{"id":1525,"date":"2026-06-16T12:10:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1525"},"modified":"2026-06-16T12:10:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:10:32","slug":"more-than-manufacturing-vietnam-has-hopes-to-become-asias-next-cultural-powerhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1525","title":{"rendered":"More than manufacturing: Vietnam has hopes to become Asia\u2019s next cultural powerhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bieber\u2019s outfit is part of a larger story: Vietnam\u2019s export-dependent economy is beginning to leverage intellectual property to move up the value chain.<\/p>\n

Read more IBM\u2019s $17 million DOJ settlement makes the case for civility<\/a><\/p>\n

Vietnam\u2019s booming cultural scene is sitting between a top-down drive by the government to elevate culture to a policy priority, and a bottom-up push by a generation of young creators empowered by rising consumer spending and cheap internet access. The companies that manage this talent hope that culture, like everything else in Vietnam, can be reengineered as an export product.<\/p>\n

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Last Year\u2019s Resolution 68 affirmed the private sector as Vietnam\u2019s \u201cmost important driving force.\u201d It dominates commentary about General Secretary To Lam\u2019s reform push, dubbed Doi Moi 2.0, a reference to Vietnam\u2019s 1980s economic transformation.<\/p>\n

Yet Resolution 80, passed in January, could end up being just as important to the growing cultural economy. The measure established culture as an indispensable foundation of Vietnam\u2019s sustainable development, a coequal pillar alongside the economy, society, and the environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe resolution emphasizes the role of cultural industries in the economic development of the country,\u201d says Duc Khuong Nguyen, a senior fellow at the University of Cambridge\u2019s Department of Land Economy and an advisor to the government. Hanoi has long used culture to encourage patriotic feelings and build some cohesion across the country\u2019s 54 ethnic groups, but \u201crecognizing culture as a business is quite recent,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

Vietnam\u2019s government wants the cultural economy to grow by 10% every year, and make up 7% of GDP by 2030. In the past 12 months, To Lam\u2019s government has announced a new public holiday to celebrate culture; its first-ever national showcase at the Venice Biennale; and the launch of Vietnam Today, an English-language state-owned broadcaster in the mold of China\u2019s CGTN.<\/p>\n

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The government also broke ground on a number of showstopping construction projects, including a lavish new opera house in Hanoi, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, and a 135,000-seat stadium, set to be the world\u2019s largest upon its completion in 2028.<\/p>\n

The cultural scene is also growing from the bottom up. \u201cVietnam\u2019s pop culture is leaking out through the internet rather than through state-sponsored engineering,\u201d William Lee Adams, a Vietnamese American journalist and cultural commentator, explains. \u201cTwenty years ago people wanted to imitate the Western world; now it\u2019s about reflecting their own lives. The country\u2019s young, digitally connected population has created this creative incubator.\u201d<\/p>\n

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An additional 23.2 million people are projected to join Vietnam\u2019s middle class by 2030, making it one of the fastest-growing globally. This rising consumer class will eventually \u201ctransition the country from \u2018make in Vietnam and export to the rest of the world\u2019 to \u2018make and sell in Vietnam,\u2019\u201d says Luke Treloar, a partner and strategy group head at KPMG in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

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Vietnam, with a gross national income (GNI) per capita of around $4,500, is still a relatively poor country compared with Asian cultural powerhouses like South Korea, Japan, or even Thailand. But Adams thinks the country can \u201cbypass the need for money,\u201d thanks to digital infrastructure and a \u201cculturally confident\u201d youth population. \u201cSouth Korea built its global pop empire after reaching high-income status, but Vietnam is proving you can start producing and exporting culture earlier in your development curve.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A sudden rise in the popularity of homegrown pop music, or V-pop, is driving growth for pop culture players like Yeah1, DatVietVAC, and POPS. Even bigger companies are getting into the business: Vingroup, one of Vietnam\u2019s biggest conglomerates and No. 26 on the Southeast Asia 500, added culture as a new \u201ccore pillar\u201d of its strategy in November.<\/p>\n

Yeah1, the country\u2019s first listed media company, reported a 60% revenue jump in 2025, driven by products like its flagship singing-competition reality TV show,\u00a0Anh Trai Vuot Ngan Chong Gai<\/em>\u00a0(Call Me by Fire<\/em>), which draws live audiences of up to 50,000 people a night and is streamed to millions of fans worldwide. The company recorded 82 billion views across its 200 owned channels last year, according to its annual report.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the end of this year I will take my boy band Uprize outside of Vietnam,\u201d Thao Le Phuong, Yeah1\u2019s chairwoman, pledges, referring to a seven-member boy group cultivated through another reality competition show. Uprize is managed by SYE Holdings, a new joint venture between Yeah1 and Sony Music with a focus on international markets.<\/p>\n

POPS, another growing Vietnamese music and entertainment company, is preparing to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and planning its own international expansion. \u201cIt\u2019s our duty to recognize the dreams of our artists,\u201d POPS founder Esther Nguyen says.<\/p>\n

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And that dream is to break out of Vietnam and go global. \u201cOf course our artists want to have resonance in the local market, but their ultimate goal is always: \u2018How do I get outside of Vietnam? How do I make it in the U.S.?\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

This article appears in the June\/July 2026: Asia issue of\u00a0<\/em> Fortune\u00a0with the headline \u201cVietnam\u2019s pop culture takes the stage.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Iran emerges from war with its economy in free fall and inflation on some food items above 400%. If the regime doesn\u2019t fix it, \u2018there will be trouble\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government policy and grassroots creators hope to prove that Vietnam can export culture as well as consumer goods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media"],"yoast_head":"\nMore than manufacturing: Vietnam has hopes to become Asia\u2019s next cultural powerhouse - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1525\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More than manufacturing: Vietnam has hopes to become Asia\u2019s next cultural powerhouse - 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