What do you think? Any statistics to back it up?

I don't think this is a good topic or indicator...

What basis can one base this on? One thing, look at our country, its well...

$hit.

I'm talking about the Vietnamese intelligence, not how the country is doing.

Yeah if we were smart enough then ouir country wouldn't be backward.

Intelligence...its a very abstract topic and since you wrote compared to mother Asians...taht is a topic looking for a flame war...

Honestly all humans are intelligent...

Please define some constraints...

I don't get, what does our intelligence have to do with our country being backward?

I only blame the Chinese, French and Americans for the present state of Vietnam.

Yes blaming shows how intelligence we Viets are...

Intelligence and backwardness...if we had the intelligence we would have properly managed our country....the intelligence to adopt Western technology and improve Vietnam...just like the Japanese and Koreans did to theirs.

Intelligence is not only about making breakthroughs...all that Science and stuff..it's also about management and quickly reacting to change, able to accept change...etc...that is what I am referring to when I point out the Intelligence-Backward country relationship..

We Viets were not intelligent enough to improve out country.

Peripheral countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam need to wisen up and ally yourself with the best and leading powers. The first three on the list had succeeded to do so whilst Vietnam unfortunately was not intelligent enough to stop the Communists when it had teh chance. Vietnam needn't Communism ... we would be on par or better than Korea had we seized the chance when we did have it.

I don't think you should blame other countrie's for one countries state of affairs. If that is the case, shouldn't you blame your own countrymen like Ho Chi Minh for trying to reunify Vietnam and causing the war??

You are right Kewell7, the only people that should really be blamed are the leaders.

Vietnam would be a better country if the communist are out of power, they are the only thing that is holding us back.

But sooner or later we will get it back!!!!

Vietnam is getting better and better every single day , fuk those who are against Vietnamese , wait and see

Yeah fu-k all those fu-kers, they need to get the fu-k out.

Or we gonna kick them in the ballz

The country ain't doing THAT bad. The poverty rate is like what? 29% Compared to other countries that didn't have any wars or economic sanctions like the Phillipines which have their poverty levels at 40%.

29% poverty level isn't bad for an isolationist country that couldn't trade until recently.

Look at China and India, they are both 3rd world countries but their people are by no means morons.

Yes intelligence plays a factor in how well developed a country is, but there is also the luck factor which may ruin a country.

Well if you look at the stats of the Official Mathematics Olympiad, Vietnam ranks 2nd, 3rd, or 4th every year and is the 2nd highest asian country after China, not bad for a country that has economic sanctions on it.

Yeah. Okay.
I think it has a lot to do with you guys being a Communist state..correctme if you guys arenn't i'm just going by what I read at Lonely Planet.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/s...t_asia/vietnam/

HAHAHAHA

It's like you mentioned that maths stuff 100 times already.

All the asians are good at maths man

you have to define what smartness really is before you can answer this question

I don't know.

The only people you should really blame are the commies...........

NQSH!!!! You are smart like a Nasty Ghost Ho Chi Minh Dog Eater!!!

LOL Flame bait

RockHeart is gonna get hammered

..delete

Byron u better stop with that Vietnamese Catholic thing.. Im a Vietnamese Catholic u have anything against me? Its ok if u dont like Vietnamese Catholic, but dont show it to everyone, keep it for yourself i dont go around and say i hate other religion ( yes i did say i hated muslems in another topic, but i meant those fundamentic ones).. In the end those Vietnamese Catholics are Vietnamese just like u, just with another belief....

^ hey, i'd like to know if vietnamese were buddhist before chinese influence? were they animist?

Hmmmmm

well!!! I would to believe on the Buddhist and Catholic religion. They are so good advice to all human been. But i hate Christain religion...Because its liar and cheat too much...Its teaching the people doing the wrong way...

NQSH, you put everyone in such a predicament bringing up this topic.
Very INSENSITIVE. Ask a moderator to close it off before it get worst.
Trust me on this one.

Hai chữ trong tiếng Việt : khiêm tốn

Yes Buddhism was in VN before the Chinese took over, actually the first contact that China had with Buddhism was from VN, not India, though China wasn't too fond of Buddhism back then and only until Bodhi Dharma from India a few hundred years later did China have a more prevalent side of Buddhism. What's "animist" - I googled it and found weird results?



Our country is not backward. I would think that to look upon VN as being backward is not very smart. You have to take into consideration our history through a span of over 4000 years to see truly why VN is VN today. Firstly with the Communists, you could say it was the reaction to French rule. During a period of colonialization, such a notion similar to democracy could never ever break through - the French would just squish any voting since they were the controling "colonizers".

By not "following" a larger international power doesn't mean we are dumb, infact I prefer it that way. I would not like the future of VN to be depend on a foreign nation. As long as VN is improving (which it is) in her own ways and is the one to make the calls, that is ok. Canada piggy backs on the US dollar, so when the US starts going downhill, we can't do anything but follow - Canada is stuck. When the US is in war (like now) our Prime Minister can't really say "No" because of this piggy-back situation, Canada sometimes is seen as an economic puppet of the US. I wouldn't want VN to be like that.

Japan and Korea are rich nations compared to VN, but they also have a great "influential hand" behind them. If the US tells us to do something we don't like, we can just say screw you that's not what our people want. Japan and Korea are in more difficult situations. Also after the war, our currecny is so inflated that we can't afford current technology in micro-biology and nano-tech from different nations. We learn what is good from the west, but we do not adapt immediately. Speed is not an indication of intelligence. VN has a spirit and moral base that we can see tends to diminish with more developed nations, so that is why VN takes her time. For example, if VN embraced the internet like the way the west does (with all its chatting, porn, time wasting, etc) it would not have counter-measures to educate a nation on proper responsibility. TV is another example. If TV were like the MTV stuff over here, our children would be immediately affected. Time allows for observation (though being too slow is not good either).

VN is not backward at all, we should not look on the current state of VN unless we take into account the complete history of our nation. If we want to see how much "improvement" we can achieve economically, simply look at the turn-over rate that VN has achieved after the war in the current situation that VN sits in. Once you look at the "change" instead of the "state", then you can see VN is indeed amazingly fast and not slow as you think.

Totally agree with you!


NO! "NO" is my final answer. We never blame on someone with intrinsically good intention. Beside, the discussion of this man is too profound and need in depth to discuss in order to get a good understanding. It's off topic, so I stop here.

Rockheart and Byron seem to get along very well!

Once the love birds got over the period of adjustment, things look promising.
It's like a love-hate relationship they're in. Once the hate is out in the open, there's only love baby.

Not viet or anything but it just matters on your parents and your peers when you're growing up doesn't it? If you're motivated and get the good responses from your friends and family you'll want to achieve more. It's not like just because you're a particular race you're going to be smarter then another, it all depends on how much you try and your environment. Also about the whole "modernizing" aspect, I think you lose too much culture when you try to adopt "western" society. It shouldn't be that hard to become modernize and keep your culture. I mean asian cultures are very restrictive and that's partly the reason so many asian cultures view america as so "cool" and we're losing our traditions....

Any proofs? Most of "Kinh phat" are translated from chinese. Unlike other Southeast Asian, we follow Mahayana Buddhism which China was the main "distrbutor" to its sino-influenced countries : Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Also, Buddhism didn't even flourish in Chinese domination time, but in the Ly dynasty.

Unless we follow Theravāda Buddhism, then your statement would be reasonable

Democracy doesn't always work, example : India, however I don't like communism either. Your proof of Korea and Japan are totally laughable, because again as another poster pointed out, they were mostly back-up by the "Great America". Without support of economy after the devastating WWII by the US, Japan would suffer more than Vietnam. Same concept applys to Korea. In the 70s, North Korea's economy was doing very well, as much as the South. After the USSR collasped, North Korea went downhill.

It's all about the back-up countries.

It's a Republic :P

I was just wondering is Russia backed up by the USA also ?

lol Russia. No. That's why Russia is pretty poor.

Hell Israel was a country in the 40's and look how powerful they are now. It's all because of the U.S pumping billions into it's economy.

If the U.S wanted to they could make African countries rich too.

Yes lotsa proof, just google something like "Khuong Tang Hoi" or "Khương Tăng Hội"

This has been accepted internationally now and was evident a long time ago in historical circles. The thought that VN Buddhism came from China is very debunked.

Most of the Kinh in VN are translated from China because of the 1000 years of rule. We are influenced by Chinese Buddhism to a certain extent, but Buddhism came to VN before China. Actually yes Buddhism did flourish in the Chinese domination, but it was not revealed much until now because we have recovered new artifacts - Buddhism never waned in VN.

Here take a look at this link presented to the International Association of Asian Studies, held in Houston, TX, February 21-26, 2000 (gotta read the whole thing - including the footnotes please)

here are some blurbs from there:



K’ang Seng-hui is Khương Tăng Hội



So as you can see as early as the 3rd BCE





http://www.quangduc.net/English/0202buddhisminvietnam.html

But he's chinese :S. I am very confused by your proof.

Also how do they know that "history, language, literature and Buddhism" existed before Chinese domination, if there were no hard-proof of vietnamese own writing before Chunho or Hanzi.

Also as I pointed out Buddhism didn't flourish in China, so where and how they can translate the "kinh" from China?

Should just make a new topic about religion :-D

Israel is like the USA of the middle east now hehe. Although it can't free itself from American aide now that's it has "developed"

LOL on the map, they include Laos and Champa as Vietnam.

Anyway, Vietnamese like Chinese also worship gods, heroes, and ancestors. WE also have temples dedicate to elephants and whales.

I've recently read in an OECD report that nowadays Vietnamese children performed better in literacy (understanding what they read) and have better academic achiements than nowadays German and Japanese. I can't find that report now.



I also know that children of Vietnamese descent are considered very bright pupils (always among the top group) in France, that they do extremely well also in other European countries. But probably Vietnamese youths in Vietnam, though stuying in less favorable conditions, work even harder!

So, if being smart means hard working, then we are! Vietnamese people are inventive, but I think they need to work in better conditions at home.

We've got also 1 Nobel Prize (guess for what?) but declined it...

You might want to be our next Nobel Prize winner - in economics? or statistics?!

Have a look at this.
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/rank-Asia.mht

That isn't a political map, which is why borders aren't drawn. Another reason why the borders aren't drawn is because the spreading of Buddhism took place over centuries. During this time, many nations borders shifted. The names of each nation is written at their modern day location for reference.

I don't know about Champa but I don't see how you assume Laos was included as part of Vietnam.

Yes indeed Communist Vietnamese is also Vietnamese.. But u make it as Catholics are all to blame.. It would be so easy just to blame it on Catholics.. But remember that Vietnam is majority Buddishm! So why dont u insult other kinds? i have notice u only go after Catholics..and i find that offensive.. There is a difference in bashing somes ideoligy and bashing someones religion.

Sorry I didn't clarify heheh - Khương Tăng Hội is the first Monk with Viet Blood - hes not Chinese, the usage of Chinese naming in this document was for international purposes - remember this document was presented to an international panel. Khuong Tang Hoi was son to an Indian father and a Viet mother.

About history language and literature - some sources are from Han records made by Han scholars - that's the irony - a lot our texts are destroy but the Han kept theirs and they recorded what happened when they visited us. Also remember that Dr. Le Manh That has found over 300 artifacts never before seen in this world, so the sources that you have read from are probably not a part of the new discoveries. The newer evidence is from Viet sources when Dr. Le Manh That traveled the country side.

I agree that Buddhism didn't flourish in China during that time, thus the Kinh was translated from India - Buddhism met VN by route of sea from the source, so Khuong Tang Hoi translated a lot from pali and sanskit, not from Chinese sources. Later on during the Chinese rule of 1000 years, the texts were destroyed and the Chinese versions were translated - thus what you see now with Chinese/Han scriptures in Kinh.

Also that map is old - the book I'm reading and new findings are within these foew years. Dr. Le Mant That was working during the 1974-75 era when he was put in jail by the govnt for protesting for religious freedom - he was set free in 1998, so he has been through a time freeze and the historical community had to wait.


Remember dudes - this is newer stuff, so all your previous knowledge, and that map, is debunked

And let me guess rockHeart, you are smarter than the dumbest person?

Any pictures please.

As far as I know, we haven't found any writing systems before sinicization, or if found, it would probably is still undeciphered. Unless you have pictures and proofs, I still don't believe it.

Like I said this is new stuff - so I myself can't find any on the net because the to mass populace this isn't available:

If you get a chance though you can look into this:



Khuong Tang Hoi toan tap. 44. Vol. I. VanHanh University Press, 1975. 615p

So sorry I have no pics at the moment, since this relatively new stuff so its up to you what you think. I have much to read through so I will post more when I learn more.

Someone declined a nobel prize? Who're you referring to? Never knew. (currently clueless)

Le Duc Tho for the Nobel Peace Prize, but declined



http://www.nobel-winners.com/Peace/le_duc_tho.html

Born: October 14, 1911 Original name: Phan Dinh Khai AKA Le Duc Tho
Place of birth: Nam Ha, Vietnam
Residence: Democratic Republic of Viet Nam
(Declined the prize on grounds that his country was still not at peace.) 1973

Was he supposed to share one with Henry Kissinger ?

I think so.

Thanks guys for the info on the nobel prize... Not too often do people decline the Nobel prize though, i'm kind of curious on how many people have declined them throughout the years now. But i guess i'll do that research on my own.

On a different note, that article on buddhism is also pretty interesting. It offers a new perspective on Vietnamese buddhism, and thus to a large degree, Vietnamese civilization.