 Okay, 4 p.m. on a given Monday. Bill Sharpe is flying around somewhere. I'm Jay Fidel. We're having Think Tech Asia today. And we are delighted to have Liam Kelly and his wife Le Ha Fan, or Fan Le Ha, better put. Okay, both of them are into Vietnam. Liam is in the department in the history department at UH Manoa, and Fan Le Ha is in the Department of Education, the College of Education. Yes. But they're both heavily involved in Vietnam, been that way for a long time. Can you tell me about, Liam, welcome to the show. Can you tell me about your, you know, your CV, how you got to where you are in the history department? Sure. I came, actually I have my MA and PhD from UH Manoa. I came here in the 90s to study Chinese history. Then I, somewhere along the way, I came to realize that the Vietnamese used to write in classical Chinese before the 20th century. And so if you can read that, you can research old Vietnamese history. And so I essentially found a way to research about Vietnam, even though I was getting a degree in Chinese history. And that then led to a position where I now teach Vietnamese history in Southeast Asian history at UH Manoa. But along the way, I studied Vietnamese, I've spent, you know, a lot of time in Vietnam. And now I consider Vietnam to be my main area of focus and no longer China. Yeah. And hence your remarks on Thursday last week at the China seminar. A number of my friends were there and said it was really great. It's really great. Great. You know, I'm good for you for speaking there. That was actually a special moment because the founder of the China seminar, Professor Danny Kwok, is my PhD advisor. Oh, is that right? So that was kind of like a homecoming. It's been the, the China seminar has been going on for 41 years. I think I got my PhD 17 years ago. So it took him 17 years to invite me, but he finally did it and I was happy to do it. He came around. Now you've arrived. Okay. And family, can you tell me about your CV and what you're doing in the College of Education? Yes. So I am from Vietnam, from Hanoi Vietnam, and I received my education in both Vietnam and Australia. So actually before moving to UH Manoa, I had been working at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. And so since I moved to UH Manoa in 2014, I have been, you know, I have been with the Department of Education and Foundations in the College of Education and specializing in globalization, I mean internationalization and globalization of high education and also doing a lot of work with sociology of knowledge and knowledge production. And I've been doing lots of research in different parts of the world. Of course, Vietnam is one, but also in Australia, South East Asian countries and the Middle East. At least the whole area. Yes. Well, you know, we see Asia as going way west. So I think that Asia includes a lot. Anyway, so you guys have a conference that you do together and you had a show with us with it last year with Grace Chen. Right. And you talked about that conference. Can you talk about what is that conference? Why are you doing the conference? Who comes to conference and so forth? That conference is Lea Ha's baby. She's the real founder of us. Well, we'll let her start. And then I'll pick up on anything else that she leaves out. All right, fair. So in 2009, when I was still working at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, I started an initiative called Engaging with Vietnam. So basically, I wanted to create like, you know, a playing field for all those interested in Vietnam to come together to share their work. And, you know, and we want to bring people from different disciplines. And, you know, to engage in Vietnam from a very complex, sophisticated, non-dicotomous menu. Yes. And then the Engaging with Vietnam initiative has its annual academic conference series. And every year we have the conference in one location. And we have been partnering with different institutions and organizations in Vietnam, in Australia, in the United States. And our latest partner is in the Netherlands to organize a conference. And knowledge production has been the core part of Engaging with Vietnam. And this year is a very important year for us because it is a 10th anniversary of Engaging with Vietnam. And Liam has, in a sense, 2011, has been joining me to co-develop Engaging with Vietnam. So you want to talk about it. One of the things that's unique about it is that the conference usually moves from one country to another. So it's usually one year in Vietnam, one year outside of Vietnam. And what really attracted me to it originally is that because of globalization and all the changes that are taking place in Vietnam, you have a growing cohort of Vietnamese who are studying overseas. But now we're also seeing Vietnamese who are studying in country who are really reaching impressive levels. And so every year at this conference, you meet just young people on the rise who you never could imagine. And that numbers are just growing and growing. It's really exciting. Yeah. And actually also related to Liam's recent seminar on the Sino-Vietnam relation. There are thousands of Vietnamese students studying in China at the moment. So just before this talk, we briefly talked. So at the moment, we have probably 15,000 to 16,000 Vietnamese students studying in the United States about a similar number in Australia and many in China, for example. So yes, so a lot of educational activities and collaborations have been taking place between Vietnam and China. Yeah, and they're all achievers too, aren't they? Yes. They're all high energy achievers. I don't know any exception to that. So anyway, so when is the conference? When can I go this time? How soon and what should I do? This time it's going to be in December. Right. So like I said, usually we move from inside Vietnam and outside. We had it in 2016 here in Hawaii, the end of 2017, early 2018 last year in Vietnam. But we had such a good time last year and it was such an amazing conference because we moved from Ho Chi Minh City to two other places in the south. And it was just, it was fantastic. And so we want to do that again. And so it will be this December 15th to 21th. We'll have the conference again in Vietnam. And also the 10th anniversary, we really want to have it in Vietnam. So we expect to have the conference held in two locations. A lot of people come. Yes. Yeah. And what kind of agenda do you have? What kind of programs do you have within the conference? So one of the things that's unique about the conference is it's basically designed so that people can enjoy or will enjoy going to everything. So there are a lot of big conferences these days where people kind of parachute in, they give their paper and then they leave. But the way this one is set up is we have a theme for the conference. There are keynote talks that everyone goes to that address the theme from different disciplines. Then there are breakout sessions where people give their individual papers. But the keynote speakers chair the breakout sessions. Then we have a lot of talk shows. And even the keynote sessions can be like talk shows. And a discussion. Yeah. And then we've had like a last year, one of the focuses was, well, we were focusing on tourism, sustainability, development and heritage. We had an evening at this new boutique hotel that used a lot of materials from an old shipyard to create a sense of the past. So we went there, had a dinner. We met with the architect and the owners to talk about the logic behind all of this. We went out into the provinces to see how tourism, sustainability and development are put into practice there. We continued the conference out there. So it's really the type of conference where you go, you stay the whole time and people do this. And you want to take a guess how many days this conference was? Last year nine days. Nine days. Oh, that's a long conference. Wow. But it was fun. And we are determined to do it again this year, at least seven days. Vietnam is in a happy time now. Yes. Yes. Economy is good. People are becoming globalized. Is that true? Yeah, true. But of course there are, I mean, like any other places in the world, opportunities come with problems, issues, dilemmas, paradoxes. And that invites a lot of, you know, policy and practice conversations. And yes, and that is why our engagement with Vietnam conferences, we really, you know, are important in addressing those issues and in inviting and bringing people together to come up with interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary dialogues to address. It's been remarkable since the Vietnam War. It really has. And you almost wonder, I hesitate to say this, but you almost wonder that the war, things wouldn't have been so good now without the war then. Disagree with that? Unbeatable. Unbeatable. But things would not have been so dramatic, that's for sure. And so one of the things I talked about in this talk last week was about how society has changed so much. And the one generation that just continues to amaze me is the one that's Le Ha's generation. So imagine if you will, you know, you were born right after the war. You live in the 80s, the hardest time in Vietnam. There's no food. Everything, you know, is difficult. But education still works. They're still getting great literacy, math sciences. Everyone's getting that. Literature, of course. Yeah. And foreign languages. Yeah. And then the country starts to open a bit in, you know, by the late 80s with this policy of Doi Moe. The 90s then. What's Doi Moe? That was their reform or renovation. That was the name of their policy in 1987. Right. And so then in the 90s you get people who are in university who then go on to, you know, like, let's see where they are today. Today they have their road. They're the CEOs of telecommunications companies. In the 1990s, there were not many landlines in Vietnam. They're the head of IT companies, multinational IT companies, the head of law firms that deal with clients from around the globe. That transition is incredible. And so without a war, they would be there now, but you wouldn't see that dramatic, you know, transformation. Yeah. It is. I mean, every international conference I go to, I find Vietnamese people there. Right. And they're actively involved in it and their achievers. So one of the things of interest here is, you know, the economy. And I had a client. I used to be a lawyer. I had a client who had invested. He was from the South Pacific. He was European descent. And he had, no, actually he was Chinese descent. He had invested in Honolulu. And one day he said to me, I'm cashing it all in. I'm selling everything. And I am reinvesting in Vietnam. This was in the, I guess, the late 80s, early 90s. And I said, oh, that's an interesting thing. And he made much more money there than he would have made here. Right, Tommy. Right, yeah. So, you know, as you say, though, economic progress makes for challenges. And then you have all these historical things swirling around in Southeast Asia. And Vietnam has a history of being strong, sometimes dealing with adversities it shouldn't have to deal with. But here we are. And it's rising to the top of the heap in Southeast Asia. It's quite amazing. And so this takes us to your comments on Thursday about Sino-Vietnamese relations. Obviously, China is, you know, dominating that whole area and wants to and will continue to. And it will have an effect on every country that you can imagine. And so I ask you, I'm sorry, I wasn't there. I'm going to ask you now, what effect is China having on Vietnam? And twirled in there is, is that different than the effect the United States is having on Vietnam? Yeah, okay. What effect is China having on Vietnam? You know, you said, you know, Vietnam is rising as a power in the region. And that's definitely the case. If the population is nearing 100 million, I don't know what percentage of that is below 30, but it's enormous. There's no other country like that in Asia. Like Indonesia and things like that. They have quite young population in Indonesia and Afghanistan, but Vietnam is population in that young group. Yes. And there's, but there's something about the dynamism and the dynamism of that economy and the mix of all of that. And so, you know, if you're looking, if you're another country in the region, you'd, I would be nervous about Vietnam, not in a threatening way, but that is competition. That is something, you know, that you really have to think about. And, you know, I think that works both to Vietnam's advantage and against it in that it could be difficult to get close allies when you're the big rising superstar and you need the help of people who are a little smaller than you. Then you've got big China, the big US, and what do you do in those situations? And at present, I think what, say, like the government tries to do is to deal with both of them and to not lean too far in any one direction, not really, not necessarily play them off each other, but realize you've got to live with both. You can't really rely on anyone out there. And so it's a kind of a balancing act and a way just to, you know, keep as many connections as possible and don't go too far with any of them. It strikes me that Vietnam is well, historically well-prepared to deal with that, because it's had to do that balancing act sometimes more successfully than other times over the last 150 years of its history. I mean, as an historian, these kind of big generalities are the type of things we deconstruct. The historian to me is going, it's a lot more complex than that. In reality, I don't think there's really any kind of past knowledge or anything that anyone can rely on. But one point I brought up in the talk that's really interesting that people, I think, don't really realize is in a place like Vietnam, there's a mandatory retirement age and it's 60 for men and 55 for women. Even though we are trying to change it. And so that means you have tremendous change in society. And so if you think about it, let's say you rise to the top of your department or agency when you're 56, you do one term and then you have to step aside because you've hit the retirement age. And what I think that means is that if, even though you might want to maintain the same, say policy or strategy, it's going to change with younger people coming in every few years. And so this idea that that's why I'm kind of playing off this idea that they have experience to build on, that experience is disappearing and changing every five years. You know what I mean? They used to say, there's a little friend. Sure. He used to say now they say plus a change plus a change. We take a short break. We'll come back. And we're going to get in the details on this. We'll be right back. So I'm Yukari Kunisue. I'm your host of New Japanese Language Show on ThinkDec Hawaii called Konnichiwa Hawaii, broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 p.m. Please join us where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 p.m. Aloha. You know, for a long time after the Vietnam War, I think there was a lot of tension politically. I mean, it was silly, but there you have it. And then at a certain point, it seemed to me that we became very friendly with Vietnam. We liked Vietnam and we think they liked us. I think it was all marked by 1990 or so, Miss Saigon. Miss Saigon, isn't that true? Miss Saigon had sort of an effect on people's perceptions. What are those perceptions now? How is the U.S. getting along with Vietnam and how is Vietnam getting along with the U.S.? I mean, you read different things at different times, but at times, I remember one funny statistic a few years ago was that the safest country in the world for Americans was Vietnam or some things. I might say that somewhere. And yeah, you know, there are things that happen and people talk about Vietnam as being the closest American ally in Southeast Asia and things like that. It is very close, but like I was saying before, I think like the Vietnamese government, for instance, knows not to put too many eggs in one basket. And so it's very close, but other relationships are close as well. It sounds like India. Right. It's a concept of independence. We like you, but you're not our only, you know, the only girl in our dance card. Right. But also as I briefly mentioned before, there have been a lot of educational collaborations and exchange between Vietnam and the United States. And up until now, the United States appears to be the most popular destination for Vietnamese students. And not just at the high education level, but at school level. So more and more young Vietnamese have been sent to the United States for schools. Well, indeed. I mean, you look at any city in the country and find Vietnamese immigrants everywhere. Yeah. And actually, a lot of them now are not immigrants. They are actually international students from Vietnam. And their parents are economically viable and stable. And then they can sponsor, they can support their kids' education in the United States. Yeah. And the US is going to Vietnam. The US is traveling. A lot of people are doing tourism. The childless school has a substantial business school. And they say, I like your opinion on this, they say that what is it, one in four CEOs in Vietnam has gone to a program at the childless school in Ho Chi Minh City. That's true. I haven't heard that statistic, I'm not sure. But I mean, to follow that, I mean, yes, that program has been there for years now, right? And there's many people. And it has good reputation, yes. But if we just look at universities, though, you've got Australia has a university there. There's Germany and Japan have both set up joint universities. There's the Fulbright University, which is being developed. Recently, there's a new university that's been announced that is essentially being supported by a conglomerate of what was originally Vietnamese workers who were sent to the Eastern Bloc, but then who stayed on after the Soviet Union collapsed, became successful there, came back to Vietnam and invested. They're building an entire new university and are asking Cornell, and I think you, Penn as well, perhaps, to consult in the construction of this. So it's, everyone is involved, you know, at that level. How has the Trump isolationist, I don't know if he's always isolationist, maybe that's changing. But how has the Trump farm policy been played out in Vietnam? Oh, wow. I mean, if you, so for example, if you, I can only comment from what I am a little bit familiar with. So I have heard a lot of concerns from prospective Vietnamese students who may want to go to the United States to study because they are concerned about their visa being rejected. And at the same time, I have also heard a lot of stories from Vietnamese students who are currently in the United States, whom feel nervous to go home for a holiday because they don't want one. They don't want to get locked out, yeah. So things like that. And at the same time, they have also been, I don't know, a cause from Vietnamese people who have been in the United States for a long time, but suddenly feel that they are not welcome to stay. And stay here. Yeah, to stay here. Right. And so of course, that somehow affect the perception and, yeah, people inside Vietnam. So yeah, so things, there are things like that going on. And at the same time, I have also seen some solidarity between different groups of Vietnamese both inside and outside of Vietnam to support those Vietnamese inside the U.S., who at the receiving end of the policy. Yeah. And this is interesting in view of the fact that after the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese who were in the United States, there was a certain disdain by the Vietnamese who were in Vietnam, who stayed in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese who were left and settled in the right. Am I right about that? Sure, yeah. Yeah. But again, I mean, that kind of touched on that in the talk as well, right? That is something that has changed over time as well. You know, there are certainly... Mass solidarity. Yeah, there are certainly animosities that still exist, but there's also more solidarity that still exists. Yeah. And new forms of collaboration. Yeah. You know, as I was saying in the talk, go into any, not any, but go into a hip restaurant in Saigon, and there are lots of them. And there's a good chance that there's a overseas Vietnamese who's behind that as they've brought back, you know, ingenuity, technology. Returning. Sure, many people. Because I mean... This is a good place to return to. The economic vibrancy is wonderful, you know. And, you know, yeah. So let's turn to China for a minute. You know, China one belt, one road. China obviously trying to increase its influence everywhere in every continent, and certainly everywhere along the one belt, one road, right into the heart of Europe. They're actually building things in the heart of Europe and in Africa. How has that affected Vietnam so far? And how has that changed the perception of Vietnam, the people, the government toward China, and indirectly how has it affected their relationships, their perception of the United States as a future partner? The world is changing. I absolutely agree, totally agree. And the question is, what about the changes between China and the U.S.? So the thing, one of the things I brought up in my talk was that while we have this sense today that there's always been this animosity between Vietnam and China, in reality the big turning point was 1979. There was a border war, actually a series of conflicts at that time. And the relationships just took a massive nosedive. And in the aftermath of that was this incredible anti-Chinese, you know, sentiment. And, you know, that lasted for a while and things have smoothed out. But it's like you have this scar there, and now you're trying to interact and not open that scar again. And so while on the one hand, there are plenty of ways that China can invest in Vietnam, Vietnamese can go and study in China, and everything is fine. But if there's some kind of conflict that emerges, it's not all that difficult for that scar to, you know, open again. And so I think that China is very careful about how it, about what it does in Vietnam, perhaps not unlike the way that Japan was with Southeast Asia after World War II. They went back in and invested, but did it very carefully and quietly and didn't, you know, and respectfully, right? It didn't try to, you know, draw too much attention to themselves. And for instance, you know, we were talking about how at these, there was a recent APEC meeting in Vietnam. And all of the global leaders went out into the streets, Putin, Trump, right, everyone, Xi Jinping just stayed back in his hotel. And I think it's, there's a nervousness about the relationship, you know, and you might have another view of it. But there's a lot of interaction that's going, but they're also careful, both sides, I think, not to, you know, draw too much attention to this. Ah, how interesting. Yeah. And actually, related to your question about One Belt, One Road, right? So one of my research interests is the internationalization of high education in global context. So through that research, I have been working with a lot of colleagues, actually from China, based on different, based at different Chinese universities, as well as Chinese scholars working in the UK or in Australia, for example. And so we have been talking about a lot, you know, with each other a lot about that new ambition from China. And to my surprise, actually, my colleagues are often surprised, you know, often get surprised that how come, you know, so much about China, we don't seem to know much about Vietnam at all. And then, well, it dawns on me, hmm, why is it that? And then I realized that, you know, just all the way some, something, like since we were small, somehow we, we always read and tend to be very curious about what China does. But a lot of my, even my own students from China, they don't seem to pay much attention. Yeah. Yeah. But at the talk, there was someone who brought up a comment, which is true, which is that at Vietnamese universities, there are no professors of Chinese history. So Vietnamese know lots about China, they learn a lot about it. But officially, there's no one they're teaching Chinese history living edge there. Really interesting. And there's probably the same case in China. I don't know if there's any positions of Vietnamese history anywhere. It could be, I'm not sure, a little bit, yeah. But that shows you the kind of the nuances of this relationship. It's, they're close together, they're, essentially the governments are allies, but it's not, the visibility of it is kept, you know, at a kind of control level. That goes to my last question, because we're almost out of time. And finally, let me ask you my question first. Where is this going? Where is Vietnam going? Where is its relationship with the US going? Where is its relationship with China going? I want to see Vietnam and China or Vietnam and the US to be great friends and great collaborators with each other. Definitely, that is what I would love to see. And actually, I've seen a lot of evidence to support my hope. Okay. Yes. I learned Chinese in Taiwan. I lived a total of six years in Taiwan, which has this very odd relationship with mainland China. And what I've learned from that is ambiguity is really tenacious. Ambiguity can last a long time. You heard it here. Ambiguity is tenacious. And so my prediction, I'm a historian, I only predict about the past. And predicting about the future, I think just this same kind of being in the middle, balancing everything, not going too much in any direction. That's the way it'll keep going, I'm sure. Yeah, and maybe just one last part to add to your question. So I have been researching into the impact of the role of English as a global language in the global context, including Vietnam. And at the moment, I'm looking at the influence of Chinese as one of the world's dominant languages in Asia. So I think I hope that maybe by this time next year, if you bring me back to the show, I would have more to comment on. So if I go to Ho Chi Minh City right now, will I hear Chinese on the street? Not on the street, but definitely a lot of students, young students, now they learn Chinese. So at our conference last year, actually, I was surprised to see so many young students. I'll hear a lot more English. A lot of people are learning a language in addition to English. Yes, yes, so more and more. It's part of globalization. Well, thank you. Fan Le Ha. And Liam Kelly, thank you so much for coming down. Great to talk to you. I hope we can do this again. It's very important that we study the subject.