Tran Van Tho

Tran Van Tho (born in Quang Nam province, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese former economic advisor to the Japanese government, head of a major Japanese bank’s ODA assessment committee, and professor at two prestigious Japanese universities.

Biography

Born in a poor village in the central Quang Nam province – a region constantly battered by natural calamities and, during his childhood, by shells and bullets – and having no connections or financial means but just a burning desire for knowledge, Tho has succeeded against all odds.

He obtained a doctorate from Tokyo’s Hitotsubashi University. He then worked at an economics research center, become an assistant professor, then professor at Obirin University in Tokyo. In 1990 the Japanese government, for the first time, named three foreigners to the Economic Council of Japan, which advises the prime minister. Tho was one of them and he served for nearly 10 years on the council. In 2000, after completing his term, he became a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University.

In 1993 he was invited to be a member of an economic body advising Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet. Later he was on a policy research team under Kiet’s successor Phan Van Khai. It was then that he called for eliminating paperwork and bureaucracy, recruiting state officials on merit, setting up a level playing ground for foreign and domestic investors and for private and state-owned enterprises. He also advised the government to compile a “negative list” with entrepreneurs allowed to involve in any activity not finding a place in it. He also criticized the indiscriminate award of doctorates which, thus, held little value. Calling for the revocation of a regulation prohibiting Communist Party members from doing business, he said officials should be allowed to open private companies and engage in business. This has since been seriously considered.

In 1997 he published a book in Vietnamese, Industrializing Vietnam in the Age of the Asia-Pacific, and again in 2005, East Asian Economic Upheavals and the Road to Industrialization for Vietnam.In 2003 the Japan Bank for International Cooperation invited him to be the head of its ODA project assessment committee for developing infrastructure in northern Vietnam. Tho initiated the founding of the Vietnam Asia-Pacific Economic Center in Vietnam of which he is now chairman.

He retains his Vietnamese citizenship. Even in the desperate times soon after the war he refused to consider Japanese citizenship, which would have brought him plenty of benefits.

Quotes

“Our country has to develop to earn respect.”

References

[http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=25327 Vietnamese economist’s success story in Japan]