A dynamo returns home

Huu Dinh has lived an extraordinary life. As a child, his poverty-stricken family moved from the north to the south to seek a living. He had 11 brothers and sisters, but disease and disaster killed seven of them. His mother died in childbirth, but his father continued to struggle to educate his son. As the American War waged ever fiercer, Huu was sent to the US in 1974 to study mechanical engineering and nuclear power.
After obtaining a PhD diploma in 1985, he became the executive director of a nuclear power plant in Louisiana. But his heart yearned after Vietnam, and so he decided to quit the plant.
It was not so easy; he was a valuable employee and the chairman thought he was crazy to leave. The company director enlisted the help of his wife to persuade Huu not to leave, and he was offered a pay rise. All to no avail: Huu told the company director it was time to do something for Vietnam before he was too old.
Every beginning has birthing pains and Huu’s new enterprise was no exception. His first company with two friends went awry and so Huu donated his stake to the friends and left. He set up his own company, American Technologies Inc. US (ATI-US), in 1990. The company applied the latest technology to power, waste treatment and oil and gas exploration and production.
ATI-US now employs more than 400 workers and experts to serve various customers, including the US Energy Department. In 1996, ATI-US was listed in the top successful businesses in the US headed by minority Americans.
So much for helping the US. Hearing that the Vietnamese government was encouraging Viet Kieu to return to Vietnam to invest, Huu returned in 1997.
By December 2003, Huu owned 25 projects in aquaculture, eco-tourism, oil exploration and e-commerce in Vietnam and was contributing considerably to poverty reduction.
Riding the wave
Huu challenged nature when he decided to invest aggressively in aquaculture in northern Vietnam where cold winter weather threatens shrimp and fish breeding. Modern farming technologies have helped him to do so, little troubled by the harsh weather, but not before Mother Nature tested his will.
Large waves twice destroyed the dams Huu built in Twin Dragons Bay in Quang Ninh province to farm cobia, grouper and red drum fish. At the time, Huu was disheartened but persevered, and his third attempt at the dams was successful. Other projects rode over similar difficulties, and his projects now reach from Sapa in the north to Quang Binh province in the central region.
Most of his projects are labour intensive and the company employs more than 2,500 workers who are happy to have an average monthly wage of VND1 million ($64). The projects are often located in poor areas such as Tien Hai district in Thai Binh province and Thach Ha district in Ha Tinh province, sandy or swampy areas that few other investors would glance at. Residents themselves did not think much of the land they struggled to make a living from, until Huu arrived.
Workers often see Huu as another farmer amongst them rather than as their boss because of his simple lifestyle. Unlike many other Viet Kieu, who opt to live in luxury villas, Huu lives in a small room in the company’s headquarters in Hanoi’s Pham Van Dong Street.
Huu spends less of his time in his modern office than out in the fields, talking with experts about farming technologies or instructing workers how to shore up banks and dig ponds. At night he eats dinner with his workers in the fields.
“Perhaps because I came from an impoverished family, I understand how miserable being poor is,” Huu says.
Huu also admires and promotes Vietnam’s unique culture. All his tourism resorts, whether in Ha Tay province, Sapa or Bai Tu Long Bay, feature the traditional stilt-houses of ethnic minorities.
battling rumours
Failure often accompanies success. It was not his set-backs in construction, Huu says, but some workers’ bad will that was his first failure. Experts in a shrimp breeding project in Thai Binh province asked him for much higher pay after they successfully produced high yields. In following harvests, they were too complacent and productivity dropped sharply.
Malicious rumours disappoint him even more. Huu says his business expansion is making some people jealous. They have tried to attack him by spreading rumours that he has political ambitions and that his shrimp-breeding projects are polluting the environment.
“These rumours make me very frustrated,” Huu says. “I am too old to pursue any political ambitions. I am not doing business to earn money: my only desire is to contribute something to Vietnam’s development.
“I invest in sandy areas with modern technology and foreign expertise. I am keeping the environment clean and creating jobs.”
In response to questions about where he has gotten the money to invest in so many projects, Huu replies that his company has been strongly supported by the Thang Long branch of the Bank for Agriculture and Rural Develop-ment with various bank loans.
“I am very sad about these suspicions and rumours, they discourage me from further expanding my investments,” he says.
However, Huu says, he will try to beat the rumours and make his investments successful. “Success will be the answer to these suspicions.”
last dream
Huu’s main concern is how he can use the knowledge he gained in the US to benefit Vietnam. His ambition was to help the country develop a nuclear power industry but so far there has been no opportunity.
Huu says his aquaculture and tourism projects are faring well but really they are only side ambitions. He would rather do something to prove to foreigners that Viet-namese people are not inferior to anyone in the world.
“It is not easy to find a person with knowledge about nuclear power like me in Vietnam. Much of my knowledge has not been used.”
Huu says he is considering leaving the fishery and tourism businesses for his staff to manage while he returns to the US to look for opportunities to help his homeland in nuclear power development and e-commerce.
Huu has set up an e-business website, www.bvom.com, a trade link between Vietnamese and US businesses. It is the abbreviation of Business Vietnam Open Market, meaning Vietnam is a country open for foreign companies to do business in.
The website has attracted a considerable number of Viet-namese and US companies looking for business opportunities brought about by the implementation of the Vietnam-US bilateral trade agreement.
“Vietnamese enterprises are often not strong enough financially to promote their products overseas. The Internet is a cost-effective instrument for their promotion,” Huu says.
Alongside the website, the company plans to create a trade promotion centre in the US to introduce Vietnamese goods. As such, he is serving as a bridge for business between the two countries.
But right now, Huu is eager that all his investments here are successful, toiling day and night in the fields to ensure they are.