The session was chaired by Politburo member, National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Phu Trong.

Ta Ngoc Tan, a Party Central Committee member, who is Editor-in-Chief of Tap Chi Cong San (Communist Review), highlighted the persistent preservation and creative application of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thoughts in the transitional period to socialism in Vietnam.

He attributed huge achievements of historical significance made in the country’s renewal process to the correct understanding of the scientific and revolutionary nature of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thoughts and creative application of these mentoring documents in the reality of building socialism in the country.
Tan noted, “The course of implementing the renewal policy over the past 25 years has shown that the more our national construction and development advance, the more complicated and difficult issues we will face, which will place our country in new opportunities as well as new challenges”.

“These require us to assess our understanding again, apply creativity and supplement and develop Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thoughts in accordance with the new global context as well as specific conditions in the country,” Tan said.

Party Central Committee member, Huynh Dam, who is also President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee, focused on promoting the national great unity to contribute to executing the 11^th Party Congress Resolution successfully.

Dam laid stress on the need for the Party to continue reviewing its leading methods and to strictly follow the principle of democratic consultation while working with the Vietnam Fatherland Front and other mass organisations, respecting the VFF’s self-reliance, giving support to its voluntary, active, and creative activities and listening sincerely to opinions contributed by the VFF and other mass organisations.

The Party must well perform its role as both the leader and a member of the VFF, Dam said.
Another presentation, about “boosting the development of a knowledge-based economy to make the country develop fast and sustainably”, was delivered by Vu Hong Khanh, from the delegation of the Hanoi City Party Committee.

Khanh spoke of problems emerged from an economic development model that lacks environmental protection and resolutely backed the 2011-2020 socio-economic development strategy which champions sustainable development as the top priority and a thorough demand.

Nguyen Van Dua from the delegation of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee presented delegates with a proposal on five groups of policies and solutions to remodel development and restructure the national economy.

He pointed to the necessity of changing the thinking concerning the state’s economic management function by using a planning tool that fits the operation of the market mechanism, effective use of economic-financial policies to stimulate the internal restructuring process in economic sectors, as well as making State economic institutions be facilities to remedy and limit flaws of the market.

The delegates heard a host of presentations delivered by Party Central Committee members.
They included, “Ten year implementation of the 2001-10 socio-economic development strategy reviewed and lessons learnt to deploy the 2010-20 socio-economic development strategy” by Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc; “Environmental protection in the process of pushing up industrialisation and modernisation for fast and sustainable development” by Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Pham Khoi Nguyen; “Building the Vietnam People’s Army revolutionary, regular, professional, and well-trained and gradually modernising it to defend the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the new circumstance” by Vice Director of the General Politics Department of the Vietnam People’s Army Ngo Xuan Lich; and “Enhancing and expanding the Communist Party of Vietnam’s relations with communist parties, left-wing parties, ruling parties and political parties in the world” by Head of the Party Central Committee’s External Relations Commission Hoang Binh Quan.

At the session, the delegates were informed that the 11^th National Party Congress had so far received 149 congratulatory messages from parties, organisations and friends all over the world.

Delegates underline the need to strengthen Party

It is essential to build up the Party strongly in terms of ideology, politics and organisation, and enhance the Party’s leadership and combat capacity.

That is the common view shared by delegates attending the 11 th National Party Congress in separate interviews granted to correspondents of the Vietnam News Agency on the sidelines of the country’s premier five-yearly political event.

Delegate Tran Nam Hong, member of the Standing Board of the Party Committee of the central province of Ha Tinh , said the report presented by Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh at the opening session covered a full range of fields, from socio-economic issues to Party-building work.

Hong laid special stress on the need to build up the Party more cleanly and powerfully and enhance its leadership and combat capacity. “It is necessary to build up the Party strongly in terms of ideology, politics and organisation, and special attention should be paid to personnel, particularly those at grassroots levels,” he said.

The delegate also noted that the campaign, “Study and follow Ho Chi Minh’s moral example” should be further stepped up, in combination with rectifying the Party, considering it a vital issue of the Party.

“Together with continuing the campaign, it is necessary to competently perform the personnel-related work and carefully appraise and train cadres so they can faithfully accomplish their assigned tasks,” Hong elaborated.

Nguyen Van Thuan, former Secretary of the Hai Phong Municipal Party Committee, said in the face of opportunities and challenges, each delegate must be aware of his/her responsibility, not only to the Communist Party of Vietnam, but also to the entire nation, by participating deeply in deciding the Congress’s contents and putting Congress resolutions into action.

Thuan talked about the need for comprehensive renewal, stressing economic reform should be based on political reform to ensure stability, therefore the reform of politics must be accelerated and people’s right to mastery must be promoted.

Evaluation and selection of officials for leadership positions at all levels should be renewed and conducted in a more democratic and practical way, he added.

Meanwhile, Dinh Tien Phong, Vice Secretary of the Thanh Hoa Provincial Party Committee, expressed his hope that the ongoing Congress would create big changes within the Party, thus mapping out a firm guideline toward socialism and turning Vietnam into a modern industrialised country by 2020.

“The most important task of the Congress is to elect the most preeminent comrades to the 11^th Party Central Committee, who have sufficient knowledge, wholeheartedness and ability.” Phong said.

Congress debates socio-economic issues

The same day, delegates debated the country’s development orientation and major socio-economic issues which were highlighted in documents presented to the congress.

Hoang Binh Quan, Party Central Committee member, delegate from Tuyen Quang province delivered his presentation on enhancing and expanding ties with political parties, saying: “Over the past 25 years of doi moi (renewal), particularly during the implementation of Platform 1991, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has ceaselessly expanded and enhanced diversified relations with political parties from other countries across the world. The Party has participated in international forums, conferences and workshops with other communist parties, workers’ parties and left-winged parties in Asia. We have also extended relations with ruling parties. The CPV has relations with over 200 political parties in 115 countries, of which 100 are communist parties and workers’ parties and 40 are ruling parties. Taking the leading position in our Party’s relations are communist ruling parties from socialist countries and neighbouring nations, including Laos, Cambodia, China, Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Overall, during the 10th tenure, the Party's external relations, along with the State’s foreign affairs and people’s external activities, have made great contributions to the nation’s diplomacy.

“Via Party relations, ties with other countries have been promoted and Vietnam’s standing on the international arena has increased. Via exchanges with political parties, we have gained more international experience in national construction and defence as well as how to resolve socio-economic issues. We have also cemented ties between the country’s top leaders with leading politicians in other countries, creating a common sense and consensus in long-term and stable relations with their countries. They have developed a proper and accurate understanding of Vietnam to the extent that they can involve the country in the making and implementation of their nation’s policies. In some cases, via party ties, we have resolved existing or newly-emerging issues in the relations between Vietnam and other countries.

“However, the external relations activities of the Party need to be more practical in terms of delegation exchanges and more self-motivated in our role at political forums. Improvements should be made in researching and forecasting situations arising in other parties as well as their development trends.”

Delegate Vo Hong Phuc, Party Central Committee member from Thanh
Hoa province made a review of 10 years of implementing the socio-economic development strategy and lessons for the coming decades, stressing that over the past 10 years, Vietnam’s economic capability has been lifted.
He said: “The country has escaped from poverty and a less-developed status. GDP over that time reached 7.26 percent per year, meeting the strategy’s target. Vietnam has one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world. Last year’s GDP was US$ 101.6 billion and GDP per capita was US$1,160. We are no longer classed as a low-income developing country. Investment from the whole of society has increased, to around 40.5 percent of GDP. The macroeconomy has remained basically stable and important improvements have been made in infrastructure.

“Urbanisation has risen from 24.2 percent in 2000 to over 30 percent in 2010 and the economic structure has shifted with more focus on industry.

However, growth quality, productivity, efficiency and the competitiveness of the economy is low and macro balances are unstable. Export products are mostly raw materials and industrial goods are mainly manually made. Productivity is much lower than regional economies, for example 2.6 times and 4.3 times lower than China and Thailand respectively. Energy losses are huge. In order to turn out 1 USD of GDP, Vietnam uses about 4.65 times more power than Hong Kong, 2.10 times compared to the Republic of Korea and 1.69 times to Malaysia.

“Infrastructure has developed slowly, with poor quality and a lack of synchrony that has hampered development. The transport network has yet to be completed and we have no express railway, modern sea port or airport. The power supply and network have not met the demands of production or the public.

“The institutions of a market economy have been gradually formed and developed. During 2001-2010, the country has prioritised building a legal system, mechanism and policies. Productivity has been variable across different sectors of the economy, of which the foreign-invested sector has grown strongly, helping to improve the nation’s technology and management standard and competitiveness. However, monopoly in business has not been properly controlled and there remain weaknesses in State macro management.

Meanwhile, delegate Pham Khoi Nguyen, Party Central Committee member from Cao Bang province in his presentation on the environmental protection during the development period, said: “We have made numerous achievements in environmental protection since the implementation of the 10th Party Congress Resolution. They are demonstrated in law building, the formation of environmental police and increased investment in their work. Measures to protect the environment in socio-economic projects have been included and a number of green urban models or green production models and ecological economic models have been developed.

“But it is a truth that environmental quality is getting worse, causing adverse impacts to people’s health and lives. Air, water and soil pollution have been spreading, not only in industrial zones and urban areas but in rural regions too.

“Natural resources have been exploited excessively, resulting in the degradation of water and underground sources and leading to numerous disasters. The reasons are many, but the main one is that too much attention is paid to economic growth rather than environmental protection.

“I want to propose some measures for swift but sustainable development in the future. We need to be more focused on restructuring the economy to be more friendly to the environment and adopt the "green growth" model that has been mentioned in the socio-economic development strategy for 2011-2020. The market economy should be applied to the environment sector to increase the efficiency of State management and raise the sector’s contribution to the national economy. Natural resources and minerals will only become highly profitable to the nation if we have proper plan to exploit and use them. Investment should be encouraged to support industries that use clean technology. Public awareness should be raised on threats to the environment, climate change and rising sea levels. We need to build a strategy to encourage countries and international donors to help Vietnam to resolve environmental matters and support climate change adaptation.

Army building in new circumstance

Vice Director of the General Politics Department of the Vietnam People’s Army Ngo Xuan Lich has underlined the need to build a revolutionary, regular, professional, and well-trained Vietnam People’s Army and gradually modernise it to meet the demand for firmly defending the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the new circumstance.

“This is a vital issue, a basic viewpoint and a consistent leading guidance of our Party,” he stressed.

Over the past years, the Party and State have always paid attention and given out leading guidance, solutions and instruction to reinforce the army in political, ideological and organisational spheres, Lich said.

Accordingly, the army has become a reliable and loyal combat troop and political force of the Party and the people, having high combat capacity.

The army has proactively provided prompt and effective consultancy to the Party and State in military and defence areas and competently performed functions and tasks assigned for the combat army.

It has been the key force in safeguarding the national independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity as well as in protecting the Party, the State, the people and the socialist regime, and building a strong all-people defence and a solid all-people defence in combination with a people’s security disposition.

Lich also stressed that the army has taken an active role in promoting socio-economic development and building political bases at localities, especially disadvantaged and important locations such as remote, border areas and islands.

It has acted as a key force in search and rescue activities during times of natural disasters and environmental catastrophe, as well as in post-disaster relief operations while carrying out external defence activities to contribute to maintaining a peaceful and stable environment for national construction and development, the officer said.

According to Lich, peace, cooperation and development remain big trends nowadays, however, complex and unexpected developments taking place in the region and the world include elements that could lead to instability.

“Our current revolutionary tasks demand a peaceful and stable environment be maintained for the country to develop, risks of war prevented and stamped out, all hostile forces’ sabotage activities be thwarted to firmly defend the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and at the same time to be ready to achieve a win in an ever more complicated circumstance,” Lich said.

Therefore, the officer emphasised the need to gain a thorough understanding of the Party’s viewpoints pertaining to the tasks of building and modernizing a revolutionary, regular, professional and well-trained people’s army.

He also noted the need to renew and develop suitable contents as well as formulas relating to the building of the army on the grounds of a new stream of thinking on defence and protection of the country in the new condition, saying these should conform with the army’s real capacity and meet immediate and long term requirements and tasks.

Lich has presented issues that needed to be focused on for successfully building a revolutionary, regular, professional, and well-trained Vietnam People’s Army and modernising it to satisfy requirements and tasks to defend the country firmly at present and in the future.

He consistently underlined the principle of taking the building of a politically firm army as a basis for raising the army’s overall quality and strength with the maintenance and unceasing reinforcement of the Party’s resolute and direct leadership over the army in all fields.

Efforts must concentrate on making the army strong in personnel and organisation to ensure its stability, rationalisation, and good training to be capable of fulfilling all tasks assigned.

To become well-trained, the army must focus firstly on its political, technical and tactical spheres so that it can meet all requirements of the mode of struggle to protect the country in the new period and be capable of defeating all enemies in any situation, including a war where hi-tech weapons are used. It must work to prevent and fight off the “peaceful evolution” and the “self-evolving” and “self-transforming” inner process triggered by the “peaceful evolution”, Lich said.

The officer said the army must proactively and actively implement a policy of gradual and effective modernisation.

Apart from promoting and raising the effective use and exploitation of existing weapons and equipment, the army needs to be equipped with new, cutting-edge weapons and equipment to enable it to defend the fatherland in the new circumstance.

The army also needs to continue speeding up its external defence activities to create a new position and strength for the all-people defence, Lich noted.