THE NEW REBELS.

• Author: VILBIG, PETER
• Position: President Clinton's visit to Vietnam, and the youth of the country

Vietnam's young people are leading a revolution--and it's not a Communist one

In the discos of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, the music pulses, and the young and well-to-do shake their bodies as a strobe light glitters on the latest Vietnamese youth style: multicolored sparkles in the hair. A fortunate few Vietnamese teens--some of whose parents fought Americans in the Vietnam War more than a quarter century ago--are embracing MTV and the Internet, but theirs is a gender rebellion than their posing and hip clothes might suggest. One young man in the disco, more daring than most, wears a nose ring--but it's a clip-on. He takes it off when he goes home to his parents.

And so it goes in Vietnam, a country still recovering from the brutalities of a war that cost 3 million Vietnamese lives and 58,000 American ones and ended with a Communist victory in 1975 (see "The War We Share," page 19). In November, Bill Clinton became the first U.S. President to visit the country since the end of the war. What he found there was an emerging youth culture enamored of American styles and consumer goods, and eager to join the outside world. But their revolution goes only so far. While they embrace personal freedoms their parents never dreamed of, even the edgiest kids aren't challenging the authority of their parents, or the Communist system they fought for.

Ta Thi Minh Hong, 19, a student at the Institute of International Relations, sums up the complicated generation gap this way: "My friends quarrel with their parents, because they're different from their parents in every way," she says. "But parents understand so much about life. Their advice is useful for me to be a good person."

ROCK-STAR TREATMENT

Vietnam's contradictions were on public display at almost every step of President Clinton's trip. To the shock of the country's leaders, Clinton was treated like a rock star by adoring Vietnamese crowds, with many young people, who lined the streets wherever the President went, screaming in adulation.

"He's coming! Here he comes!" people shouted as Clinton's motorcade approached the Temple of Literature, a historic landmark in the center of Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, where U.S. bombs rained down during the war. Other voices shouted: "I can see him! How handsome he is! He seems so young and healthy, he's so pink, just the way he looks on TV."

For his part, Clinton hammered home a message of more freedom and openness at every stop. "Imagine how much more you will achieve as even more young people gain more freedom to shape the decisions that affect their lives," he said in one speech.

Vietnamese officials, however, many of whom fought in the war against the U.S., were not amused by Clinton's popularity. The Vietnamese Communist Party controls the government, the media, and the economy, and owns most of the country's businesses. While Vietnamese leaders have begun to gradually open the economy to the global marketplace, they generally oppose outside influences, and have shown no interest in allowing political freedoms. After the first two days of the President's trip, they kept crowds farther back to prevent Clinton from interacting with them.

LECTURES ON COMMUNISM

And they treated him to chilly...