My dear comrades!

The Spring of the Year 2020 is the start of the third decade of the 21st century, and is also the time to mark 90 years of building, growing, and developing of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Founded and trained by President Ho Chi Minh, the Communist Party of Vietnam has led our people to create glorious exploits which glorify our country with the proper, scientific, and creative revolutionary path and the loyal party members who wholeheartedly serve the Fatherland and people.

Firstly, the Party has manifested its great intelligence, mettle, and creativity over the historical span of 90 years of the Vietnamese revolution.

From the end of the 19th century, Vietnam was invaded by the French colonialists. Not resigning to the enslaved life, the Vietnamese people were gathered under the patriotic flags bravely rose against foreign yoke, but they were unsuccessful because they lacked a proper revolutionary line. While studying, acquiring, and developing the revolutionary theory of the world, Nguyen Ai Quoc made creative application of Marxism - Leninism to the practice of the Vietnamese revolution, led the Vietnamese patriotic movement to the proletarian path, and prepared the political ideology and organizational backgrounds comprehensively to establish the Communist Party of Vietnam in the Spring of 1930.

That the Communist Party of Vietnam was established was a historical essence which ended the standstill period of the Vietnamese revolution and the crisis of its leadership, created a great turning point in the glorious fighting periods to manifest its intelligence, mettle, and creativity, and enabled the Vietnamese people to record exploits.

After just 15 years of its establishment, the Party led the people to the victory of the August Revolution in 1945, founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the first people’s democratic state in Southeast Asia), and opened a new era for the Vietnamese people - that of national independence in association with socialism.

With the national, comprehensive, long-term, and self-reliant resistance path and promotion of the great national unity strength in combination with the era of strength of the era and international solidarity, the Party led the people to the glorious victory in the resistance war against the French invaders, making the Dien Bien Phu Battle “famous in the world and shocking the globe”. The Party highly promoted its intelligence and political mettle, proposed the right resistance line against the United States’ invasion to save the country, combined the goal of national independence and socialism, and carried out the socialist revolution in Northern Vietnam and the people’s democratic national revolution in Southern Vietnam. That creative path aroused the strength of the army and people nationwide, enlisted the great support of international friends, defeated the enemy’s schemes to invade and escalate the war, gained full victory in the Spring of 1975, liberated southern Vietnam completely, and reunified the country. 

Being steadfast with the chosen goal and standing firm against the changes of the situation, especially when the Soviet socialist model in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed, the Party initiated the new renovation cause, transformed the centrally-planned mechanism to the market one, gradually took the country out of socio-economic crisis, promoted the cause of industrialization and modernization and international integration. The great historical achievements over 35 years of renovation have proved that the awareness, theory of socialism, and the path to socialism in Vietnam have been certified to be correct in practice and that the renovation process is the creative work of the Communist Party of Vietnam and Vietnamese people. The leadership of the Party is the most decisive factor for the achievements of the country and people in each stage of the revolution.

Secondly, the Party usually self-renovates, self-rectifies, and leads the works of building the political system which should be comprehensive, strong, and equal to its mission.

Self-renovation and self rectification are always an essential, an objective, and a frequent requirement for a ruling party. President Ho Chi Minh once stated: “A nation, a party, and a person that might be great and hugely attractive yesterday are not certainly loved and praised today and tomorrow, if they fail to keep their heart pure and fall into individualism”(1).

Since the Party was found, the Party building work has been under the Party’s leadership. Owing to that, even in difficult and serious situations, the Party has still firm and developed. The cadres and party members have regularly trained, cultivated their political mettle and revolutionary moral quality, struggled persistently, and relied on themselves to lead the revolution to victory.

Since the performance of the renovation cause, Party building and rectification has always been promoted, and it is the top and regular tasks to ensure that the Party has enough capacity and fighting power to shoulder very new and hard tasks. Through the terms of the Party Congress, especially since the beginning of the 12th National Congress, the Party Central Committee, Politburo, and the Secretariat have promulgated a lot of decrees on building and rectifying the Party comprehensively in terms of political ideology, morality, organization, apparatus, and cadre work. As a result, the Party building work over the past time has showed marked changes, and been done drastically. It helps gradually prevent and push back the decline in the political ideology, morality, and lifestyle of a number of cadres and party members and has initially overcome some mistakes and limitations in cadre work and implementation of the Party’s principle, contributing to improving the leadership capacity and the fighting power of the Party itself.

Upon implementation of the leadership guidelines and lines of the Party, the political system has been increasingly reinforced. The new views on building the socialist law-ruled state are supplemented and perfected through the Program of the Party and institutionalized with one important step in the 2013 Constitution and the law system of the State. The operation organization and mechanism of the National Assembly, Government, system of the judicial agencies, and local governments have been renovated, amended, and supplemented so that they are better and more suitable for gradually approaching the international legal standards and entering practice. The position, role, function, and task of the organizations in the political system have been identified more clearly and gradually institutionalized into law stipulations so that they can be adapted to the cause of building the socialist-oriented market economy, the socialist law-ruled State, and socialist democracy. The leadership method of the Party over the institutions in the political system has been more and more perfected, and suitable for the new development context of the country.

Thirdly, the Party leads the cause of developing Vietnam’s economy, culture, society, and people and has achieved great historically significant results.

In the process of leading the renovation cause, the Party has shown better and more practical awareness of the goal, nature, and characteristic of developing the socialist-oriented market economy, implementing industrialization and modernization, renovating the growth model, restructuring the national economy, and being positive and active in international integration, and so on. 

After nearly 35 years of implementing the renovation cause, the scale, potential, and competitiveness of the economy have been raised. Facing numerous changes and risks of the regional and world economy in 2019, Vietnam still maintained macro-economic stability. Its GDP growth reached more than 7%, which was higher than planned. The scale of the economy hit more than 262 billion USD. Per capita income reached nearly 2,800 USD. Inflation was controlled at the rate of under 3%. Import-export turnover exceeded 500 billion USD. Trade surplus was over 10 billion USD(2). It was the first time that Vietnam had gone up to the upper half of the global competitiveness report of the World Economic Forum, ranking 67/141 economies(3), and Vietnam was ranked the 8th among the best economies in the world for investment by US News & World Report Magazine(4). The Bloomberg news agency which cited the data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) evaluated that Vietnam was in the group of 20 economies with the most contribution to global economic growth in 2019(5).

In the transformation process to a market mechanism, the Party is always consistent with the policy of economic growth associated with the guarantee of social progress and fairness. Thanks to that, social policies have been implemented better and better, especially the poverty reduction one. Vietnam is considered one of the most successful nations in terms of poverty reduction among the developing ones. The cause of caring for people’s health, implementing social welfare policies, and popularizing education has had clear progress, showing the good nature of socialism.

With the goals of building an advanced Vietnamese culture deeply imbued with national identity and developing Vietnamese man comprehensively, the Party has shown an extremely proper strategic vision in developing Vietnamese culture and man in order to gradually meet the requirements of the renovation cause and international integration. The Party very soon determined that science, technology, education, and training must be the top national policy, thereby advocating to prioritize investment in science and technology, gradually removing and improving law systems and scientific and technological polities; attracting, using, and treating talents; and developing high quality human resources to effectively meet the socio-economic development need.

Fourth, the Party leads the works of national defense, security, and foreign affairs and implements the tasks of building and protecting the socialist Fatherland of Vietnam successfully.

Since implementation of the renovation line, the Party has had fuller and deeper awareness of the two strategic missions: building and protecting the Socialist Fatherland of Vietnam. It has had better and clearer consciousness of its leadership role over the people’s army and security forces. With the analysis and prediction that are correct and close to the situations of the world and the country, the Party has set out the instructional views and mottoes to improve the consolidated power to protect the Fatherland early and remotely, even well before risks appear, on the basis of firmly winning the people’s heart, constructing the national defense in close association with the people’s security, and being flexible in dealing with risky and unexpected circumstances. We have firmly protected the independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity of the Fatherland, national interest, the Party, the State, the people, and the socialist regime and maintained political stability and social security.

The Party has developed, and increasingly improved the independent, self-reliant, multilateral, and diverse foreign affair line, been positive and active in comprehensive and deep integration, been a reliable partner and responsible member of the international community, and maintained peace and stability to create a favorable environment for the cause of building and protecting the Fatherland. Up to now, Vietnam has established diplomatic relations with 189 countries around the world, including many strategic and comprehensive partners; it is the official member of many international and regional organizations, and a participant in a lot of free trade agreements, especially the new generation free trade agreements. Vietnam has gradually established and maintained stable and positive relationships with its partners, step by step dealt with the existing and arising issues, making the relationships with the neighboring countries, nations in the region, strategic partners, comprehensive partners, and traditional friends deeper and deeper. Particularly, Vietnam has increasingly manifested its high prestige and position in the international arena through its key role in regional and international organizations, organized important events successfully, and implemented the duty of well-keeping international peace, etc.

Fifthly, the Party leads the comprehensive promotion, synchronizes the renovation work, and implements the vision and orientation to develop the country in the new context.

Over the past 35 years, the renovation cause led by the Party has obtained great achievements with historical significance, and our country has never had a fortune like this. However, we cannot be so complacent and subjective that we oversleep on the laurel wreath. The renovation work has been facing numerous difficulties, challenges, and risks of lagging behind which requires the Party to have firm mettle, keep on raising intelligence level to lead the handling of the newly posed difficulties, and further develop the country.

In any situation, it is necessary to be firm on the thought foundation of the Party, staying steadfast to the goals of national independence and socialism, keeping consistent in the renovation line, further renovating and developing the theory of the Party to a higher level, struggling and opposing the wrongful, distorted, and hostile arguments against the Party, State and people. The cadres of the Party need to further cultivate their revolutionary morality, intelligence, and mettle and to have enough quality, competence, and prestige equal to the mission to lead the renovation cause in the next stages. The Party needs to strongly promote the cultural value, will, and power of the Vietnamese people and arouse the development aspiration of the whole nation to implement the vision to make Vietnam a developed country in the socialist orientation in the middle of the century. It is also the further assertion of the intelligence, mettle, aspiration, determination, and creativity of the Communist Party of Vietnam to make new development exploits, carry out the wish of great President Ho chi Minh, and lead Vietnam to glory so as to stand shoulder to shoulder with the powers in the world.

Thanks and best regard!

_______________________

Endnotes:

(1) Ho Chi Minh: Complete works, vol.15, National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2011, p.672.

(2) Opening speech of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the Conference between the Government and Localities, in Hanoi dated December 30, 2019.

(3) World Economic Forum, 2019, Global Competitiveness Report 2019: How to end a lost decade of productivity growth, WEF, Geneva Switzerland.

(4) https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-invest-in.

(5) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-19/which-20-countries-will-dominate -global-growth-in-2024.