Poll Sends Student to Her Vietnamese Roots

For Nhu-Ngoc Ong, an aspiring social scientist, the trip back to Vietnam was the first step toward achieving her goal of becoming an expert on the issues of her native land.

The 24-year-old UC Irvine graduate student, who emigrated from Vietnam to California a decade ago, spent a month in Hanoi, the nation’s capital, training researchers for a groundbreaking public survey of political and social attitudes.

UCI’s Center for the Study of Democracy has overseen the survey in more than 50 countries over the past two decades.

But a survey like this had never been done in Vietnam, asking citizens of the communist country for their views on issues including the need for societal reform (54% want stronger measures) and the merits of privately owned versus government-run businesses (81% favor private ownership).

Ong said she was not surprised by what the survey revealed or the skepticism with which the survey’s findings were greeted by expatriates in Orange County. The county is home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese immigrants in the United States Ong’s family moved to Irvine when she was 14.

“I’m skeptical too as a social scientist,” Ong said. “But it’s the first glimpse into what the Vietnamese people think, what they want and what they do.”

When the survey was unveiled last week, scholars and Vietnamese American journalists questioned the poll extensively, especially the findings that most Vietnamese were happy with their situation and expressed a high degree of confidence in the country’s communist government.

The Vietnamese refugee community remains staunchly anti-communist, said Ong, and is understandably skeptical of assertions that their countrymen who have remained under communist rule could be satisfied with their lot in life.

“They’ve been taught to be skeptical,” said Ong, adding, “I just want to collect information and stimulate this . . . knowledge.”

She said some questions on the survey had to be revised slightly to gain the approval of province leaders in Vietnam.

In addition to her studies at UCI, Ong is active in the community, coordinating cultural events at annual Lunar New Year festivals, giving piano performances at local concerts and editing Non Song Magazine, a bimonthly publication focusing on issues affecting Vietnamese American college students.

“As the Vietnamese saying goes, ‘If I’m busy enough, I won’t think of evil things,’ ” Ong said.

After she and her family arrived in America in 1992, her parents worked at odd jobs to support Ong and her younger brother. Later, when Ong began college, she got part-time jobs to help pay the family’s bills.

Her passion is to bring about change in Vietnam.

She said her “ignorance overall of how the Vietnamese think” and the shortage of Vietnam experts in the largest Vietnamese emigre community led her to pursue politics and social science.

“This is just the first step,” Ong said of her groundbreaking survey.