Chinese CDs sales annoy Vietnam

Chinese CDs sales annoy Vietnam

HANOI (AFP): Vietnamese officials are warning of new "cultural
pollutants" sweeping the country, propagating reactionary and
indecent thoughts among the young.

But the source of this contamination is not the western
countries that Hanoi's cultural commissars often blame for a
variety of ills. Instead, its communist neighbor China, the
world's largest producer of pirate compact and laser discs.

In recent months, stalls selling CDs from artists as varied as
U.S. grunge band Nirvana to Richard Clayderman, a pop pianist who
has won particular favor among the Vietnamese, have sprung up
across Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Discs smuggled in across the Chinese border cost only US$2,
affordable for Vietnamese who have been splurging on motorbikes
and electronics goods as the country emerges from long years of
austerity.

"Compact and laser discs containing reactionary or indecent
material such as indecent Playboy erotic movies can be purchased
across the country," complained the Saigon Giai Phong newspaper
in a recent article.

Vietnam is not the first to complain about Chinese-made CDs.
The United States has threatened to keep Beijing out of the World
Trade Organization unless it closes 26 factories producing CDs,
laser discs and CD-ROM computer discs.

U.S. officials say the factories can produce 75 million units
annually, most of which are exported to Southeast Asia, and has
said China faces trade penalties unless it ends a trade that
costs the United States $1 billion a year.

But for Vietnam, the issue is less about intellectual property
rights -- a concept only recently acknowledged here -- than about
the government's increasingly desperate attempts to keep out what
it sees as unsavory influences.

"This market is posing a real threat that demands immediate
action if the government wants to strengthen itself on the
ideology and culture front," the official newspaper warned.

Too late

Authorities may be too late. Saccharine-sweet love songs by
overseas Vietnamese have left revolutionary anthems in the dust,
while the bumping and grinding of bikini-clad women is a popular
video alternative to the stale fare on state television.

Market forces unleashed here in 1987 are spreading foreign
culture at an unstoppable pace, with fierce competition between
CD traders keeping prices rock bottom.

"Our profits are very low because of the strong competition
between retailers and the cost of imported goods from China,"
said Hung, who works in a shop on Hai Ba Trung Street, Hanoi's
electronics center, where more than 100 shops vie for customers.
CDs cost retailers just one dollar, while those who smuggle goods
across the border get about five percent of their value, traders
say.

Bribes clear the goods quickly through customs to avoid the 30
percent tax on discs, which are also supposed to be approved by
the Minister of Culture and Information but rarely are.

The goods are part of the growing cross-border trade with
China, which is officially put at around $500 million a year,
although smuggling may mean the real figure is much higher.

Hanoi has signed several agreements with Beijing to regulate
the trade, most recently during a visit last week by Chinese
President Jiang Zemin, but implementation has been weak and
Vietnam has found itself powerless next to its neighbor's
exporting muscle.

The government's diktats regularly go unenforced in the
independent-minded border provinces, but new regulations or
crackdowns on pirated goods in China often have the effect of
sending new waves of traders across the border.

A recent ban on satellite dishes in China sent prices
plummeting in Vietnam as thousands were shipped across the border
to be snapped up by a population increasingly eager for
entertainment.