Overcoming challenges, reaching the goal of strength and prosperity

The 80th anniversary of the country's National Day is also the time when Vietnam aims to become a high-income country by 2045. That is also the vision of a new era, the milestone of 100 years of a strong and prosperous Vietnam National Day that the Party and State are devoting all their heart and strength to realizing.

Party and Government leaders and delegates visit the exhibition “80 years of the Journey of Independence - Freedom - Happiness” on the opening day.

Photo: VNA

In the exciting atmosphere of the whole nation, Thanh Nien interviewed Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Dinh Thien (photo), former Director of the Vietnam Economic Institute, about the achievements we have made in 8 decades of defending, building and developing the country. Especially the feasibility as well as the solutions that the Party and State have set out to realize the vision of Vietnam 100 years in the new era (1945 - 2045).

Photo: Independence

Achievements that changed the fate of the nation

Celebrating the 80th anniversary of the country's National Day, this is an opportunity to look back and evaluate what we have done and what we have not done over the past 8 decades to prepare for the important journey called the new era ahead. From an economic perspective, in your opinion, what achievements has Vietnam made?

Vietnam’s achievements over the past 80 years, in terms of fighting for national independence and freedom and defending the Fatherland, with legendary feats of arms, are truly something to be proud of. During those 80 years, economic development has also achieved great successes. The impressive results in GDP growth, national income, investment, import and export, budget, etc. that a country that was heavily devastated by war and had a very low starting point achieved after only 40 years of truly peaceful development (including 20 years of embargo) have proven that.

It is really difficult to list all the specific successes, but I will summarize the outstanding development achievements, achievements that have the meaning of affirming the national position.

Firstly, the poverty threshold, the most difficult threshold to overcome in the entire development journey, has been overcome in less than 20 years since the renovation, helping the Vietnamese people truly change their lives.

Second, changing the trajectory of economic development, abandoning the centralized planning mechanism and shifting to a market economy, means "surpassing oneself". Thanks to that, Vietnam has changed its development destiny.

Third, opening up - successfully integrating into the international community, accompanying the world and humanity to solve the development problems that have existed for thousands of years. Thereby, affirming the national position.

With those three successes, although they are just the beginning, the country's destiny has completely changed: Forever escaping the past of poverty, confidently standing shoulder to shoulder with the world to build the future. That is not only an opinion, but also an affirmation.

However, after 1945, some Asian countries rose from poverty to become developed countries. For example, it took Japan about 30 years after World War II to become one of the world's leading economies, a process known as the "Japanese miracle". It took South Korea about 30 years, from the 1970s to the 1990s, to transform from a poor country, mainly based on agriculture, to an industrialized economy, achieving impressive growth and becoming one of the four Asian dragons. Frankly speaking, 80 years is a long journey but Vietnam has not yet been able to "become a dragon". What do you think we are lacking or have missed to achieve such an achievement?

In fact, to compare the time of "turning into a dragon", we should only count the 40 years that Vietnam truly developed in peace. It is true that in about 35 - 40 years, East Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and recently China - have managed to create "economic miracles".

Although Vietnam has the advantage of being a latecomer and is not inferior in terms of intellectual potential, we have not been able to create a "miracle" and have not been able to "become a dragon" because there are still many development issues that Vietnam has not yet resolved or implemented, with many backlogs and consequences.

From an agricultural country, Vietnamese enterprises are gradually mastering a number of new technologies. In the photo : People visit the exhibition of the country's achievements on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of National Day.

Photo: VNA

Particularly in terms of international comparison, Vietnam is still struggling to escape the middle-income trap. The private sector (recently recognized as the most important driving force) and the "dominant" state sector are still quite weak. That means that after 80 years, especially when placing the economy in a fiercely competitive global space and facing a challenging future, we still have a lot of work to do.

Can you explain more clearly what we lack that has prevented us from creating a "miracle" like our neighboring countries?

Currently, within the framework of the 14th Party Congress, preparing the path for the nation's "era of rising up", the summary of 40 years of innovation is being carried out with new thinking and approaches, helping to answer your question "deeper and brighter".

First of all, each country has different development circumstances, fates and destinies. But clearly, Vietnam's slow "dragon transformation" cannot be explained mainly by objective circumstances, but must be rooted in subjective weaknesses, in the choice of development methods, in institutions and operating mechanisms.

That is why General Secretary To Lam emphasized that "institutions are the bottleneck of bottlenecks" and not just the "three strategic bottlenecks" that have been popular for the past 15 years but have not yet brought into play their practical value.

In that spirit, the first reason why we "missed the opportunity to become a dragon" in my opinion is because in the past 40 years, we have not clearly recognized and built the true "decisive driving force for growth" of the market economy: the Vietnamese private economic sector. Along with that, we have not created a solid foundation for development, which is a system of synchronized and equally competitive markets. We have maintained for too long an industrialization strategy based on the advantage of raw resources and cheap labor in parallel with the development trend of dependence on the world market and low-tech foreign investment; maintained for too long the "ask - give" mechanism, being bound by the administrative procedure system, causing "bottlenecks of bottlenecks" for the development process. Finally, the bottleneck of poorly connected infrastructure and weak human resources has been slowly resolved.

Of course, the root cause of Vietnam's "missed opportunity to become a dragon" also includes many weaknesses, even defects, of the economy. However, there is a basis to determine that these subjective causes are the most direct and important.

The country is posing worthy challenges.

The message of the era of national development was set by the General Secretary with the goal of Vietnam becoming a high-income country by 2045. 2045 is also the milestone of the 100th anniversary of National Day, 100 years of national independence. How do you evaluate the Party and State's vision of 100 years of Vietnam?

It must be affirmed that the new development target system that the Party has put forward at the historical milestone of the 100th anniversary of National Day is truly unusual: different in approach, different in target height and different in commitment. All of these reflect a rare level of high aspiration, great confidence and strong determination.

The core points of that system can be summarized as follows: Progressing to keep up with the times, standing shoulder to shoulder with the world, ensuring a strong - independent - self-reliant country, bringing prosperity, freedom and happiness to the people.

According to you, what basis do we have to set such aspirational development goals and objectives?

Of course, no big or good job is easy, but I think the country is setting a worthy challenge. Setting such goals and orientations also shows that Vietnam has correctly identified the value of the "once in a thousand years" historical opportunity that the era brings, determining that this is an opportunity that the country cannot afford to miss. That is why this time the Party and State set a target of double-digit growth for decades, successful digital transformation, green transformation and "artificial intelligence". These are truly unusually high development goals, rare, even unprecedented, in the history of the world economy.

To achieve that goal, Vietnam must create completely new development capacities and dynamics, with a different development approach. Identifying the "four pillars of Resolution" recently proposed by the Party, the "immediate" way of action in implementing, streamlining the public apparatus, "reorganizing" the country, combined with the momentum of movement taking place throughout the country and the people's trust, we can see that positive prospects are opening up.

There is an advantage but also a huge challenge, sir: Vietnam has reached 100 million people but also faces the risk of getting old before becoming rich. What should we do to effectively take advantage of the golden population period for the era of national development?

The world is moving very fast. Therefore, the risk of getting old before getting rich is even greater and more real for Vietnam. If we do not move faster, we will not be able to keep up. At that time, we will not only face the risk of falling behind but also being eliminated from the common development trajectory. But to do that, first of all, Vietnam must know how to overcome itself, overcome the way of solving development problems that once brought success but are becoming old and outdated when moving to the "digital and green" era. That means we must overcome the "aging" logic so that the country can become young again and have time to "get rich before getting old".

Therefore, in addition to the general strategic tasks mentioned above, Vietnam must immediately focus on the goal of developing a true startup and innovation ecosystem. Creativity is the strength of youth, a factor that helps "rejuvenate the nation" in a real way.

Specifically, how should we "rejuvenate in a real way"?

For a long time, we have been interested in startups, but mainly concerned with helping young people "start a business" rather than creative startups. We have not paid attention to creating a national startup ecosystem, so the results are quite limited. By renewing this work, the country will have a very new and very strong motivation to quickly enrich the young generations .

In addition, it is necessary to pay attention to developing the "silver economy" (the elderly, retirees...) in the process of modern development. Now that life expectancy is increasing, population is increasing, income is increasing, the scale and role of the silver economy are also increasing. If cared for and developed appropriately, the elderly will live healthier, contributing to better development. They will also be younger, continue to be rich when they are old and thanks to that, the country will also be younger.

Those are just two examples of how to solve the problem of "old but not rich" associated with two generations. What I mean by this is the approach to solving the problem - a task that requires a comprehensive and synchronous solution system to be able to handle it thoroughly.

Instead of measuring progress solely by GDP, many countries around the world are making efforts to improve the quality of life, protect the environment, promote social equality and enhance people's well-being. The motto "Independence - Freedom - Happiness" under the Vietnamese National Name also implies the same meaning. On the one hand, we are focusing on high growth to become a rich and prosperous country by 2045. How do you envision Vietnam's development model in the new era?

Wealth includes both material and spiritual things. If something is lacking, life will be less happy. That is the principle and the motto and purpose of our Party and State are always like that. The strategic and policy approach is always "no economic growth at all costs", "no sacrificing people's happiness for growth".

In recent times, the Government's efforts towards this goal have been very clear. The program of "eliminating temporary and dilapidated houses" and developing social housing has been vigorously implemented and has achieved particularly positive results in terms of the number of houses built, the poor benefiting, the speed of time, the arousal of the spirit of humanity, and the widespread development of mutual support in society... It is consistent with Vietnam's outstanding success in "escape from poverty" as I mentioned above.

Looking to the future, we are promoting the implementation of "green transformation", "digital literacy"... all with the same humanistic spirit. I think that spirit is the red thread running through the history of modern development of Vietnam.

To move quickly and develop effectively, we must know how to choose priority goals. Of course, in poor conditions, in a development space full of instability and uncertainty, it is difficult to complete everything at a certain time. I think we are trying to solve this problem seriously, in the spirit of ensuring humanity, "leaving no one behind", while promoting the spirit of "personal responsibility, encouraging talented people, capable people".

That is the formula for success that Vietnam continues to persistently pursue.

Thank you!

During the war, Vietnam knew how to turn every life-and-death challenge into victory. Now, in the fierce competition for modern development, if we know how to turn challenges into development pressure, turn pressure into opportunities for developing talents, then solving the above-mentioned impossible development problem will become a reality.

Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Dinh Thien

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/vuot-thach-thuc-vuon-toi-muc-tieu-hung-cuong-va-thinh-vuong-185250901205436193.htm