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Vietnam tightens grip on illegal online games

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Google, Apple and Facebook help remove over 140 apps from stores since 2017.

Vietnamese authorities have been tightening their grip on illegal online games published on Apple and Google app stores—removing 142 of them since 2017 with support from Google, Apple, and Facebook—according to local media reports.

Separately, the Apple Transparency Report revealed that Apple removed nine apps out of 29 that were requested by the Vietnamese Government between July and December 2018. The “requests relate to illegal gambling and/or unlicensed gaming app investigations,” Apple said.

According to a report by Thu Huong Le, KrASIA on Nikkei, Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications defines illegal online games as those that contain elements of violence, gambling, and those found to distort Vietnamese history.

Additionally, online games, also those hosted outside of Vietnam or “cross-border,” must be granted a license and have their content approved by Vietnamese authorities before being released to Vietnamese audiences. Foreign game companies can partner with a local company and ask that local company to apply for a license for its games. Another option is to set up a branch or representative office in Vietnam and do the paperwork on their own. Failing to do so makes games illegal.

Authorities have also warned local businesses not act as middlemen by collecting money from online game players in the country and transferring proceeds to the foreign game publishers. The Ministry has asked local game businesses to store data about players in Vietnam and provide information of players to authorities if requested.

In 2018, the Ministry said it licensed 175 online games in Vietnam, 95% of which came from China.

According to a recent report by local game publisher Appota, Vietnamese users combined, consume on average more than 400,000 hours per day watching livestreams of video games.

South African teacher missing in Vietnam

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The family of Mushfiq Daniels, 28, from Surrey Estate in Cape Town, says he was last seen on June 5 in Ho Chi Min City.

According to a report on Netwerk24, Daniels has been working as an English teacher in the country since March 2018.

Daniels last spoke to his family on July 3, and his mother, Faheema Abrahams, was notified of his disappearance on July 7. The family has been in contact with the South African embassy.

Daniels’ family has travelled to Vietnam and have searched at mosques, hospitals, police stations and restaurants in the hope of uncovering his whereabouts, but have yet to receive any leads.

According to a Facebook page set up to aid the search, Daniels’ family believes he “suffered a breakdown causing distress and disorientation”.

On Friday, the family called for followers of the page to “keep a lookout near all mosques in the Ho Chi Minh City [area]”, but this did not yield any results.

“We have no other confirmed reports. It is currently difficult to verify some reports due to the lack of CCTV in the city. Please continue to keep an eye out for Mushfiq,” the family posted.

Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) spokesperson Nelson Kgwete confirmed that the department is aware of Daniels’ disappearance.

“Officials at the South African embassy in Hanoi are in contact with the Vietnamese authorities. Local police have launched a search to trace Mr Daniels. The embassy is also in contact with Mr Daniels’ family members who are currently in Vietnam,” Kgwete added.

Earlier this year, another South African was reported missing in Vietnam.

John Bothma, 22, from Gauteng, was last heard from on May 18. He had been visiting a friend in Ho Chi Minh City. His phone had been off since then and friends and family have been trying to piece together what could have happened.

Bothma had been doing short-team teaching stints since entering the south-east Asian country in November last year, but was hoping to secure a longer contract.

Images of a South African man involved in accident, thought to be Bothma, were circulating on Facebook last month. However, authorities verified Bothma was not the man involved in the accident.

Kgwete also confirmed that efforts to trace Bothma are continuing.

Vietnam is top country for foreign adoptions in Ireland

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Vietnam is the top country for people from Ireland who are adopting a child from abroad.

There were 20 adoptions registered from Vietnam here last year, according to the annual report of the Adoption Authority. Eilish O’Regan reports on Irish Independent.

This is followed by Thailand, from where eight children were adopted, and the United States, which accounted for seven adoptions to Ireland. There were four children adopted here from China and one from Bulgaria.

Overall there were just 41 inter-country adoptions last year, which is down from 82 in 2015.

The report said that some 72 adoption orders were granted for domestic adoptions in 2018. And the majority were in step families.

The updated adoption legislation of 2010 led to a slow-down in the number of foreign adoptions as a result of several countries being closed off to Irish people.

However, the opening up of Vietnam in particular means that the number of new inter-country adoptions. The trend is believed to be continuing this year.

Ireland now has adoption agreements with Bulgaria, China, Haiti, India, the Philippines, Poland, Thailand, the US and Vietnam which includes easier means of traveling to Ireland among others.

According to Irish Independent, the number of adoption orders made in respect of children who had been in long-term foster care in Ireland increased to 25 in 2018, from 21 in 2017.

Children who are available for adoption abroad now tend to be older. Many also have special needs.

Since 1991 there have been 1,608 children adopted here from Russia and 880 from Vietnam.

Another 786 were adopted from Romania and 425 from China.

Hundreds of children were also adopted from Ethiopia, Belarus, Thailand and the Ukraine, according to figures in the report.

VN-Index finishes the week on a positive note

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Vietnamese shares picked up on Friday as market sentiment turned positive again during the earnings season, following an official comment from a Fed official.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange rose 0.64 per cent to close at 982.34 points.

It recovered from the 0.66 per cent drop recorded on Thursday.

The VN-Index gained a total of 0.71 per cent this week.

Banks and other large-cap stocks were the main driving force of the market on Friday.

The large-cap VN30-Index surged 1.15 per cent to end the session at 880.79 points.

Twenty-three of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and trading liquidity in the VN30 basket advanced.

Among the best-performers in the VN30 basket were Eximbank (EIB), Vietcombank (VCB), Techcombank (TCB) and Sacombank (STB).

Other gainers included tech group FPT (FPT), food and beverage producer Masan (MSN), DHG Pharmaceutical JSC (DHG), dairy producer Vinamilk (VNM), property firm Vincom Retail (VRE) and retailer Mobile World (MWG).

Banking, realty, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, retail, technology and food and beverage were the best-performing sectors on Friday.

Those sector indices gained between 0.9 per cent and 2.1 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Some banks have reported higher earnings reports for the second quarter and the first half of the year such as Vietcombank, Sacombank and Military Bank (MBB).

Therefore, investors were drawn into other banks and firms whose quarterly performance they hope will meet market expectations.

Net foreign buying was also another driver of the market’s growth.

Foreign investors net-bought VNĐ146.7 billion on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange, marking the fourth consecutive day they net-purchased local stocks.

The increase of trading liquidity also proved investors were upbeat about the market’s short-term uptrend, Thành Công Securities Co (TCSC) said in its daily report.

More than 170 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VNĐ4 trillion (US$172 million).

The figure consisted of more than 160.6 million shares being sold via order-matching transactions, worth VNĐ3.6 trillion.

Investor confidence was also bolstered after a Fed official late Thursday said central banks should cut rates to stimulate their economies in the context of the global slowdown, MB Securities Co (MBS) said in a note.

Recent developments show the market is quite strong financially and the earnings season is expected to drive growth in the short term as large-cap firms release their reports, MBS said.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index was up 0.31 per cent on Friday to finish at 107.07 points.

The northern market index gained a total of 1.38 per cent in the last four trading days this week for a total weekly gain of 1.14 per cent.

Nearly 28 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VNĐ456 billion.

Source: VNS

VND8bn robbery reported at Hanoi Ciputra apartment

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A South Korean lost cash and property valued at over VND 8 billion (USD347,826) after his apartment at the Hanoi’s Ciputra Urban Area was broken in.

Police in Bac Tu Liem District announced on Saturday that they were investigating a robbery at an apartment in Ciputra Urban Area.

According to initial information, on the morning of July 19, a South Korean friend of the tenant, unlocked the door of the apartment in Ciputra for a cleaner to access the property. He realised that the door had been damaged and unlocked already. A safe in the bedroom was broken and all his belongings inside gone.

The apartment is rented by another South Korean man who was currently not in Vietnam.

The man immediately informed the home owner’s assistant, Hoang Thi Hong Phuong who then came to check and report the case to the police.

Phuong also informed the house’s owner who told police that there were VND1 billion and 15,000 yuan, four watches worth a total of VND7 billion and some gold, altogether worth VND8.1 billion.

Phuong said that there was no security camera at the apartment corridor.

The management board at Ciputra has yet to give any explanation or comment about the robbery.

Police are still investigating the case.

Source: Dtinews

iPhone users complain about iOS 13 beta

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iPhone users have complained that iOS 13 beta on their phone sets sometimes interferes with incoming calls.

“This doesn’t happen regularly, but it affects my life and work a lot,” said Nguyen Minh Hieu, 25, an office worker in Hanoi.

On iPhone fans’ forum, many users have complained about similar problems after they installed iOS 13 beta version.

Apple recently offered its new iOS beta version, allowing users to test them before other people.

On mobile devices, the three wavy lines are still shown, but the phone cannot receive incoming calls. This happens with calls of many different mobile networks, including VinaPhone, Viettel, MobiFone and Vietnamobile.

“The signs on my iPhone show that conditions are perfect. I can call other subscribers, but cannot receive calls. I usually have to restart my iphone to fix the problem,” Quoc Nam commented on the forum.

Minh Duc, a technician at an iPhone Shop on Cau Giay district in Hanoi, said the errors were anticipated.

“This is the beta version of iOS 13, so errors are unavoidable,” he said, adding that users have only one choice – ‘live with the problem’ and wai for the next version in which the problem can be fixed.

In the latest beta version of iOS 13, Apple has fixed some errors which existed in previous versions, including the inactivity of Touch ID on iPhone 7, 8 and 8 Plus models. Wi-fi and bluetooth connections have been improved.

However, the latest version still has system errors, including application conflicts and lag. Some users even complained that their devices fell into the state of pending and automatic restart.

“The new operating system supports many interesting features, and the performance of my iPhone X has also improved significantly. However, the battery fell quickly and applications escaped abruptly,” Nguyen Quang Son wrote on his Facebook.

Some Asian technology journals have advised iPhone and iPad users against installing iOS 13 beta.

While iOS 12 beta was described as reliable enough to install straight away, this year’s iOS 13 beta is not.

iOS 13 was introduced by Apple in early June at WWDC 2019 with some feature changes and focus on device performance. According to Apple, the iPhone models installed with iOS 13 will have screen unlocking speed with Face ID 30 percent faster and an application opening speed 2 times faster.

Source: VNN

Vietjet gets green light for launch of Hanoi-New Delhi service

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The Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam has granted approval to low-cost carrier Vietjet Air to conduct direct flights between Hanoi and the Indian capital city of New Delhi.

The approval was given based on a previous air transport agreement between the Vietnamese and Indian governments.

Vietjet already operates four flights weekly between Ho Chi Minh City and New Delhi.

The airline has not announced the official takeoff date of its first Hanoi-New Delhi flight.

The Vietnamese budget carrier said at the launch of the Ho Chi Minh City-New Delhi route in March 2018 that offering services between Vietnamese and Indian cities serves a growing demand for air travel.

Vietnam and India marked the 45th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 10th anniversary of strategic partnership last year.

New Delhi is the capital city of India. The city itself has a population of roughly 260,000 but the much larger metro area has a population that exceeds 26 million as of 2019.

Vietjet currently operates around 400 flights daily on 113 domestic and international routes covering destinations across Vietnam, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, mainland China, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia.

It is the second-largest airline in Southeast Asia, behind only Singapore Airlines, in terms of market capitalization with the total market value of its shares estimated at US$3 billion as of November 2018, according to Nikkei.

Vietjet transported 44 percent of Vietnam’s total air passengers in the first half of 2019, according to a CAAV report.

Source: Tuoitrenews

Shared workspace business flourishes in downtown HCMC

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HCMC welcomed over 4,000 square meters of co-working office space in the second quarter, concentrated in the central districts.
New co-working spaces were created mainly in five locations – three clusters in District 1, the city’s business district, and two in Binh Thanh District, a short distance from District 1, according to real estate firm CBRE’s latest report.

Co-working space has been expanding at a rapid pace, and its occupancy rate averaged 80 percent in the second quarter, the CBRE report said.

By the end of June, there were 46,266 square meters of shared offices in HCMC, up 101 percent over the same period last year. This figure is projected to increase two-fold by the end of 2019.

Nguyen Hong Hai, CEO of office rental service Pax Sky, said co-working spaces are now popular because the supply of office space in HCMC’s central districts fails to meet demand of the rising number of entrepreneurs choosing to base themselves in the city.

According to the Global Research on Flexible Workspace report, the HCMC market is among the top five developing markets with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 80 percent per year.

A CBRE report last year showed that around 54 percent of co-working space users in Ho Chi Minh City were either founders or employees of start-ups, and approximately 14 percent were self-employed freelancers.

Source: Vnexpress

FaceApp Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People’s Faces And Names

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Everyone’s seen them: friends posting pictures of themselves now, and years in the future.

Viral app FaceApp has been giving people the power to change their facial expressions, looks, and now age for several years. But at the same time, people have been giving FaceApp the power to use their pictures — and names — for any purpose it wishes, for as long as it desires. John Koetsier reports on Forbes.

Composite image of a diverse group of people @ GETTY

And we thought we learned a lesson from Cambridge Analytica.

More than 100 million people have downloaded the app from Google Play. And FaceApp is now the top-ranked app on the iOS App Store in 121 countries, according to App Annie.

While according to FaceApp’s terms of service people still own their own “user content” (read: face), the company owns a never-ending and irrevocable royalty-free license to do anything they want with it … in front of whoever they wish:

You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you. When you post or otherwise share User Content on or through our Services, you understand that your User Content and any associated information (such as your [username], location or profile photo) will be visible to the public.

FaceApp terms of use

That may not be dangerous and your likeness may stay on Amazon servers in America, as Forbes has determined, but they still own a license to do whatever they want with it. That doesn’t mean the app’s Russian parent company, Wireless Labs, will offer your face to the FSB, but it does have consequences, as PhoneArena’s Peter Kostadinov says:

You might end up on a billboard somewhere in Moscow, but your face will most likely end up training some AI facial-recognition algorithm.
Peter Kostadinov

Whether that matters to you or not is your decision.

But what we have learned in the past few years about viral Facebook apps is that the data they collect is not always used for the purposes that we might assume. And, that the data collected is not always stored securely, safely, privately.

Once something is uploaded to the cloud, you’ve lost control whether or not you’ve given away legal license to your content. That’s one reason why privacy-sensitive Apple is doing most of its AI work on-device.

And it’s a good reason to be wary when any app wants access and a license to your digital content and/or identity.

As former Rackspace manager Rob La Gesse mentioned today:

To make FaceApp actually work, you have to give it permissions to access your photos – ALL of them. But it also gains access to Siri and Search …. Oh, and it has access to refreshing in the background – so even when you are not using it, it is using you.
Rob La Gesse

The app doesn’t have to be doing anything nefarious today to make you cautious about giving it that much access to your most personal computing device.

John Koetsier is a journalist, analyst, author, and speaker.

Vietnam most vulnerable to offline cyberattacks in Southeast Asia

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Vietnam suffered the most offline cyberattacks in all of Southeast Asia and the 30th most in the world in the second quarter of 2019, according a report by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

Between April and June, Kaspersky detected around 100 million offline attacks in Vietnam, which affected nearly 60 percent of users in the country.

Offline attacks occur when malicious codes are spread via flash drives, CDs, DVDs and other physical data storage devices.

The security firm also found 19 million online threats in the country in the same period, equivalent to 27.7 percent of users in Vietnam being attacked by such Internet threats.

Yeo Siang Tiong, general director of Kaspersky in Southeast Asia, said that while Vietnam was most vulnerable in the region, the number of both online and offline attacks in the country saw a year-on-year drop in the second quarter of 2019.

This was largely thanks to the Vietnamese government’s increased attention to cybersecurity, Yeo said.

Despite this success, local companies and organizations are advised to improve awareness of network attacks through courses on network security, he added.

Data from Kaspersky showed Singapore was the country with the lowest number of online and offline threats in the region in Q2 2019, at 1.3 million and 2.1 million attacks, respectively.

Kaspersky Lab is a multinational cybersecurity provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, offering antivirus, Internet security, password management, endpoint security, and other cybersecurity products and services.

Vietnam’s legislature passed a landmark law on cybersecurity in June last year that would allow police access the information systems of companies and organizations under circumstances where there is a perceived threat to national security and public order.

The piece of legislation requires all foreign providers of Internet-related services to open representative offices and data centers in Vietnam, where the information of Vietnam-based users must be stored, in order to continue offering such services to local users.

More than 60 percent of Vietnam’s population of 96 million have access to the Internet, according to a December 2018 report by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Vietnam has the world’s 15th-largest population and 16th-largest base of Internet users.

Vietnamese people spend seven hours daily on the Internet on average, according to the same report.

According to a report on Tuoi Tre

Ho Chi Minh City has been required more budget in 2019 than next 4 cities combined

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Ho Chi Minh City has been required to achieve a budget revenue target of VND400 trillion (US$17.2 billion) for 2019, which is more than that of the next four big cities of Hanoi, Hai Phong, Da Nang and Can Tho combined.

By the end of the year’s first half, Ho Chi Minh City had collected VND193.31 trillion ($8.31 billion) in state budget, meeting 48.43 percent of the whole-year target, Le Ngoc Thuy Trang, deputy director of the municipal finance department, said at a socio-economic review meeting on Friday.

While the southern metropolis reported year-on-year growth in all parameters of budget collection, it still came up short of catching up with the progress for meeting the set target due to overly high expectations, Trang said.

Among Vietnam’s five municipalities, Ho Chi Minh City has been assigned the highest budget revenue target for 2019, higher than the other four cities combined, she added.

Municipalities are top-tier cities according to Vietnam’s administrative division system. They are centrally controlled and have a special status equivalent to that of a province.

The current five Vietnamese municipalities are Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Da Nang and Can Tho.

Ho Chi Minh City’s assigned 2019 budget revenue target is 1.5 times Hanoi’s, 6.2 times Hai Phong’s, 14.58 times Da Nang’s, and 35.47 times Can Tho’s, Trang pointed out.

These four cities are required to collect VND365.9 trillion ($15.74 billion) in combined budget revenue for 2019, or less than 92 percent of Ho Chi Minh City’s mission.

A Ministry of Finance directive sets targets for other provinces and cities to collect 12-14 percent more domestic tax in 2019 than in 2018, while only Ho Chi Minh City is asked to meet a 19.9-percent year-on-year growth rate on this front, the official said.

“[The target] is too high, exceeding Ho Chi Minh City’s capability to mobilize revenue,” Trang said.

Slowing growth of its sources of revenue also adds to the city’s struggle to meet the centrally-assigned target, she asserted.

The growth rate of domestic tax collection saw a three-year low in the first half of 2019, Trang said.

This was partly due to a grim business situation across sectors including real estate, stock markets, transport and construction, she explained.

The municipal finance department is already taking measures including coercive collection of outstanding corporate tax and creating favorable conditions for law-abiding businesses to speed up budget collection, Trang said.

In 2018, Ho Chi Minh City collected over VND378.54 trillion ($16.28 billion) in budget revenue, exceeding its assigned target by 0.47 percent and reporting a 8.65-percent increase from 2017.

The city of nearly nine million people made up 26.6 percent of Vietnam’s total budget revenue last year.

According to a report on Tuoi Tre

Da Nang beer festival will be organizing for early next month

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Thuan Nhi Company and its partners will be organizing the Danang Beer Festival at Whale Park in Son Tra District, Danang City from August 2 to 3.

The beer festival is sponsored by Dinkelacker, a family brewery founded in 1888 in Stuttgart, Germany.

“The event, which is inspired by traditional German beer festivals, allows participants to explore the German culture and enjoy great German beers. We have invited members of the German Business Association in Vietnam and Dinkelacker to join the event,” said Ngo Tan Nguyen, director of Thuan Nhi Company.

In addition to a variety of German beers, guests will enjoy traditional Western dishes and a fantastic music show performed by professional DJs, singers and bands, and dance with beautiful women in Dirndl traditional costumes.

To ensure safety for guests, the organizers will give out taxi vouchers so that drinkers can go home safely.

Tickets cost from VND990,000 to VND1,500,000, including a porcelain mug with the event’s name on it.

Guests will have the opportunity to win valuable prizes, including trips to Germany, sport bicycles and Dinklacker beer.

According to a report on SGT

E-commerce platform: exorbitant losses for a single percent

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Each e-commerce platform needs to spend millions of US dollars to gain a single per cent of market share from competitors, showing just how serious the competition is.

According to the latest statistics of security company VNDIRECT, each e-commerce company has to suffer a loss of VND124 billion ($5.4 million) to gain 1 per cent of market share from any competitor.

This raises concerns whether newcomers like Viettel Post have the finances to challenge the current kings of the hill Lazada, Tiki, and Shopee.

E-commerce in Vietnam is still a new sector, so businesses have to pour tremendous amounts of capital into advertisements, personnel, and warehouse infrastructure toset a solid foothold on the market.

One evidence for the fierce competition is their race in promotions, which originated in Lazada’s 95 per cent discount promotion last year titled “Birthday discount party”.

Accordingly, as soon as Lazada launched its promotion programme, Shopee immediately came out with its “Shocking deals and hot prices not only for birthday” programme and an unveiled jab at Lazada.

Since then, the e-commerce platforms have been suffering huge losses. Specifically, the total accumulated losses of the three giants – Lazada, Shopee, and Tiki – in 2015-2018 were VND9.4 trillion ($408.7 million). This may baffle newcomers in the sector.

In 2016 and 2017, Tiki posted VND179 billion ($7.78 million) and VND282 billion ($12.26 million) in losses.

This resulted in VNG, which currently owns 28.8 per cent of Tiki’s shares, also reporting losses of VND93 billion ($4 million) and VND126 billion ($5.4 million) in the same years. In 2018, VNG posted a loss of VND254 billion ($11 million).

As of the end of the first quarter of 2019, VNG’s losses from Tiki have reached the value of its VND506 billion ($22 million) capital contribution in the company.

Similarly, Lazada reported a loss of VND1 trillion ($43.39 million) in 2015-2016, increasing its accumulated losses to VND2.7 trillion ($117.1 million) by the end of 2016.

Due to the fierce competition, Lazada’s losses in 2017 alone were estimated at VND1 trillion ($43.39 million).

Shopee was officially launched in August 2016, however, by the end of the same year, the firm reported a loss of VND164 billion ($7.1 million), which increased to VND600 billion ($26.03 million) in 2017, twice as much as the loss of Tiki.

According to a report on VIR

iPhone users complain about iOS 13 beta on their phone sets sometimes interferes with incoming calls.

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iPhone users have complained that iOS 13 beta on their phone sets sometimes interferes with incoming calls.

“This doesn’t happen regularly, but it affects my life and work a lot,” said Nguyen Minh Hieu, 25, an office worker in Hanoi.

On iPhone fans’ forum, many users have complained about similar problems after they installed iOS 13 beta version.

Apple recently offered its new iOS beta version, allowing users to test them before other people.

On mobile devices, the three wavy lines are still shown, but the phone cannot receive incoming calls. This happens with calls of many different mobile networks, including VinaPhone, Viettel, MobiFone and Vietnamobile.

Minh Duc, a technician at an iPhone Shop on Cau Giay district in Hanoi, said the errors were anticipated.

However, the latest version still has system errors, including application conflicts and lag. Some users even complained that their devices fell into the state of pending and automatic restart.

Some Asian technology journals have advised iPhone and iPad users against installing iOS 13 beta.

While iOS 12 beta was described as reliable enough to install straight away, this year’s iOS 13 beta is not.

According to a report on Vietnamnet

Port Throughput of Vietnam Surpasses Hong Kong

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* Orders due to trade diversion stemming from the China-U.S. trade spat were worth nearly 8% of the country’s gross domestic product in the 12 months through the first quarter

* Vietnam’s container throughput rose 3% year-on-year in the first half of 2019 to 9.1 million TEUs

Vietnam’s container throughput surpassed Hong Kong’s in the first half of this year, in part due to the China-U.S. trade war diverting trade to the country. Timmy Shen reports on Caixin Global.

In the first half of 2019, Hong Kong saw a container throughput of 9.06 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), down 8.1% year-on-year, according to government data from the Hong Kong Maritime and Port Board. TEU is a measurement of volume based on the size of a standard 20-foot shipping container.

In the same period, Vietnam recorded 9.1 million TEUs of container throughput, up 3% year-on-year, official data (link in Vietnamese) from the Vietnam Maritime Administration show.

“As tit-for-tat tariff hikes between the U.S. and China increase, so does the cost of importing from each other,” Nomura Holdings Inc. economists said in a report. “However, there is a silver lining: the two countries diverting imports away from each other potentially benefits industries in different economies.”

“Vietnam is by far the largest beneficiary,” the Nomura economists said, adding that orders due to trade diversion were worth nearly 8% of the country’s gross domestic product in the 12 months through the first quarter of this year.

“As production facilities of low-end manufacturing industries shift to Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, the shipping demand for goods also naturally transfers”, said Billy Wong, a deputy director of research at the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.

In the first four months of 2019, the total value of Vietnam’s goods exports rose 6.5% year-on-year, according to data from Vietnam Customs. Vietnam’s role as a “transfer terminal” contributed largely to the country’s strong export growth, Shen Jianguang, JD Digits’ chief economist, said in a note (link in Chinese).

Also, the growth in Vietnam’s exports to the U.S. in recent months has been of a similar size to the growth in its imports from China, Shen said, adding that this means it’s likely that Chinese goods are being re-exported to the U.S. through Vietnam.

However, Shen predicted this situation might not last long. The U.S. has long been wary of moves to circumvent its increased tariffs on goods, for instance those on South Korean products, by shipping through Vietnam, and has put Vietnam on the observation list of currency manipulators due to the country’s climbing surplus with the U.S., Shen said.

According to Caixin, as of June, Hong Kong had seen year-on-year declines in throughput volume for 17 consecutive months, and saw the sharpest fall of 17.9% in February. Ports in Chinese mainland cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen have posed a threat to Hong Kong given their cost advantages, Paul Tang Sai-on, chief economist of The Bank of East Asia Ltd., told.