[Vnbiz] Intel Vietnam refuses to pay bribes

Thu Aug 16 16:18:07 PDT 2007

Dear anh Hoanh, chi. Lien:
1.  Frankly, I am mystified by your insistence that anyone in this forum 
is opposed to ethics.  I only saw questioning of your proposition that 
ethics has to be the precondition to everything else.
Ethics is being taught in schools everywhere in Vietnam.  "Tien Hoc Le, 
Hau Hoc Van" is all the walls of every school.  It is still alive and well 
in popular sayings, writtings, radio and television programing.  But it 
remains at the theoretical level.  Parents and teachers probably realized 
that it is impractical to take it to the applied level given the reality 
of the rule of law, or the lack of it.  You have the option of couselling 
your client not to operate in an unfavorable/unprotected environment. 
People living there don't have that option.  Earlier the C. Party's 
approach to maintaining ethics among its members was to prohibit them from 
doing business.  It forgot that they were still in the powerful position 
of regulating business.  Thus developed the husband-and-wife business 
model.  Without a good rule of law in place, teaching business ethics is 
like teaching the art of raising orchids in winter in Canada without a 
heated greenhouse!
2.a  I don't see how you can discuss corruption with out also talking 
about economics.
2.c  I don't see anything racist about the statement.  You forgot about 
their separate and different environments when comparing farmers with 
urban dwellers.  Take a poor country girl into the city and the chance of 
corrupting her increased exponentially.  Take a powerful cadres to the 
countryside and the chance of his taking someone else's land for his own 
also increased.  Neither places have the rule of law.  On the other hand, 
take an average Vietnamese immigrant used to the "freedom" on peeing in 
the street with impunity and masterful at dodging taxes and put him in an 
environment where he can work hard to grow his business and he will soon 
build a big house with more bathrooms than bedrooms that he will not risk 
loosing to the IRS (tax department).  Ethically, he is the same man.  "
“tao muon lam nguoi tu te, nhung ai cho tao lam nguoi tu te” (I want to be 
a good person, but who allows me to do that?)"  Chi. Lien, we can answer 
Nam Cao's question by changing just one word:  not "who" but "what".  This 
will also provide answers to the many honest official and cadres.  We 
cannot take this line of logic too far in this forum for it will take us 
into areas that can not be discussed here.
2.d  I respectfully disagree.  Just because some people will always be 
corrupt is no reason for not linking economics with corruption.
 Best,  HPP

"Tran Dinh Hoanh" <tdhoanh at gmail.com> 
Sent by: vnbiz-bounces at mail.saigon.com
08/16/2007 05:39 PM
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Re: [Vnbiz] Intel Vietnam refuses to pay bribes

[ Vietnam Business Forum ]

Dear CACC,

I think I have made my points fairly clear for now.  No need for me to 
repeat it.  In this message, I'd just like to synthesize some points made 
by various brothers/sisters, hoping that it does reflect some degree of 
consensus among us (and maybe some degree of non-consensus as well) and 
make things clearer and less confusing for many folks who have followed 
this thread, especially the younger students who take a primary place in 
my heart. 

1.  Obviously we all agree that every thing--law, economics, ethics--works 
together in a comprehensive system, nothing should be excluded.  Good!

My problem here is that when we talk about law and economics, the 
discussion would go well, but as soon as we talk about ethics, there would 
inevitably be opposition from some corner. Why?  I don't understand it. In 
fact if we look around, ethics plays such an important role in raising up 
good citizens and building up our society, but ethics teachings is very 
skimpy.  Other than your parents when you are little and your teachers in 
primary school, who is teaching ethics, where?  I am glad that the VCP 
sees the importance of teaching ethics, as chi Bich Lien mentions.  But, 
sorry folks, that is still lip service.  Where is ethics being taught in 
Vietnam?  Is there a course of ethics anywhere?  I have mentioned ethics 
teaching at universities for business students for a decade, in this forum 
and other places, and do we have one ethics course in Vietnam yet? 

2.  Of course, the level of economic well being of the population may have 
something to do with ethics.  We Vietnamese says, "Co thuc moi vuc duoc 
dao" (You have to eat in order to save ethics).   And in Vietnam's current 
development, we often say that as the economy advances, the legal system 
will work better and the government will become cleaner and more ethical. 
That is generally the evolution process (to use brother  Andi's 
terminology) in which everything goes hand in hand toward a higher level. 

However, generally I try not to talk about economics when discussing 
corruption, because a number of potential issues:

a.  The economy advances very slowly.  We need immediate solutions for 
corruption.  For immediate solutions, law and ethics work much faster.

b.  The causal relationship between economic advancement and improvement 
in ethics is unclear.  What is the cause and what is the effect?  Does 
economic advancement cause ethic improvement, or does ethic improvement 
cause economic advancement?  In other words, (1) you are ethical and your 
ethics helps you make a lot of money, or (2) you make a lot of money while 
still unethical and your money helps you become ethical later?  I think, 
intuitively many of us may agree with the first scenario.  My experience 
in management is that ethics helps my company makes money.  And I haven't 
seen an unethical company becomes ethical after it makes a lot of money. 

c.  The statements "As the economy advances, people become more ethical," 
although 
accepted by most of us as the truth, may carry with it a racist and 
discriminatory tone if we think hard about it.

It basically says that the poorer you are the less ethical you are.  This 
is a very condescending attitude that may not have any truth in it.  There 
is nothing to say that the farmers in the countryside, who are poorer and 
in a less developed area than the city dwellers, are less ethical than 
city dwellers. Indeed I think that most farmers are more ethical than city 
dwellers.  And there is nothing to prove that people of Vietnam, who are 
poorer than the American, are less ethical than the American. 

So, when we say "as the economy advances, people become less corrupt (or 
more ethical)," we really talk about the standards of business and 
government practices SET BY ADVANCED NATIONS.  That's fine, when you are 
poorer and work in the same marketplace as the very rich guys, you have to 
follow the rich's standards.  That is life.  So "The poorer you are, the 
more corrupt you are" is a statement from the rich guy's point of view and 
rich guy's standards.  Fine, with me.  As I say, in a market, the poor guy 
has to follow the rich guy's standards.  But I don't like that 
discriminatory and condescending and potentially racist tone. 
If we use Vietnamese ethical standards to measure the advanced nations, 
then the advanced nations may not be so ethical either.

d.  Economic advancement may have something to do with the conduct of the 
general population, but obviously it has nothing to do with the truly 
corrupt people.  Truly corrupt people will engage in all kinds of 
unethical conduct regardless of how much power or money they have. 

For the above reasons, while I generally agree that economic advancement 
does have relationship with ethics, I don't think economics is very 
beneficial when discussing a solution for corruption.

I hope this summary helps.  Have a great day, everyone.  Great discussion.

Hoanh

On 8/16/07, Bui Bich Lien <lien.bb at gmail.com> wrote: 
[ Vietnam Business Forum ]

Pls allow some additional thoughts/observations:

1.      Yes, no arguments whatsoever about the essentiality of ethics. 
But, in order to look further into the issue of how ethics work/contribute 
to economic/social development of a developing country like Vietnam, 
economic/legal perception and analysis would be useful.  Further to Anh 
Andi's economic analysis, I'd recommend a book called "Law and Economic in 
Developing Countries", published by the Hoover Institution, that includes 
some interesting economic analysis of systematic official corruption.  The 
approach taken here, in my view, is very sensible because it attempts to 
examine the complex relationship between law, governance, and 
economic/social development instead of single out one particular 
factor/area.  And more importantly, such relationship is put into the 
context of developing countries. 

2.      Agree with Anh Phong 's point re. the rule of law.  But a country 
like Vietnam will need a long long march towards the rule of law.  To 
reach this goal, we all will need to work very hard, and I'd love to see 
the system improved before I die. In the current context, Intel move is 
indeed smart and deserves to be applauded.  Hopefully, we'll see more 
examples like this in the future.  I'm not attempting, however, to 
judge/categorize whether Intel's action/intention is practical or ethical 
- only Intel policy makers know it.  Anh Hoanh lost a large deal in 
Vietnam, but was deservedly compensated other deals IN THE US.  I dearly 
hope that, the same thing would happen to an ethical lawyer IN VIETNAM. 

3.      As personal experience of being a lawyer to a number of 
Singaporean business clients, the common question that I was asked is how 
to get a deal done in the legal/bureaucratic environment of Vietnam (that 
included some very direct questions).  Again, I have no personal judgment 
of whether they are more (or less) ethical than Americans, Europeans, 
Australians or other Asians doing business in Vietnam. 

4.      Re. legal vs. ethics, the case of chemical companies is a perfect 
example. 

5.      Teaching ethics to people is a great idea.  Anh Hoanh may be 
interested to know that it is in fact mentioned in a Party's resolution on 
judicial/legal reform. 

-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, Esq., LLB, JD
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