I realize that this quote is a bit too long for copyright purposes, but this article is too interesting not to share. It is about how the elite in Ho Chi Minh City is preparing its next generation to compete globally, with learning English at the core of its strategy:

A 13-year-old Vietnamese boy managing the reception at the Homework Center told me in perfect English (he started learning it at age two) that children attend after school between the hours of 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., bringing their daily studies to around 12 hours. He spoke with earnest precision and eerie assurance. And where, I asked, would he like to go to college? “M.I.T.” he shot back without hesitation.

At Little Genius — motto “Kids want to fly!” — the push for academic excellence begins at an early age with a computer room designed for three-year-olds and filled with state-of-the-art equipment. Mastering English and technology is a sine qua non for such global wunderkinds growing up in a Communist state with a fiercely capitalist system, and imbued with the Asian values that put the success of the young generation first.

The brochure of Little Genius, an international kindergarten, lists among its objectives: “To creatively integrate technology through the curriculum, thereby earning access to the learning tools of the 21st century...."

This then is the way the world works: Autocratic hypercapitalism without American checks and balances produces new Asian elites, often party-connected, whose dream is an American lifestyle and education for their children; and whose other goal, knowing how their own capricious system really functions, is to buy into the rule of law and property guarantees by acquiring real estate in North America or perhaps Britain, so driving up prices in prime urban markets to the point where the middle classes of those countries, whose incomes are often stagnant or falling, are pushed aside. This symbiotic system at the level of individuals is mirrored at the national level, where the invisible bargain is that American debt is bought by Asian governments, notably the Chinese, and Asians make money through access to credit-fueled U.S. markets and consumers.