important

• A cap-and-trade system is vulnerable to companies tricking the system by polluting heavily before the system begins: The main problem is that baseline emission allowances for companies are based on their past emissions. For this reason, a company has the incentive to emit as much as possible when these baselines are being set so that the baseline is above or at what the company is already emitting. If a company successfully tricks the system in this way, they will be able to emit carbon as they had before, with no reductions being achieved.

• A carbon tax obligates participation, whereas participating in a cap-and-trade system is largely optional: A carbon tax is an "opt-out" program, where all companies are obligated to participate unless taking specific steps to avoid it. A cap-and-trade system is an "opt-in" program, conversely, where companies are not obligated to participate unless they specifically take steps to "opt-in" and participate. This difference makes the carbon tax more imposing and likely to achieve results.

• A carbon tax can be easily adjusted over time to achieve desired emissions results

• Cap-and-trade system don't ensure local area carbon emissions are reduced

Vietnam inflation at 12-year high

Vietnam's inflation rate jumped to 15.7% in February, its highest rate in 12 years, highlighting the difficulties the communist authorities face in trying to rein in inflation without sacrificing the country's growth prospects. The sharp rise in prices was pushed by a 25.2% increase in the cost of foodstuffs and a 16.4% rise in housing and building materials driven by the -construction boom. Authorities have become increasingly worried about the impact of inflation, which has fuelled unrest among factory workers who complain they can scarcely make ends meet on their minimum wage salaries.

Prices in Vietnam have historically risen faster around the Tet holiday, the recent new year celebrations, than at any other season, as families splurge on lavish meals and gifts. But economists say the surging inflation rate, up from 14.1 per cent in January, reflects the challenges facing Vietnam's policy-makers as they struggle to cope with the economic impact on global currency realignments and an estimated $14bn in capital inflows in 2007.

Jonathan Pincus, chief economist for the United Nations Development Programme in Hanoi, says Vietnam has been hit particularly by the appreciation of the Chinese renminbi against the dollar, since the US is its biggest export market and China is its biggest supplier. "When the Chinese currency began to revalue against the dollar it created a conundrum for the Vietnamese", he said. "Do you follow the US dollar down to remain competitive on exports? But if you do that, the price of your imports becomes more expensive, so that generates inflation."

Hanoi decided to "track the dollar down, which means they imported inflation from China", he says. Inflation has been fuelled further by the surge in credit growth on rapid lending by commercial banks. The State Bank of Vietnam, the country's central bank, has unveiled a number of shock measures to curb inflation by trying to drain liquidity from the financial system, including raising both commercial banks' reserve requirements and interest rates.

In another bid to soak up liquidity, the bank announced that 41 large banks and credit organisations would be required to buy a total of $1.27bn (€839m, £637m) of one-year treasury bills with an interest rate of 7.8 per cent. The banks have protested against a move that would erode their margins.