LOS ANGELES -- The people of Vietnam -- who celebrated the 30th anniversary of the United States' final pullout from Saigon on April 30 -- are getting with the market-oriented, rich-is-glorious, we-love-anyone-with-money (including Westerners), China-clone program of economic reform (while keeping dissidents under the party's boot) aimed at reconciling the internal contradictions of Marxism by making the Vietnamese people too wealthy and comfortable to bother to dissent or try to poop the party.

A prominent conveyor of this with-it message was Ambassador Ton Nu Thi Ninh, who recently completed a charm offensive in the U.S. In a wide-ranging interview, she painted a portrait of a thoroughly reforming Vietnam. Ton Nu claims there is as much raucous internal dissent and debate now in the Communist Party of Vietnam as in the U.S. Congress, adding: "The top-down format is now rare: "Mostly there is a suggestion from the top for discussion, but the discussion is now bottom up."

For its part, America, on the whole, seems comfortable with the new image of Vietnam. Ten years ago diplomatic relations between Washington and Hanoi were officially normalized. About 4 1/2 years ago, President Bill Clinton made a ground-breaking official visit there. A year later the two countries, once so much at each other's throats, actually inked a bilateral trade agreement. How much the times have changed.