To Lam’s blueprint for a rising Vietnam: build fast, grow rich

If all goes to plan, in under three years the world’s largest stadium will tower over Hanoi’s southern suburbs as a shimmering monument to the good times ahead for Vietnam and, by extension, its leader To Lam, the secret policeman who now holds power.The golden, drum-shaped Trong Dong Stadium, with a capacity of 135,000, is the centrepiece of a proposed US$38 billion new town designed to ease Vietnamese capital’s chronic congestion.Vingroup, the country’s dominant cars-to-minimarts conglomerate, is set to build it with generous state support under the public-private model favoured by Vietnam’s government.But To Lam, general secretary of the Vietnam" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="12806" data-entity-type="organization">Communist Party of Vietnam, is just getting started.His government is set to lavish tens of billions of dollars on long-delayed airports, high-speed rail lines and nuclear power plants – an infrastructure push fit for the “new era of national rise”, as the party sloganeering puts it.And, as with much of To Lam’s vision for Vietnam, speed is of the essence.An artist’s impression of the golden, drum-shaped Trong Dong Stadium in Hanoi. Photo: Handout