Hanoi pledges economy-oriented change at the ruling party’s national congress 　　April brought louder voices for increased economic, social and political reform in Viet Nam as the country’s ruling Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) held its 10th National Congress.
　　At the eight-day session, 1,176 delegates representing 3.1 million party members elected the new tenure of leadership of the CPV Central Committee and agreed on a strategic plan for economic and social development in the next five years.
　　The party’s 160-member Central Committee reelected Nong Duc Manh, 65, as its general secretary, the top Party post. Sitting Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, 72, President Tran Duc Luong, 69, and National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Van An, 68, withdrew from leadership consideration.
　　Observers say that Nguyen Minh Triet, Secretary of the Party Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, and Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung are likely to take the places of Luong and Khai at the pending session of the National Assembly, Viet Nam’s parliament.
　　One of the most remarkable features of the election was the large-scale shuffle of CPV Central Committee members. Of the 160 newly elected members, 80 are new faces, including 17 under the age of 50.
　　According to experts on Viet Nam affairs, the fresh blood creates a good situation for the continuation of the country’s doi moi policy, meaning renovation or renewal, which has been in place for the past 20 years.
　　This year marks the 20th anniversary of Viet Nam’s adoption of the doi moi policy, and summing up the experiences and lessons of the past two decades is an important task for the CPV congress, said Pan Jin’e, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
　　
　　Political reform
　　
　　Before its opening, the CPV Central Committee publicized the draft political report for the congress, inviting public input. The document addressed the sensitive topic of political system reform.
　　While the report did not outline detailed reform measures, it cited problems ahead. Besides economic and social issues, including changes to the system of state-owned enterprises and the widening rich-poor gap, the report stressed challenges facing the Party and the government in building and improving governing systems.
　　For example, it said the National Assembly fails to play its role as supervisor and some groups, such as the Viet Nam Fatherland Front, which shoulders the task of supervising the CPV, are now only compliant to the ruling party.
　　The report also mentioned factors including corruption and excessive bureaucracy inside the Party, rigid thinking in reforming educational, medical, political and ownership systems, and the violation of democratic rules.
　　According to Zhai Kun, Director of the Division for Southeast Asian Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, corruption plagues Viet Nam. Top CPV officials, however, have reiterated the Party’s determination to fight corruption.
　　“As part of our renewal, we need to fight problems, not just wait for them to take place,” General Secretary Manh told reporters. He said it’s not that there is more corruption than before, but that corrupt practices are being uncovered and measures should be taken to punish those involved.
　　A multimillion-dollar bribery and football-betting scandal in a road-building agency that receives foreign aid rocked the Party ahead of the congress. The country’s transport minister resigned and his deputy was arrested two weeks before the opening session.
　　Some observers said the CPV’s identification of its own problems at the Party congress indicates its resolve for political reform.
　　This desire for political reform in Viet Nam is the result of work completed in previous Party meetings. At the Seventh CPV Congress in 1991, the Party put forth that the deepening of economic reform should be facilitated by political reform. The concept of political reform was crystallized at the eighth and ninth congresses, that is, under the principle of democratic centralism, the parliament’s role should be gradually strengthened, legal construction should be intensified and the administrative system should be streamlined.
　　In recent years, the political system in Viet Nam has made some progress. It has become a common practice for major leaders to stay in a post for only two successive terms, a grassroots electoral system has expanded to urban areas and the National Assembly more openly debates matters of public concern. At the 10th Party Congress, a two-candidate election was held for the post of general secretary of the central committee.
　　
　　Booming economy
　　
　　Viet Nam started economic reform almost synchronously with China in the late 1970s.
　　In 1979, the CPV Central Committee for the first time recognized a private economy and commodity economy, and started a pilot project of distributing and contracting land in some villages.
　　But the cornerstone of Viet Nam’s economic reform was the adoption of the doi moi policy in 1986. Key points of the policy include: adopting the contract system in the agricultural sector, expanding the autonomy of companies in business operations, recognizing the commodity economy and relaxing state control of the flow of commodities.
　　The doi moi policy greatly stimulated Viet Nam’s productivity. Only a year later, in 1987, the country realized the goal of feeding and clothing its population by itself, a constant headache of the country during two successive five-year plans.
　　At its ninth national congress in 2001, the CPV put forward the concept of a “market economy with socialistic orientation.”
　　Since 2000, Viet Nam’s economy has maintained an average annual growth rate of 7.5 percent. With an 8.4 percent growth in 2005, the Southeast Asian country with a population of more than 83 million now ranks among the fastest growing economies worldwide.
　　Nguyen Tan Thang, who lives on the outskirts of Hanoi, is a farmer-turned-entrepreneur who owns a clothing company and is well known in his community. But before 1986, he lived below the breadline, with six family members crowded into one small thatched cottage.
　　“After I left school, I hoped to work in business or arrange a loan to establish a clothing manufacturing factory. But the policy at that time did not allow me to do that,” the 53-year-old man told China’s official Xinhua News Agency.
　　After the Sixth CPV Congress in 1986, the implementation of the doi moi policy created a situation that allowed Thang’s dream to become a reality.
　　In the late 1980s, he established a home workshop with self-raised funds, producing and selling towels, ties and various kinds of clothing decorations to nearby towns. In the mid-1990s, he expanded his workshop to a clothing factory. Now, he has two textile machines, each worth $300,000, and employs more than 20 workers.
　　“If there was no doi moi policy, I would have to repeat the lives of my father’s generation,” Thang said. “Now I can buy a computer, DVD player, motorcycle and even a car.”
　　
　　Bottlenecks to be tackled
　　
　　However, 20 years after Viet Nam initiated its economic reform, several bottlenecks are gradually emerging. The development of productivity has recently met invisible obstacles and many plans cannot be implemented as smoothly as before.
　　According to Professor Vo Tri Thanh of Viet Nam’s Central Institute of Economic Management, constant ideological battles remain a key obstacle for reform.
　　“The theory of economic reform in Viet Nam lags far behind reform practices. Many Vietnamese do not emancipate their minds enough and the concept of economic reform is not universally accepted,” said Luong Lai, former President of the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences.
　　One example is that many Vietnamese are still puzzled by the boundary between capitalism and socialism. Meanwhile, private entrepreneurs are not allowed to join the CPV and Party members are not allowed to run businesses.
　　In this regard, Viet Nam made a leap forward at last month’s Party congress. According to a political report submitted to the session, CPV members will be permitted to engage in business.
　　The report stated that Viet Nam will “soon issue regulations and guidelines about the issue, which will ensure that the capacity of party members to do business will be brought into play while maintaining the good conduct of Party members and of the Party’s nature.”
　　According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment, the private sector currently contributes some 60 percent of Viet Nam’s GDP. About 38,000 private businesses were established in 2005, raising the total number of non-state companies to 200,000.
　　
　　Foreign investment
　　
　　Viet Nam’s economic vigor is also attracting an increasing number of foreign investors. In 2005, the country’s foreign direct investment exceeded $3 billion, up 14.5 percent over 2004. In the first quarter of this year, foreign investment commitment rose 24.4 percent from a year ago to $1.63 billion, according to official statistics.
　　But still, foreign investment faces many restrictions in the country.
　　“We want to strongly develop foreign-invested enterprises, and gradually reduce and ultimately abolish all special regulations on foreign-invested enterprises,” Deputy Investment and Planning Minister Tran Dinh Khien said in April.
　　According to Reuters, foreign investment in Vietnamese companies is capped at 49 percent but stood at 30 percent until last September. The cap applies to companies listed on Viet Nam’s 35-member stock exchange.
　　In March, the Finance Ministry gave the green light to the energy, banking, telecommunications and aviation sectors to raise funds from foreign investors to help fuel economic growth, which was 8.4 percent in 2005.
　　In April, Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corp., visited Viet Nam. President Tran Duc Luong and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai squeezed a meeting with the world’s richest man into their busy schedules.
　　In his nine-hour visit, Gates pledged to increase investment in Viet Nam and help the country train IT technicians. Just two months earlier, U.S.-based Intel announced it had plans to invest $300 million to establish a factory for computer chips in Viet Nam.
　　In recent years, with Sino-Japanese political relations reaching a nadir and the gradual increase of labor costs in China, many Japanese enterprises have shifted their attention from China to Viet Nam. The labor cost in Viet Nam is only half that of China. A large number of Japanese enterprises, such as Yamaha and Canon, recently increased their investment in Viet Nam.
　　Viet Nam is applying to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO). Trade experts predicted that Washington is likely to hand Hanoi a gift by ending bilateral negotiations on the issue before U.S. President George W. Bush attends the APEC economic leaders’ meeting in Hanoi this November.
　　Viet Nam’s entry into the WTO is expected to give a great impetus to its economic development and bring Vietnamese-U.S. economic relations into the fast lane. The United States is now the largest export market of Viet Nam with the total export value hitting $6.5 billion last year, compared with only $800 million in 2001.

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