Week 4 Presentation: Politics

Ricky Lai

ASA 150E

Week 4 Presentation: Politics

            Week 4 was the start of the powerpoint presentations for ASA 150E. Tien, Michael, and I all volunteered ourselves to be the first presenters due to being students of Valverde’s previous class, so we felt pretty comfortable with her grading process. Despite this, we definitely encountered difficulties in collaborating with each other and trying to relate our articles to each other as well. Because of our difficulties in collaborating our efforts, we each worked on an article of our own choice that we felt related to the topic of “Politics”. We all happened to pick topics relating to Vietnam due to all three of us being Vietnamese.

            Michael’s presentation about Vietnamese politics explained the rigidity of Vietnam’s government in relation to its citizens’ concerns. It explained that the Communist Vietnamese government is unwilling to seriously consider the voice of the people living in Vietnam. I thought his article was interesting and it happened to relate somewhat to my own article, which was China and Vietnam: Managing an Asymmetrical Relationship During an Era of Uncertainty. I picked this article because I felt that it was extremely relevant to some of the themes learned in Professor Valverde’s ASA 114 course, that of which being globalization and transnationalism. It was apparent to me that China and Vietnam’s long lasting historical tensions has continued to this day in the form of socio-economic ties through their interconnected market-capitalistic economies. It highly intrigued me as a second-generation Vietnamese American born in the U.S. how Vietnam was so interconnected culturally, socially, and economically to China. I wanted to explain the reasons I felt that my article provided for this interconnectedness between Vietnam and China and what it can do for their mutually-beneficial relationship.

            Tien’s presentation was a little harder for me to follow since we hadn’t discussed our articles together. It was unfortunate that we weren’t able to meet, but alas it was the first week of presentations and I’m sure we were all scrambling to get our presentations finished. Despite not having a powerpoint, I picked up on the fact that Tien’s presentation related to mixed race Vietnamese children and the lack of accountability for them in the context of the United State’s political frameworks and processes. I found his article interesting but I thought his lack of visual aid made it difficult for the class to follow. Not having any visible outline or rubric made the topics he discussed a bit confusing. Overall though, I’d say we did an okay job collectively on this presentation.