North Korea Is Not Vietnam
March 9, 2020
Expecting the brutally repressive state to liberalize magically the way Vietnam did is a pipe dream.
By Geoffrey Cain
The New Republic
Feb 28, 2019
Expecting the brutally repressive state to liberalize magically the way Vietnam did is a pipe dream.
By Geoffrey Cain
The New Republic
Feb 28, 2019
SEOUL, South Korea — He was once thought to be a Swiss-educated cosmopolitan taking the side of reform in North Korea. But some say Tuesday’s nuclear test has squandered hopes that Kim Jong Un will open the militarized nation to the world.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Feb 15, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — Four years ago, Kim Eun-seo, 40, fled political persecution and poverty in North Korea’s gritty far-north city, Chongjin.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jan 24, 2013
Vietnamese officials are stepping up repression of old and new media even as they promote an image of an open, globalized economy. Intense surveillance and imprisonment of critical journalists, coupled with increasingly restrictive laws, are choking the flow of information.
By Shawn W. Crispin
CPJ
Sep 19, 2012
HO CHI MINH CITY – In what was once one of Asia’s most exciting emerging markets, Nguyen Van Nguyen sees only gloom ahead. Since 2008, his business in southern Vietnam’s economic capital has suffered through two volatile bouts of inflation, peaking in August 2011 at 23 percent — at the time, Asia’s highest inflation rate.
By Geoffrey Cain
Foreign Policy
Jul 11, 2012
In April 2011, a Vietnamese dissident explained to me why he gave up blogging critically about the government. “We have jobs, motorbikes, nice coffee shops, and big luxury buildings,” he said, pointing to the then-recently opened Bitexco Financial Tower, Ho Chi Minh City’s tallest edifice, with a helicopter landing pad jutting out of its side. “The Communist Party has made this blogging unprofitable. If we go up against them, how do we get a piece of that prosperity?”
By Geoffrey Cain
CARNEGIE COUNCIL for Ethics in International Affairs
Jun 28, 2012
How an idealistic spy in Asia challenged the American way of war, and what his tragedy teaches us about finding allies today.
By Geoffrey Cain
Washington Monthly
Jan 1, 2012
What the first systematic survey of North Korean refugees tells us about life inside the Hermit Kingdom, and about whether the regime might be ready to fall.
By Geoffrey Cain
Washington Monthly
Jul 1, 2011
If schools are a reflection of society, then they show Cambodia to be a limp and defeated nation. On the first day of class, Cambodian children learn they must bribe their teachers to get good grades, a practice that continues for the 3% of them who make it to college.
By Geoffrey Cain
The Wall Street Journal
May 19, 2011
PHAN THIET and PHU QUOC, Vietnam — In 1910, a little-known nationalist named Nguyen Sinh Cung taught elementary school in Phan Thiet, a coastal town in southeastern Vietnam.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Mar 26, 2011
What to read next:
Geoffrey Cain on Investigative Journalism, Authoritarian Power, and The Perfect Police State | In a wide-ranging conversation with Jennifer Grossman, CEO of The Atlas Society, investigative journalist Geoffrey Cain reflects on years spent reporting inside some of the world’s most restrictive regimes — and on the research behind his book The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future.
For years, Tim Cook insisted Apple could change China from the inside. Instead, China changed Apple.
The latest evidence? Apple spent billions developing cutting-edge electric vehicle battery technology with Chinese automaker BYD, only to watch its innovations become the cornerstone of BYD’s rise to global electric vehicle dominance. Apple walked away with nothing. China walked away with everything.
This isn’t just another story about corporate research and development gone wrong. It’s a cautionary tale about how even America’s most valuable company has become trapped in China’s web of technological control — and how that web is about to tighten even further.