The President has just published a book on the economy of Vietnam by Routledge, a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.  It shows that Vietnam has enjoyed significant economic success since the start of its economic reforms in 1986, with, for example, its GDP and exports growing very rapidly and many of its poorly-performing state-owned enterprises dismantled.  However, there is an underbelly to this, as the daily life of many ordinary people is still fragile, with income only just above the poverty line and vulnerable to even small price increases.  The state-owned sector remains large, much of it continuing to perform badly.  Unemployment, especially among the young, is high, with ironically a great shortage of workers with technical-vocational skills.  This book provides a comprehensive overview of the current economic situation in Vietnam and proposes changes to policies on macroeconomic management, trade, industrialisation, business regulations, state-owned enterprises and higher education that would help to improve its performances. 

Work on the book started in 2009 as a consultancy project for the International Labour Organization, as part of the preparation for the current socio-economic development plan (2011-2015) of Vietnam.  It benefited from discussions, held during fieldwork in Vietnam, with government officials, researchers from local and foreign development research institutes, and experts from the World Bank and various agencies of the UN.  The book was completed during Professor Lim’s time with THEi.  It is the latest in a long line of books on development economics, broken only by one on quality assurance in higher education in developing countries.

Danping Wang, English in the Chinese Foreign Language Classroom, 2014

Dr. Dani Wang has published a book English in the Chinese Foreign Language Classroom by Peter Lang, an international academic publisher. Chinese is an ancient language, but the present scope of its global study is unprecedented. Comprehending the impacts of worldwide linguistic realities on ‘Chinese as a Foreign Language’ (CFL) by teachers and students will be critical to its long-term success. The most important phenomenon has been the establishment of English as a lingua franca, especially in the expanding marketplaces of Asia. This book examines the role of English as a medium of instruction in CFL classrooms. It begins by integrating existing studies on the global spread of English with research on English as a medium of second-language acquisition. Several valuable empirical analyses from actual CFL classrooms serve both to validate the use of English as a lingua franca and show that much more work needs to be done to ground this practice in deep sociocultural and ecological settings. The author advocates the development of a new pedagogy that emphasizes taking account of specific cultural, social, and political contexts in order to reach an ever-more diverse body of students. The book concludes with a discussion of the role of English in China’s national education system and social development, as well as predictions about the future relationship between Chinese and English.