Chimera, firstly, the Vietnamese market socialist system of big state corporations and cheap export manufacturing is hardly the model to emulate, even if we could. Check this report about Vietnam:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-09/vietnam-s-star-is-dimming.html
I also think its fanciful that a feckless and lazy people like us could achieve anything close to what Vietnam has achieved. The Bell curve and IQ Studies are real. People in temperate climes have an edge over their tropical counterparts. Farmers are smarter and have better work ethic than nomads. Different religions also imbue different outlooks and values to countries, obviously if your religion forbids modern banking as we know it, then you simply have no chance of catching up. There are a lot of variables and and you can't copy and paste something as complex as economic system.