VIETNAM: FACING THE CHALLENGE OF INTEGRATION

Nguyen Manh Hung

Nguyen Manh Hung is an Associate Professor of Government and International Affairs at George Mason University, Virginia, USA and a member of the Advisory Board of the National Congress of Vietnamese Americans.

The year 2003 began with Vietnamese leaders taking decisive steps to combat corruption by censuring two members of the all-powerful Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) for being implicated in a corruption case. It ended with a nine-day whirlwind tour of the United States by Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan to promote trade with “the largest market in the world” and “Vietnam’s largest trade partner”, and frantic efforts to seek integration into the world’s economy through the seventh round of negotiations in Geneva on Vietnam’s application to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Combating Corruption
Since the midterm congress of the CPV in 1994, Vietnamese leaders have identified corruption as one of the four dangers facing Vietnam.¹ It continues to be a major problem that deters foreign investments and undermines the people’s trust in the party and government. Phan Dien, Politburo member and Permanent Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPV, told a meeting in March that, “widespread corruption, red tape and the poor knowledge of Party members and Government officials are the main reasons for the people’s distrust of the Party’s ruling role”.²

Very early in 2003, the government had taken steps to move against this social ill. In a meeting with the country’s leaders on 29 January to welcome the Lunar New Year, General Secretary Nong Duc Manh pledged, among other things, to “rigorously combat corruption".³ The 7th plenum of the Central Committee (CC) of the CPV which ended a week earlier had taken an unprecedented step by relieving Le Hong Anh, politburo member and minister of public security, of his post as director of the CC’s Inspection Commission, and reprimanding another politburo member and director of the party’s Economic Commission, Truong Tan Sang.⁴

The following month, the long-awaited trial of Nam Cam, Vietnam’s most powerful organized crime boss, opened in Ho Chi Minh City. The court handed Nam Cam a death sentence, and prison terms ranging from four to ten years to three senior government officials including one former vice minister of public security and two members of the CPV Central Committee, Pham Sy Chien and Tran Mai Hanh.⁵

Then, in another trial in November involving corruption in a state-owned company under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, a death sentence was handed out to its director, La Thi Kim Oanh, and prison terms were given to two former deputy ministers.

Combating corruption is a long-term and difficult battle. While these actions were bold and encouraging, in 2003, corruption in Vietnam continued unabated, which prompted Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to lament, in a speech to the National Assembly on 21 October, that the people were “fed up and disillusioned with graft”.⁶

In the same month, Transparency International made public its second global corruption survey ranking Vietnam among the most corrupted countries of those surveyed. Vietnam ranked 100 out of 133 nations (with an index of 2.4) compared to 75 out of 99 countries in its 1999 survey (with an index of 2.6),⁷ the year when former General Secretary of the CPV launched a two-year campaign to combat and eradicate corruption. Thus, corruption was getting worse, not better.

By the end of the year, corruption had become a hot issue in talks between Vietnam and its international donors. World Bank country director in Vietnam Klaus Rohland warned that government corruption and slow progress in reforming the financial sector will jeopardize Vietnam’s economic and social development unless immediate steps were taken. The World Bank’s Vietnam Development Report 2004 issued on 26 November went further by pointing out that failure to combat corruption and carry out financial sector reform could lead to “the emergence of a variant of crony capitalism already seen elsewhere, not the development of a vibrant market economy with a socialist orientation”.⁸ Warning against “rampant corruption” was also raised at the Consultative Group of international donors that met in December to pledge aids to Vietnam.

To show the world the “determination of the Party and State to fight against corruption”, Vietnam’s representative at the Merida conference in Mexico, 9-11 December, solemnly put his signature to the UN Convention against Corruption in front of representatives from 126 countries and 90 intergovernmental organizations.⁹ That was the last action to combat corruption taken by the government of Vietnam in 2003.

Economic Performance and the Challenge of Integration
The good news is, in 2003, Vietnam received international recognition and high praises for its development efforts. Former general director of the IMF declared, in a speech to the European Chamber of Commerce in Ho Chi Minh City on 2 December 2003, that “What Vietnam has achieved over the past ten years is seen as a miracle.”¹⁰ UNDP resident representative Jordan Ryan hailed Vietnam as “leading the developing world in reducing poverty rate”.¹¹ The World Bank put Vietnam’s economic growth in 2003 at 7 percent, up from the estimated 5.97 percent, and considered Vietnam the second fastest growing economy in Asia, after China.¹² The bad news is, for three years in a row, Vietnam’s growth rate fell short of the target of 7.5 percent set by the Ninth Congress of the CPV in May 2001. Therefore, to achieve the targets set for the 2001-05 period, the annual growth rate in the next two years should be higher to stand at 8.2 percent, a daunting task.

The economic reform agenda for 2003 was set out by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in his New Year’s interview with Vietnam News Agency in which he stated that the top government’s concern in 2003 was to “link economic growth with increase in the quality of socioeconomic development”, and to “focus all endeavors on achieving a 7.5 percent GDP growth as set by the National Assembly”. After listing several shortcomings including the economy’s “low competitive edge and efficiency, administrative inefficiency, corruption, wastefulness, red tape, and lack of discipline in the State apparatus”, Khai pledged that the government will “continue with its policy to cut subsidies, reduce protection, control business monopoly, and readjust prices of a number of monopoly products and services in order to reduce ‘inputs’, improve business and investment environment, and assist enterprises in bring into play dynamism and creativeness and increasing efficiency and competitiveness”.¹³

Another goal was to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). On June 3, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told a two-day forum reviewing Vietnam’s preparations to join the WTO in Hanoi that Vietnam was highly committed to trade liberalization and considered it the top priority in its economic integration agenda. He expressed Vietnam’s desire to become a full member of the WTO in 2005, because “Vietnam’s non-membership of the organization of 146 member countries and accounting for 97 percent of the world’s international trade is a major drawback for economic growth, particularly in international trade and investment”.¹⁴ The September 2003 report of the Party’s General Secretary stressed the need for a “speedy completion of a comprehensive strategy on international integration in 2003”, and “making early comprehensive plans to initiate negotiations aiming at joining the WTO in 2005”.¹⁵ The best explanation for Vietnam’s “practical need” to join the WTO in 2005 was perhaps offered by Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan during his visit to the United States in December 2003. He pointed out:

Vietnam’s accession to the WTO is a practical need. Vietnam’s economy largely depends on the world economy. The country’s export revenues are estimated at 20 billion this year, almost half of the GDP. The ODA [official development assistance] and FDI [foreign direct investment] account for more than 30 percent of the total investment, also at a high rate. So Vietnam depends on the world economy in terms of both input and output. Therefore, the need for the country to join the WTO is necessary … Besides WTO members have pledged to remove quotas by 2005. Not being a WTO member, Vietnam will face numerous difficulties as it will still have quotas imposed. That’s why, the WTO admission is not the Government’s ambition or [anybody] else, but an objective need.¹⁶

At home, Vietnam held discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the “road map” of state-owned enterprises (SOE’s) reform, and with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on private sector investment environment. It also received aid from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union (EU) and a number of other countries to implement programs to reduce poverty, reform the legal system, undertake financial market reform, and train government officials and business managers on trade policy and skill to deal with the accession issues of the WTO.

Abroad, Vietnamese diplomats were asked to “combine diplomatic tasks with economic development in order to attract foreign investment capital and increase exports revenues”.¹⁷ In September, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai signed a decree establishing the first-ever diplomatic fund for economic development to support this effort.¹⁸

In 2003, Vietnam sent numerous trade delegations to travel the world — from major world powers, such as the United States and Russia; to regional economic powers, like Japan, China, South Korea, and Singapore; and less developing countries, such as Cuba and Myanmar — to promote trade and investment, and lobby for support of its application to join the WTO. As part of these visits, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, “investment workshops have been held in Japan, the U.S., the Republic of Korea, Europe and China … more than 40 commercial delegations, including teams from Japan, Taiwan, mainland China and Singapore, have visited Vietnam to explore business opportunities”, and many provinces, such as Thai Binh, Thanh Hoa, Thua Thien-Hue, Ha Tinh and Gia Lai, have over the past year conducted a series of investment promotional activities to introduce their potentials and offer incentives to investors.¹⁹

As a result of these efforts, Vietnam succeeded in signing a number of trade and investment agreements with Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Namibia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and the European Union. At the end of the year, Vietnam signed two “historic” air service agreements, one with the United States that allowed airlines to operate passenger and cargo freighters between the two countries for the first time since the end of the war in 1975, and an “open skies” multilateral agreement between Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar that provided for unlimited capacity rights between the signatories.

According to government statistics, in 2003, Vietnam attracted a total of US$3.1 billion in foreign investment, including 752 new projects worth US$1.9 billion compared to 715 projects worth approximately US$1.5 billion the previous year. Vietnam’s export turnover saw a record growth rate of 19 percent since last year to reach US$19.9 billion in 2003, beyond the targeted $18.5 billion.²⁰

Serious obstacles to rapid growth and economic integration remained, however. During the nine-day tour through four major cities in the United States to promote trade and investment in December 2003, Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan was presented with a list of complaints from American investors about the poor investment climate in Vietnam, including corruption, weak law enforcement, limited access to land, favoritism and opaque government decision-making process.²¹ Vietnam’s own economists were also fully aware of these problems and had offered their proposed solutions. Le Dang Doanh, an adviser to the government, identified high input costs, poor infrastructure and human resources, and inadequate government policies as the root causes of Vietnam’s poor competitiveness.²² Experts of the KX -02 Program, a state-level research program mandated to search for a suitable model of accelerated industrialization and modernization for Vietnam to be presented to the Central Committee, recommended that the government give the highest priority to efforts to regulate the market for land aimed at clearing up all roadblocks against the creation and mobilization of capital for the purpose of economic development, and to quickly pass an “anti-monopoly” law to facilitate competition and reduce market distortions. Tran Dinh Thien, one of the group leaders stressed the need to move faster toward a market economy and to increase efforts to encourage private investment.²³

By the year’s end, SOE reform had not made significant gains. While the number of SOE’s being restructured in 2003 increased 40 percent against last year, the government succeeded in restructuring only 365 of 1,646 SOE’s slated for divestiture during the year.²⁴ Banks continued to finance bad projects. Of the 16 percent credit expansion in the first six months of the year, most loans were given to state projects by the four leading state-owned commercial banks, and the money was going to industries that would soon face tough competition within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).²⁵ Much, therefore, remained to be done, and they had to be put off until the following year. A report of the Ministry of Finance to a conference of financial cadres emphasized the need in 2004 to “focus all efforts to renovate the SOE system, to persist in privatizing the SOE’s, to dissolve, allow to go bankrupt, sell or rent out those profit-losing SOE’s because they themselves would not be able to compete when the economy was opened up”. During the conference, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai warned that, “From now on, SOE’s must understand that the Prime Minister will not help them when they seek funds to cover their losses”.²⁶

As for joining the WTO in 2005, Vietnam still had a long way to go. Seung Ho, the Korean chairman of the WTO team on the application of Vietnam, said in mid-year that it would take a “quantum” jump by Vietnam to win membership in 2005.²⁷ Thomas Huang, an expert of the American Bar Association, told a seminar in Hanoi on 4 November, that the 1997 Trade Law was vague and lacked clear regulations as required by the WTO and the Vietnam-U.S. trade agreement.²⁸ Felipe P. Sureda, commercial counselor of the EU delegation in Vietnam opined that Vietnam should take steps to revise its laws and regulations in line with the WTO and to make commitments to the EU, similar to those given to the United States and Japan if Vietnam was to meet its 2005 of joining the WTO.²⁹

Human Rights and the Need to Maintain “Discipline”
The issues of trade, aid and international economic integration were somehow linked to the issue of human rights - a concern of Vietnam’s international donors and their constituencies. Since 2001 after Vietnam sent troops to the Central Highlands to squash demonstrations of thousands of ethnic minorities in protest over land confiscation and restrictions of their Protestant faith, forcing a mass exodus into Cambodia, Vietnam has been criticized for its treatment of ethnic minorities and its violations of religious freedom and freedom of expression.³⁰

When the 7th Party’s plenum met in January, party leaders resolved to “accelerate the exercise of democracy while attaching importance to maintaining disciplines”, improving the standards of living of ethnic minority communities, and increase the “State management of religious affairs”.³¹

On the human rights front, the year 2003 saw three developments: 1) a failed attempt of the government to reconcile with the banned United Buddhist Church of Vietnam; 2) a continued effort to suppress a new group of young cyber-dissidents; and 3) angry exchanges between Vietnam and its international critics over its human rights performance.

The most remarkable development concerning religious freedom in 2003 was a surprise meeting in April between Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and Venerable Thich Huyen Quang, patriarch of the banned United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV). Quang was released a month earlier after 19 years under house arrest and was allowed to go to Hanoi for medical treatment where he met with Khai. This event was followed by the release on June 27 of his deputy, Venerable Thich Quang Do, who was held under “administrative surveillance for nearly two years for launching an “Appeal for Democracy” in Vietnam.

These two events raised hope about a possible reconciliation between the government and the independent Buddhist organization. UBCV sources said the government subsequently tried to persuade Thich Huyen Quang to accept a senior position in the state-sponsored Vietnam Buddhist Church (VBC) but he refused. Instead, Quang called for an assembly of Buddhist leaders in Binh Dinh in early October to discuss Church affairs. Police intervened when the monks decided to accompany their two leaders to Ho Chi Minh City, fourteen monks were arrested and three senior monks were put under house arrest. Thich Huyen Quang and Thich Quang Do themselves were accused of secretly reorganizing the UBCV through “political motivation and ambition” to “sabotage” the VBC.³²

While the government resolutely refused an independent role for the Buddhists, it has relented somewhat on the Catholics. In September, when the Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City, Pham Minh Man, was appointed Cardinal by the Vatican, the Foreign Ministry called his promotion “good news for Vietnamese Catholic followers”.³³ Then, before Christmas, in a gesture of good will, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan sent his congratulations to the newly ordained Cardinal.

In addition to the efforts to promote “State management of religious affairs”, the government continued its efforts to deal with political dissent. Resolutions of the 7th Party’s plenum stressed the need to “accelerate the exercise of democracy while attaching importance to maintaining disciplines” (italics added).³⁴ Since doi moi, the party has suffered from severe criticism coming from former revolutionaries. It could harass them but could not deal too harshly and silence those who had made a name for themselves during the revolution and still commanded the respect of their comrades, such as Nguyen Ho, Nguyen Van Tran, Tran Do, Hoang Minh Chinh, etc. But death has removed them one by one. 2003 was the time to deal with a younger group of dissidents who used the Internet to post their protest and disseminate information about human rights violations in Vietnam to a larger audience.

The first casualty of the campaign against cyber dissidents in 2003 was Dr Nguyen Dan Que. Que was arrested on March 17 for sending documents with content that “runs against the State” to the “High Tide of Humanist Movement” organization in the United States.³⁵ Que was a prominent dissident who had been jailed for 18 years then released under international pressure and put under surveillance since 1988.

His case was a continuation of Hanoi’s campaign against political and cyber dissidents starting in the last two months of last year. In November 2002 Le Chi Quang was sentenced to four years imprisonment on charges of disseminating anti-State documents on the Internet. It was followed in December by the sentence of 12 years imprisonment plus 3 years probation handed out to Nguyen Khac Toan, a former military officer, for sending 24 emails and two floppy disks and using his cell phone to transfer information to a group outside the country so it could be used to slander the country. In the same month, retired Col. Pham Que Duong and scholar Tran Khue were arrested. They were long-time government critics and spokesmen for a “democratic group” in Vietnam.³⁶

On 18 June, a Vietnam court charged Dr. Pham Hong Son with spying and found him guilty because he communicated by telephone and email with “political opportunists” in Vietnam and abroad, and sought to “advocate pluralism and a multiparty system”. Under international pressure, Son’s verdict was reduced in August from 13 to 5 years.³⁷ It is interesting to note that, in 2003, stiff sentences were given to cyber dissidents at the same time when the government was making conciliatory gestures toward religious dissidents. Nguyen Dan Que was arrested during the month Buddhist patriarch Thich Huyen Quang was released from house arrest. Son’s trial took place in the same month that Quang’s deputy, Thich Quang Do, was released from house arrest.³⁸

The next action against political dissidents in 2003 took place in November when the Hanoi’s peoples’ court handed down a 10-month jail sentence to Tran Dung Tien for charges of “abusing democratic freedoms to encroach on the interests of the State, the rights and legitimate interests of organizations and citizens”.³⁹ Tien was a former bodyguard of the late communist leader Ho Chi Minh who turned dissident since 1998. Tien was briefly detained in November 2002 for protesting the trial of cyber dissident Le Chi Quang. On January 22, 2003 he was arrested after photocopying anti-government documents – days after sending an open letter to leaders asking for the released of Pham Que Duong and Tran Khue.

International reactions were fast and furious. One week after the verdict on Tran Dung Tien, on 19 October, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution (H.Res. 427) calling for Vietnam to honor religious freedom and respect human rights, and called attention to the abusive treatment of the UBCV by the government of Vietnam.⁴⁰ The next day, the European Parliament strongly condemned a “serious wave of repression of religious freedom” in Vietnam. It accused Vietnam of a “deliberate policy of ... eliminating non-recognized Churches, especially the UBCV”. It called on “Vietnamese authorities to halt immediately the policies of repression of the UBCV, the Catholic Church, Montagnard Christian groups and Hoa Hao and to adopt without delay all reforms necessary to guarantee all these churches’s legal status”. It also demanded Vietnam to “release immediately all Vietnamese citizens detained on account of their faith, their religious practices or simple their attachment to the freedom of religion”.⁴¹ Two months earlier, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, a congressional mandated watchdog on religious rights, had called on Secretary of State Colin Powell to nominate Vietnam as a “country of particular concern” on freedom of worship — a move that could lead to sanction.⁴²

These resolutions prompted angry protests from Hanoi. On 25 November, Vietnam’s National Assembly issued a rare communiqué, warning that these resolutions could hurt Vietnam’s relations with the EU and the U.S. It said the resolutions “slander the policies and practice of religious freedom in Vietnam” and were based on “false, inaccurate information provided by a handful of extremist elements”. Both the Vietnam Fatherland Front and the Executive Board of the government-sponsored Thua-Thien Buddhist Shanga came out against HR 427 demanding Congress to take an objective look at the situation and refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of the VBC and the Vietnamese State for the benefit of improved relations between Vietnam and the United States. The government also organized meetings in a number of provinces to protest against HR 427.⁴³

While the Vietnamese government made a concerted effort to go on the offensive against international criticism of its human rights performance, it did make some concessions to their demands. On 26 November, Amnesty International, in a 34-page report released to coincide with one-day annual human rights talks in Hanoi between the EU and Vietnam, accused Vietnam of using national security as a pretext to silence cyber-dissidents and stifle freedom of expression on the Internet, and called for the immediate and unconditional release of all “prisoners of conscience detained solely for peaceful expression of their opinions”.⁴⁴ The organization specifically highlighted the case of two nephews and a niece of Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly jailed in September for emailing information about their uncle and the religious situation in the country to U.S.-based activists. On the same day, the EU representative expressed its concern and raised questions about the free exercise of fundamental freedoms in Vietnam, including the issues of prisoners of conscience and the treatment of ethnic minorities.⁴⁵ Reporters Without Borders backed this up by urging the appeal court to exercise leniency towards the relatives of father Ly. As a result, the Ho Chi Minh City’s People’s Supreme Court reduced the sentences of father Ly’s nephews from 4 and 5 years to 32 months, and his niece from 3 years to 4 months and 6 days.⁴⁶

Hanoi could be flexible on minor cases like those of father Ly’s relatives, but it would not retreat in cases dealing with better known cyber dissidents. The case against the last known cyber dissident took place on the last day of the year, 31 December, when in a brief three-hour trial, Nguyen Vu Binh, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for having been in contact with “subversive dissidents,” and for posting messages of a “reactionary nature” on the Internet.⁴⁷ Binh was a former reporter of for Tap Chi Cong San, the theoretical journal of the CPV, who resigned in 2001 after seeking permission to set up an independent party called the Liberal Democratic Party. He was detained in September 2002, after posting an article on the Internet criticizing a controversial Vietnam-China land border agreement. Reporters without Borders, in a pres release on 31 December, condemned the “abusive use of a spying charge against the cyber dissident and the mockery of justice in Vietnamese courts”.⁴⁸ The United States issued a strong rebuke. State Department spokesman Adam Erili explained, “We are especially concerned that the Vietnamese Government may have targeted Mr. Binh because in 2002, he submitted written testimony to the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus and the Congressional Caucus on Vietnam”. The U.S urged the Government of Vietnam to “immediately release Mr. Binh and all of those imprisoned for peacefully expressing their views, and we strongly urge the Government of Vietnam to put an end to its ongoing repression of peaceful dissent”.⁴⁹

The fact is, by the end of the year, the government had effectively put all known cyber dissidents behind bars in an attempt to “nip in the bud” the spread of a new generation of young, high-tech political dissidents that could last long into the future. In 2003, the campaign against political dissent was more successful than the fight against corruption.

Political Stability, National Defense and Foreign Relations
The 7th plenum of the Central Committee of the CPV in January set the tone for Vietnamese politics in 2003. The party was concerned over the loss of people’s “confidence in the party, state, and our system”, caused by “difficulty in the people’s daily life and prevailing social injustice, corruption, bureaucracy, wastefulness, ineffective law enforcement, degradation of social ethics, and shortcomings in maintaining social order and safety”. Still shaken by the revolt of ethnic minorities in February 2001 protesting over land issue and religious issue, party resolutions stressed the need to “strengthen national unity, improve the living standards of ethnic minority communities, increase the State management of religious affairs, and reforming land law”.⁵⁰

To win the people’s trust and confidence and deflect criticism, party leaders emphasized the need to speed up mass agitation works. At a conference in Ho Chi Minh City in February to set the ideological-cultural tasks for 2003, politburo member and permanent secretary of the Central Committee Phan Dien called upon ideological and cultural cadres at grassroots level to exert more effort to combat the distortions created by “hostile forces and political opportunists”. Dien’s call was preceded by instructions given earlier to the press urging them to turn newspapers into a “sharp weapons in the ideological battle”.⁵¹

To strengthen national unity, the government earmarked funds and initiated programs to improve the living standards of the Montagnards in the Central Highlands but at the same time continued its campaign against Montagnard dissidents. It also made an attempt to reconcile with the Buddhist opposition and, when that failed, reverted back to imprisonment, administrative detention, and suppression.

To maintain “discipline”, in 2003, the government moved resolutely against the cyber dissidents despite severe international criticism.

The 8th Party’s plenum in July focused on the “national defense strategy in the new stages of development”. The goals were to defend the national independence together with socialism, and maintaining peace and stability for the sake of socio-economic development. Party resolutions spoke of the need to maintain an “international environment favorable for national reconstruction and defense”, and to fulfill the core task of economic development in close combination with socio-cultural development… and build an economy of independence and self-reliance while taking initiatives in global integration” (italics added). They repeated earlier commitments to promote the great national unity and further “exercise democracy along with strengthening order and disciplines”. Most important was the call to “accelerate foreign activities and actively expand international cooperation in the spirit of ‘Vietnam wishing to be friend and a trusty partner of other nations in the international community and strive for peace, independence and development’ aimed at consolidating favorable international environment to maintain peace, stability… speeding up the national industrialization and modernization process, and raising the country’s national status in the region and the world”.⁵²

While the goals remained the same --defending the nation and socialism through economic development and maintaining political stability-- the central task of the second semester, therefore, would be to maintain an international environment favorable for national reconstruction and defense through “accelerate foreign activities” to raise the country status and integrate in the world economy.⁵³

Vietnam did succeed in raising the country status by demonstrating its capability to mount spectacular events and take decisive actions to solve crises. In 2003, Vietnam achieved a number of “firsts”. In April, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized Vietnam as the first country to stop the spread of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). In November, the country held the Asian-Oceanic Computing Industry Organization Information and Communication Technology summit, the largest IT event in the Asia-Pacific region, for the first time in Hanoi; and in December, it successfully hosted the 22nd Southeast Asian Games where Vietnamese athletes broke several records and collected the largest number of gold medals, almost twice the number of medals received by the runner up, Thailand.

To promote a favorable defense environment, Vietnam engaged in defense cooperation talks and exchange visits of military delegations with several countries, including China, Japan, India, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea, Thailand, and the United States.

Special attention was paid to security relations with neighboring countries, such as Laos, Cambodia, and China, where in addition to military co-operation, talks and visits between public security officials were also undertaken to promote co-operation in settling border disputes, promoting border trades, combating the infiltration of “hostile forces”, drugs and smuggling. Of these, China loomed large in Vietnam’s foreign relations. The greatest number of high-level delegation exchanges was with China. In 2003, at least 10 meeting of leaders at the politburo and central committee levels took place to tie the two countries in a web of relations ranging from border demarcation, trade and investment co-operation, to military, police, political and ideological co-operation.

While Vietnam was deferential to China for security and ideological reasons, it continued to boost trade and investment cooperation with Taiwan for economic reasons. Whereas China only ranked 17th among 70 countries investing in Vietnam, Taiwan in 2003 became the biggest investor in Vietnam. The first foreign military visit to Vietnam in 2003 took place on 22 January. It was made by Lt. General Kui Quangsheng from China’s Chengdu military zone. The first commercial visit of the year to Vietnam was undertaken the following day, 23 January by Taiwan’s Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu.

Relations between Vietnam and the United States took a new turn in 2003. While disagreement over the issue of human rights and trade disputes (American fishermen sued Vietnam for dumping catfish fillets and shrimps in the U.S. market) have, at times, created tension between Vietnam and the United States, relations between the two countries improved noticeably in 2003. Within two years of the ratification of the Vietnam-United States Bilateral Trade Agreement, the value of trade between the two nations has increased from US$1.5 billion in 2001 to US$2.3 billion in 2002 then close to US$5 billion in 2003 when the United States supplanted Japan to become Vietnam’s largest export market.⁵⁴

Three major developments in the last two months of the year highlighted this major change. The first was the visit of Defense Minister General Pham Van Tra to the United States from November 8 to November 12 for first time since the end of the Vietnam War. Tra’s visit marked a new stage of U.S.-Vietnam cooperation in the sensitive security area between the two former foes and represented the final step in closing the last gap in the restoration of full relations between the two countries. In an interview with Vietnam News Agency about the purposes of his visit, General Tra talked of “promoting mutual understanding and joint efforts to build a framework (italics added) of friendly co-operative ties for peace, and long-term stability in the Asia-Pacific region”. Perhaps, with an eye toward China, he added, “We consider Vietnam’s national security attached to regional and world security. We wish to expand defense and diplomatic relations with all countries regardless of their socio-political regimes; including ties with the United States and other big countries, and regional nations which we consider are of great significance” (italics added).⁵⁵ Tra’s visit was followed by the second development, the four-day port call at Ho Chi Minh City, of a U.S. warship, the USS Vandegrift. The visit was full of symbolisms. It was the first time in thirty years since the departure of the last American soldiers from Vietnam in 1973 that American military men returned to Vietnam in peace and friendship. The usually hard-line Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People’s Army) newspaper hailed the ship visit as “a new milestone in military relations between Vietnam and the United States”.⁵⁶

The third development was the nine-day visit to the U.S. of a large Vietnamese trade delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan in December 2003 to promote trade and investment and to find measures to resolve outstanding issues in bilateral relations between the two countries. While Khoan was faced with hostile demonstrations by overseas Vietnam in San Francisco and Houston, he was warmly received by U.S. government officials. He met all the important players, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, and acting Secretary of Commerce Samuel Bodman. Former President George H. Bush hosted a banquet in honor of him in Houston. He also secured a U.S. pledge to support Vietnam’s application to join the WTO. In an interview with reporters of Vietnam News Agency in Washington, D.C., Khoan repeated two points made earlier by General Tra to explain the rationale for the new step taken by Vietnam toward the United States. He said the purposes of his visit were “to introduce Vietnam’s situation and a foreign policy of openness, diversification and multilateralization for peace, cooperation, and development in Southeast Asia and the world”; and to discuss with the U.S. political leaders measures to form a “framework for stable and long-term partnership” (italics added).⁵⁷ Note the terms “framework” and “partnership”. In other words, Vietnam wanted to move from an “unstable” relationship with the United States marred by disagreement and conflict to the institutionalization of a stable and long-term partnership between the two countries.

These developments were preceded by a conference on “The Future Relations between Vietnam and the United States” in Washington, D.C., 2-3 October 2003, jointly organized by The Institute for International Relations, Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Vietnamese participants included representatives from the National Assembly, the Central Committee of the CPV, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Public Security, Defense, and Trade. In a speech delivered at the conference, Vietnam’s Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien, for the first time, articulated clearly and publicly Vietnam’s view of the importance of the United States to the world and the development of Asia when he declared:

[T]he United States is the only superpower in the world today, playing an important role in and exerting strong influence on all aspects of international relations globally and regionally. The special relationships of the United States with Asia and the Pacific in general and South East Asia in particular dated back centuries ago. The growth miracles of the dragonets in East Asia could not have been possible without their cooperation with the United States.⁵⁸

By this realistic assessment and by moving closer to the United States, at the end of 2003 Vietnam had completed its move away from a foreign policy based on ideology to a foreign policy based on practical “benefits” and, therefore, finally and fully implemented the task set forth by the 8th Party’s plenum, which is, to practice a foreign policy of genuine “openness, diversification, and multilateralization” in the spirit of “Vietnam wishing to be friend and trusty partner of other nations in the international community … aimed at consolidating favorable international environment to maintain peace, stability and … speeding up the national industrialization and modernization process”.⁵⁹

NOTES

1.  The other three dangers are: the danger of falling behind, deviation from socialism, and peaceful evolution.

2.  Nhan Dan, 5 March 2003; Vietnam News Briefs, 5 March 2003.

3.  Nhan Dan, 30 January  2003; Vietnam News Briefs, 30 January 2003.

4.  Vietnam News Agency (VNA), 21 January 2003; BBC Monitoring International Reports, 21 January 2003.

5.  VNA, 7 June 2003.

6.  Agence France Presse (AFP), 21 October 2003.          

7.  Vietnam Investment Review, 27 October 2003; Xinhuanet, 27 October 2003 (www.chinaview.cn.2003-10-27).

8.  AFX-Asia, 26 November 2003 (www.afxnews.com).

9.  Tien Phong, 15 December 2003; Vietnam News Briefs, 16 December 2003.

10. Saigon Times Daily, 3 December 2003.

11. Interview by Jordan Ryan, 24 October 2003 (www.undp.org.vn/mlist/devlvn/102002/post51.htm).

12. Saigon Times Daily, 3 December 2003.

13. BBC World Monitoring, 20 January 2003; VNA web site, 17 January 2003.

14. Vietnam News Briefs, 4 June 2003.

15. Web site of the Communist Party of Vietnam in Vietnamese, retrieved 31 October 2003. Translation mine.

16. Interview with Vietnam News Agency, VNA web site in English, 13 December 2003.

17. President Tran Duc Luong to 19 newly accredited ambassadors, 25 August 2003; Financial Times, 27 August 2003.

18. Decision 195/QD-Ttg dated 18 September 2003 (VNA, 30 September 2003).

19. Asia Pulse, 2 February, 2004.

20. Asia Pulse, 31 December 2003 and 7 January 2004.

21. The Wall Street Journal, 4 December 2003.

22. Vietnam News Briefs, 2 June 2003.

23. Interview with economist Tran Dinh Thien, general secretary of the KX-02 program by Tuoi Tre Chu Nhat, 11 January 2004. Translation mine.

24. Xinhua, 30 December 2003.

25. Far Eastern Economic Review, 28 August 2003.

26. Tuoi Tre web site in Vietnamese, 7 December 2003. Translation mine.

27. Frederick Balfour, “Vietnam’s Time is Running Out,” Business Week, 24 November 2003.

28. Saigon Times Daily, 6 November 2003.

29. Tuoi Tre, 11 December 2003; Saigon Times Daily, 11 December 2003; Global News Wire, 11 December 2003.

30. Early in the year, on 21 January 2003, Human Rights Watch, through its Washington bureau chief Mike Jendrzejczyk, reported, “It has been almost two years since the demonstrations happened, but the Vietnamese government’s crackdown on the Montagnards is as harsh as ever. People are being interrogated, arrested, beaten and jailed simply because they are Christians or are suspected of supporting the popular movement for land rights and religious freedom”. Then, toward the end of the year, on 23 October, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders released its second world press freedom ranking Vietnam in the bottom ten countries where the situation is “catastrophic”.

31. NVA web site, 21 January 2003; BBC Monitoring International Reports/ Asia Pacific, 21 January 2003.

32. AFP, 12 October 2003.

33. AFP, 25 December 2003.

34. VNA, 21 January 2003; BBC Monitoring International Reports, 21 January 2003.

35. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 21 March 2003.

36. International Freedom of Expression (IFEX), 3 January 2003 (www.ifex.org/fr.layout); Also AFP 3, January 2003.

37. Son had posted online his Vietnamese translation of “What is Democracy” taken from a U.S. State Department web site. In 2002, he wrote a letter to CPV General Secretary Nong Duc Manh supporting his call for “grass-roots democracy” and calling for broader debate on the nation’s future.

38. Deustche Presse-Agentur, 28 June 2003.

39. AFP, 3 November 2003.

40. House Resolution 427, 10 November 2003 (http://usinfo.state/govt/drh/Archive/2003/Dec/01-499319.html).

41. European Parliament’s press release, 20 November 20, 2003; AFP, 21 November 2003. For a full text, see www.radicalparty.org. 20/11/2003 “European Parliament Resolution on Vietnam.”

42. AFP, 24 October 2003.

43. Global News Wire, BBC Monitoring International Reports, 11 December 2003.

44. Amnesty International Press Release, 26 November 2003. For a full report, see www.web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa410372003.

45. AFP, 26 November 2003.

46. Reporters Without Borders, 28 November 2003 (www.rsf.org/article.php3?id._article=8621); Amnesty International, 28 November 2003 (www.beb.amnesty.org/library/index/engaga410422003).

47. Reporters Without Borders, 31 December 2003 (www.rsf.org/print.php?id_article=8916).

48. Ibid.

49. AFP, 31 December 2003.

50. VNA, 21 January 2003; BBC Monitoring International Reports, 21 January 2003.

51. Nhan Dan, 7 February 2003; Vietnam News Briefs, 7 February 2003.

52. Nhan Dan, 14 July 2003 (www.nhandan.org.vn/english/20030714/bai-newsl.html).

53. Ibid.

54. VNA web site, 13 December 2003.

55. VNA web site, 12 November 2003.

56. Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 20 November 2003; AP, 23 November 2003.

57. Interview with Vietnam News Agency, VNA web site in English, 13 December 2003.

58. Remarks by Vietnam Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Dy Nien, 2 October 2003 at the conference on “The Future of Relations Between Vietnam and the United States,” School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, October 2-3, 2003 (www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/asia/seasia/seasiapublications.html).

59. Nhan Dan, 14 July 2003 (www.nhandan.org.vn/english/20030714/bai-news1.html).

Source: Southeast Asian Affairs 2004
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore