By Min Zhou, Vivian Chen
When we travelled to Vietnam in late December, the first novel coronavirus cases hadn’t even been reported in China. Now, with the virus battering Chinese manufacturing, our impressions from that visit seem especially timely as investors seek to assess the shift of global supply chains to Vietnamese factories.
Global companies have been testing Vietnam’s capabilities for several years - even before the added impetus from the US-China trade wars. That’s because China’s rise as the world’s factory has created labor shortages and pushed up costs. Labor costs in Vietnam, with