HO CHI MINH CITY -- Last month Vietnam's leader held a series of meetings in California, from a tete-a-tete with Apple CEO Tim Cook to a gift exchange at Google's campus, to tell Silicon Valley his country is open for business. Simultaneously, at home on the other side of the Pacific, its one-party government was drafting internet rules that sent jitters through the technology sector.
Vietnam's activities on opposite sides of the ocean lay bare two competing ambitions -- one to digitize the fast-growing economy of 99 million people, the other to keep the web under its thumb.
