Influenced by the changes in China, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Vietnam announced reforms in 1986. In those days, one faction was arguing for resuming relations with China, also a totalitarian communist country, but which had had a border conflict with Vietnam in 1979, while another faction advocated for attracting foreign investment and forging ties with the capitalist West.

At the same time, Taiwan was studying investment in Southeast Asia as an alternative to investment in China. In 1989, the Ministry of Economic Affairs added Vietnam to its guidelines for forging stronger ties to Southeast Asia. "In those days, I was working for the International Economic Cooperation and Development Fund [now the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund]. To get the ball rolling, we provided two loans to the Vietnamese government," recalls Huang Nan-huei.

"To tell you the truth, there was opposition to Taiwanese-Vietnamese cooperation in both countries. On the Taiwanese side, some were opposed to working with a communist country. On the Vietnamese side, the opposition was a reaction to Taiwan's close ties to the US, which then had Vietnam under an embargo. This opposition held things up."

In 1992, Taiwan established an economic and cultural office in Vietnam. The next year, Huang requested a transfer to Vietnam and began running the office's commercial division.

Working in a difficult environment, Huang guided the formation of the first Taiwan business sssociation in Vietnam's capital of Hanoi, and then helped establish another in Ho Chi Minh City. Taiwanese businesspeople's organizations in Vietnam have now grown to include a Taiwanese chamber of commerce with ten branch chambers, as well as three Taiwan business associations.

In 2002, Huang was again stationed in Vietnam, this time as the representative at the Hanoi headquarters of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vietnam. There, he actively pursued bilateral agreements and cooperation memoranda between Taiwan and Vietnam, including agreements on investment guarantees and avoiding double taxation that extended legal protections to Taiwanese businesses in Vietnam.

More exciting to Huang was the educational cooperation agreement signed in December 2006 on the campus of the Chaoyang University of Technology in Wufeng Township, Taichung County. More than 30 Vietnamese universities have now sent representatives to Taiwan, and more than 100 have forged cooperation agreements involving dual-degree and sandwich programs. Taiwan has sent more than 30 delegations of its own to Vietnam during the last year for visits and exchanges.

"Education is a form of 'invisible' trade," says Huang, who believes that Vietnam can learn a great deal from Taiwan, whether it be about commerce or the social sciences. He adds that in the wake of the agreement, the number of Vietnamese studying in Taiwan has soared to more than 600.

"From a long-term diplomatic standpoint, this is a big help," says Huang, arguing that as people from the two nations trade, have educational contacts, and intermarry more frequently, their relationship will broaden and deepen.