Thuan An
Thuận An is the capital of Bình Dương Province — Vietnam's manufacturing heartland north of HCMC — where the 1996 Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) created the template for FDI-driven industrialisation that transformed an agricultural province into one of Vietnam's wealthiest.
Thuận An sits immediately north of Ho Chi Minh City in Bình Dương Province — a location that was primarily agricultural in the 1980s and is now one of the densest concentrations of foreign-owned manufacturing in Southeast Asia.
The transformation started with Đổi Mới, Vietnam's 1986 economic reform programme that opened the country to foreign direct investment after a decade of post-war isolation. Bình Dương Province, positioned on the northern edge of HCMC with flat terrain, cheap land, and proximity to port infrastructure, was one of the first regions to attract large-scale industrial investment. The Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park — VSIP — opened in 1996 as a joint venture between Singapore's Ascendas and Vietnam's Becamex IDC. It offered foreign manufacturers pre-built factory space, guaranteed power and water, customs facilitation, and a single administrative contact for permits and approvals. Hundreds of companies from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the US established operations in VSIP Bình Dương and in the industrial zones that proliferated across the province in subsequent years.
The VSIP model was not just a park — it was a replicable template. Vietnam subsequently built VSIP facilities across multiple other provinces, applying the same design to attract FDI nationwide. What began as a single zone north of HCMC became the blueprint for how Vietnam industrialised. The business lesson: a proven operating model (pre-approved land, utilities, permits bundled as a product) scales faster than individually negotiated arrangements — because it reduces the search and compliance costs that deter foreign investors. Thuận An, as Bình Dương's capital, sits at the administrative centre of the province where the model was first proven.
Mycorrhizal fungi form networks below the soil surface that connect tree root systems across an entire forest. Resources — water, phosphorus, carbon — move through the network from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. No individual tree can access what the network accesses; the connectivity itself is what enables the forest's productivity. Bình Dương's industrial park system operates on identical logic: shared infrastructure, shared logistics networks, shared labour pools, and shared regulatory frameworks allow individual manufacturers to operate at a cost structure they could not achieve in isolation. The VSIP model is the mycelial thread through which the province's growth moved.
The Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) in Bình Dương Province, opened 1996 as a joint venture between Singapore's Ascendas and Vietnam's Becamex, became the template for Vietnam's industrial park model — subsequently replicated in seven other provinces — making Thuận An's province the origin point of how Vietnam industrialised.