I currently live in Vietnam. Yes, they have very harsh penalties. They also have the least police presence I've experienced anywhere. I feel like when I do see a cop (besides traffic cops) every so often it's quite a surprise.

Also, a friend's weed dealer was busted about a while ago. He got 8 years, not 34 years, from what I heard.

I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture here. Theres huge corruption in the government and a lot of pollution and traffic problems. But it's not the dystopia that it's often portrayed as in the west. On the contrary, it's a beautiful and easy country in which to live, as long as you're above the poverty line. But food and necessities are amazingly cheap here and only about 10% are below the national poverty line here (in the US it's around 12%).

Not defending Singapore which has extremely problematic laws on the books and I can't really speak for Vietnam but the US has far higher incarceration rates than any of those countries. Like 3-4x higher. China's numbers are probably suspect but at least on paper the US is still worse.

> 2 years in jail for selling gum

What do they have against gum?

Ever wondered what those black spots on city sidewalks are? That's gum. All of it is gum that's been spat out then walked on until it acquires a top embedded coating of city grime.

At least for sidewalks it probably had a helpful benefit of keeping it waterproof.

Are you seriously justifying a two year prison sentence for selling gum?

Not at all, but nor do I choose to live in Singapore.

People sticking their used gum in random places, locks etc and breaking stuff with it instead of properly disposing of it.

It's extremely hard to remove from sidewalks and gets on people's shoes, and was a big problem in the 80's when they adopted the law.

They are very fixated on clean streets, train etc.

Gum tends to end up everywhere and is super hard to relive once dried.

But there are other high penalities for dirting the streets/parks/houses related offenses.

But then it's a city where you could (theoretically) walk barefoot in the streets without worrying about dirt it similar. Through it's probably not legal either and you do have to worry about burning you feed on the hot asphalt ;=}

Vietnam is also pretty generous with death penalty for drug trafficking. What makes it worse, it's not transparent about number of executions or even the reasons for capital punishment. See e.g:

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170420003622/http://thediploma...

While one of the most famous things about Singapore, the law was introduced in the 90s to prevent vandalism of the then new metro system. Since 2004 pharmacists and dentists have been allowed to sell gum, including standard and sugar free gum. I can’t find verification: has anyone actually gone to prison for selling gum in Singapore?

If the Chinese government wants to punish a citizen, they don't need to send you to prison: They can track or tap your phone. They know when you check into a hotel and will send the police over to search your belongings.

Do you mean they can constantly harass you instead of imprisoning?