Thousands of Vietnamese flock to Bill Gates http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-22T054736Z_01_HAN137313_RTRUKOC_0_US-VIETNAM-GATES.xml
Sat Apr 22, 2006
By Grant McCool
HANOI (Reuters) - Thousands of Vietnamese students climbed trees and pushed against security barricades to give Microsoft founder Bill Gates a pop star's welcome in Hanoi on Saturday.
The world's richest man is on a one-day visit to the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which has the highest rate of fake software sold in the world. With an annual per capita income of $640, few can afford software packages and pirated versions sell for one or two dollars.
"I hope that one day I can be as successful as him," said Nguyen Trung Dung, 19, one of about 7,000 students who swarmed the grounds of Hanoi University of Technology to see Gates and hear his speech in the auditorium.
He received a standing ovation inside the hall and some students briefly clambered on the car carrying the Microsoft chairman as it left 90 minutes later for his next event.
Earlier on Saturday, Gates, 50, met Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong, who both took time away from the ruling Communist Party National Congress, the most important event on the political calendar. The eight-day Party meeting ends on April 25.
Khai, after outlining Vietnam's 20-year-long reforms from a centrally planned economy to one driven by markets, told Gates: "I'm ready to listen to your advice."
The two also met last year in Seattle when Khai became the first Vietnamese Prime Minister to visit the United States since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
"We certainly see opportunities in Vietnam for talented people to have jobs in the IT sector, including the improvement of the efficiency of the economy and the government," Gates said.
Economic analysts see education in technical and foreign language skills, particularly English, as the key to developing Vietnam's technology sector. About half of its 83 million people are under 30 years old.
Gates emphasized this point in his speech to the students.
"Now that the Internet has connected the world, some of the opportunity is not so much defined by geography but today it is much more determined by the educational investment you make."
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