AUTHOR’S COLUMN DISPATCHES FROM THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
MR. JAMES BORTON
is a veteran foreign correspondent who has been reporting on South Asia for over 30 years. He is a past non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and is currently a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
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James Borton, author of Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground was interviewed by Tanya Vatsa of the Synergia Foundation.
Q1.
You’ve covered Southeast Asia as a writer for over 25 years. What is it that drew you and continues to captivate you as a writer and what are the biggest changes you’ve seen in your time covering the region?
JB
I came to Vietnam in 1997 to witness the nation’s renovation or Doi Moi especially following the arrival of the Internet. I was invited by Nguyen Anh Tuan, the founder of Vietnam Net to meet with his energetic young bilingual staff, who expressed interest in speaking with an American journalist and learning more about western reporting methods. I realized that the new generations of educated young Vietnamese consumed news online and that the government was ill prepared for the arrival of social media and its impact on Millennials and Gen Xers. During this time, Internet cafes were quickly opening up throughout the country and the region. The biggest change I have witnessed over the decades in South East Asia is the success of economic reforms that have lifted millions from poverty and prompted a rising optimism about the future. This is especially true in Vietnam. From Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, I engaged with the nation’s new entrepreneurs, who were starting businesses from software companies to spas. It was the Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) optimism in Vietnam’s future that brought to me this New Vietnam. So through my lens I had a front row seat in chronicling how this country, one of the poorest in the world, joined the world to become a developmental success story.
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