In an opinion piece appearing in the The Straits Times, David Koh recounts the famine of 1945 when an estimated 2 million people (10% of the total population of Vietnam) perished as a result of being forced to export food and agricultural products to Japan and urges Vietnamese to remember the lessons from that largely forgotten era. From the The Straits Times: "Food security has again become a matter of concern. Vietnam is now the second top rice-exporter in the world. The government enforced a suspension of rice exports earlier in the year, but it has been lifted since. Then there are the higher frequency and intensity of natural disasters that strike Vietnam every year, in particular the typhoons that bring flooding, damaging crops and harvests...."
"Steady growth over the past two decades has brought about levels of consumption that are unreal and even unsustainable. Vietnam now has only US$20.7 billion (S$29.4 billion) in reserves, roughly equivalent to the government's annual budget."