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...

By Aidan Jones