Vietnam’s Critical Minerals Rush: How Foreign Capital Drives Extractivist Expansion in Ethnic Minority Regions
Original framing: “Masan Plans Tungsten Mine Expansion in Vietnam as It Courts Foreign Capital” — Bloomberg
Vietnam’s extractive history traces back to French colonial mining in the 19th century, which laid the foundation for modern-day land grabs under the guise of 'development.' Post-colonial state policies have continued this legacy, with the 2010 Law on Minerals enabling foreign corporations to exploit resources while displacing ethnic minorities. The current tungsten boom mirrors global patterns, from the 19th-century California Gold Rush to 20th-century oil booms in the Niger Delta, where resource extraction has consistently fueled conflict and environmental degradation. The Masan expansion is thus part of a long, violent continuum of extractivism.
The Masan tungsten mine expansion is a microcosm of global extractivism, where foreign capital, state complicity, and corporate framing converge to dispossess Indigenous communities in Vietnam’s northern highlands.
This is not an isolated incident but part of a centuries-long pattern of resource exploitation, from French colonial mining to today’s geopolitical race for critical minerals. The H’mong and Tay communities, whose cosmologies and livelihoods are tied to these lands, face a triple erasure: their knowledge is ignored, their lands are seized, and their futures are gambled on a narrative of 'development' that benefits elites while leaving ecological and social wreckage in its wake. The solution lies not in incremental reforms but in dismantling the extractivist paradigm itself—through community governance, circular economies, and the centering of Indigenous and marginalized voices. The trickster’s wisdom reminds us that the absurdity of this system is its own undoing: when land is treated as a commodity, the land fights back, and the communities who have stewarded it for generations are the ones who know how to heal it.