How do you tell when a country is emerging from poverty? What are the tell-tale signs that the cashflow in the village is starting to change from a drip to a steady stream? Is it the new health clinic? The new school? New shoes? A mobile phone? 

In Vietnam, when you ask someone how life has changed in the last few years, the answer is surprisingly unanimous. “Two years ago, when we opened this bamboo factory the workers all arrived by bike,” explains Mr Tung, manager of TBF Bamboo processing plant in Thanh Hoa Province in the central highland region. “Today almost everyone comes on a motorcycle.”

“We used to travel everywhere on  bicycles,” echoes Ha Xuan De, a farmer way up in the hills of Thanh Hoa. “But things have got better for us, now we have three motorcycles in our family.”

The motorcycle in Vietnam – usually a modest 110cc Honda 4-stroke workhorse signifies freedom, independence and wider horizons. Ownership doesn’t denote prosperity so much as surplus – an end to hand-to-mouth subsistence.

Each motorcycle has a story to tell. It is not unusual for the pillion seat to be occupied by a passenger, sometimes, an entire family. But,as often as not, it is taken up with something which is about to be sold – or has just been bought. An entire bullock carcase; a split pig; a wobbling mountain of baskets; a cage-full of chickens; a veritable forest of bamboo; a stack of mats that dwarf the rider; a pair of gleaming new porcelain toilets.

The ambition of some of these riders knows no limits: the one with the chest freezer; the one with the wardrobe; the one with the safe! Once they have got moving they dare not stop. Not for a red light nor a broken down truck. They’ll just have to steer round it and keep going. A bit like Vietnam really. This long, slender and beautiful country, nestling between the Pacific on its east and Cambodia and Laos on its west, which has achieved something of an economic miracle in recent years.

Remember, this is a country that in living memory has been: colonised by the French; occupied by the Japanese; bombarded by the Americans and attacked by the Chinese. By the early 1980s it was in ruins, mourning three million dead (roughly 12% of the population) and the third poorest country in the world. Yet, Vietnam’s economy has grown at an average of 7% every year for the last decade and poverty has decreased almost as fast. Over 20 years, the percentage of people living in poverty has fallen from well over 70% to less than 20% today. No other country in the world can boast that it has met the UN Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty by 2015 so far ahead of schedule.

Lu A Nung is a farmer living in the Ban Sen commune – a collection of villages near the city of Lao Cai in the far north, nestling against the Chinese border. Until his mid-30s he was a carpenter, specialising in traditional wooden saddles for the horses that were for so long the best form of transport on steep hillside tracks.

About nine years ago he noticed demand dropping off, and people using horses less. It was the motorcycle again. The roads had been improved, his farming neighbours were becoming more productive and, as their incomes rose, they bought their first motorcycle. With the unexpected side-effect of the collapse of his harness business.

Lu A Nung had to think again. If people were becoming more prosperous, they would have money to spend on other things too – like their homes. It was no secret that traditional thatched roofs were prone to leaking in the fierce monsoon season, so he approached the government for a loan to embark on a tile-making business. Today the business is thriving.

“Each day I make about 150 tiles and I produce them for up to five months in the year,” he explains, standing proudly by the small factory adjoining his home. “When work is busy I create jobs for my neighbours and relatives; the more they produce, the more I can pay them.”

Ask after the critical factors in his success and he needs little time for reflection: the government invested in roads which have connected inaccessible areas like his own, and they began to make loans available on good terms. “In 1997 when I started out,the main road ended over there.” He points across the valley. “I had to use buffalo to bring the raw materials for the tiles to my house, but today we have a new road and a truck brings the material all the way.”

Drive along the new road to his house, against a misty backdrop of dramatic granite hills, shaped like walnut whirls, covered in greenery, children carry umbrellas to protect themselves from the dust thrown up by passing vehicles,and everyone seems to have a buffalo. Lu A Nung has more than most. “If you sell one buffalo,” he laughs. “You can tile your whole house from me!”

He has taken several loans, repaying each on time. With his latest, as the tiling business thrives, he has embarked on a small fisheries enterprise. It’s a picture of economic growth and entrepreneurial flair which seems a far cry from the country which was tied down by rationing and whose crippling sovietstyle central ‘command economy’ put people to work on collectivised farms producing crops to order but not to eat.

Lu A Nung, and his wife Lu Thi Dung, in their late forties, are old enough to carry vivid memories of war and its aftermath. “Even when we managed to grow our own food we were always short, always going hungry,” he recalls. “But the fact that life was very difficult means that today we never forget to be happy that now we always have enough to eat.”

If their story sounds remarkable, it is repeated time and again as people in the poorest communities successfully find a route out of poverty. The roots of this regeneration lie with a reform programme introduced by the Sixth Party Congress in 1986 known as doi moi – renovation. Private ownership was permitted in industry and commerce, and agriculture was de-collectivised. As leading national economist Le Dang Doanh puts it “Vietnam has moved to a market economy, allowed the development of the private sector (and) farmers have immediately increased production, selling freely at the market and earning higher revenues.”

While it must be said that in this one-party state, political liberation has not kept pace with economic freedoms, nevertheless change is everywhere. The evidence is nowhere more clear than at the home of Bui Thi Nga, a handsome villa with tiled floor, veranda and a grand balustrade looking down over a verdant valley. Living within the commune of Doc Lap, a morning’s drive into the country from the capital Hanoi, her two-story concrete house is built right next door to her original wooden, stilt house. The two buildings capture the change in her fortunes – and the speed of national transformation. “I can remember the way that my husband and I would cry ourselves to sleep at night because we didn’t have enough food to eat,” she explains. It was 1999, just seven years ago. “Things would get so bad that some days we would go out on to the hillside and dig up roots to feed our children. Our roof leaked and our bedding got wet.”

The turning point, she says, came in the year 2000 when she was provided access to a government loan. They bought a buffalo along with corn, rice and cassava seed. If the loan was inspiration, the rest of the story is perspiration. “We worked hard, day and night” she recalls.“ We were determined to make a success of our crops and overcome our poverty.”

The family already had a small plot of land but productivity was low – they needed training, which is what the government provided next. Like their neighbours they also benefited from national investment in irrigation schemes, taking water efficiently to their crops when it wasn’t raining. The new roads brought the traders to them.

Seven years on, they have repaid their loans – and subsequent ones – and have a successful business, employing up to four other people. They produce four tons of rice alone each year – half their crops they use for their own family and livestock, half they sell to traders.

“I never thought I could be this prosperous,” she muses. “It’s unbelievable really, it’s beyond my dreams.” The fact is, she has had the confidence to make her own dreams come true. Some of her neighbours have not done so well, simply, she thinks, because they don’t like to take a loan, unsure of what to spend it on, and afraid they won’t be able to pay it back. Now she spends time advising them how they can use the money wisely – and earn the income to repay the loan. “I don’t feel poor anymore,” she says “and I’m confident I won’t fall into it again.”

As nearly three-quarters of Vietnam’s 82 million people live in rural areas and nearly two-thirds of the labour force work in the agricultural sector the success of people like Lu A Nung and Bui Thi Nga is all the more significant. New-found prosperity is not confined to urban areas. Yet it would be a mistake to get carried away by the success stories – millions of people remain highly vulnerable to poverty and, without the right support, will not find a way out.

“I have tried very hard to move up but despite taking loans from the government, and buying new livestock, I have not had good luck.” This confession comes from slight, muscular and tattooed figure of Nguyen Van Danh, a quietly spoken man who sits cross-legged on the bamboo floor of his stilt house, pouring us green tea. He has the physique of the soldier he once was, fighting as an artilleryman in the border war with China. He doesn’t have a good news story to tell. “When my wife fell ill with a mental problem I had to sell the buffalo that I’d borrowed money to buy in order to pay for her medicine.” Because she couldn’t work, he has been unable to grow enough to keep his three daughters in food and school fees, and must work as a labourer for other farmers. Most years there is not enough food for everyone and yet, he says, the country is going in the right direction. “Conditions have improved, the new roads make a big difference for getting to market, people get around more quickly on motorcycles.”

The government, he says,must target households like his with bigger loans so they can withstand sudden changes in circumstance. His dream of a new life is still alive. “Three things I dream of: a happy family, a good business, and enough food to eat and clothes to wear.”

Perhaps one of the reasons behind Vietnam’s success story is a pragmatism, born out of making the most of very little – and an ability to roll with the blows. Nguyen Xuan Miu, who lives up the hill from Nguyen Van Danh, used his loan to plant sugar cane, but the returns were disappointing. Undaunted, he changed businesses to bamboo cultivation. “No one told me,” he said, “I just figured it out for myself. This is the second year and it grows very well.”

Very well indeed, as his TV, cassette player and new wardrobe attest. And his motorcycle, of course.

Image: Revved up development page spread © David Pratt and Martin Wroe