THE RISING JEWEL OF SOUTHEAST ASIA:

CONTEMPORARY FOREIGN AND ECONOMIC POLICIES IN

VIETNAM

In Partial of the Requirements

For The Contemporary World

Members:

Crisostomo, Jay

Datu, Carl Louise

Demanarig, Michaela

Diaz, Sheryn Mae

Felisilda, Richard Mari

Ganal, Aaron Jay

Halog, Mariano IV

Rodriguez, Michael Gestner

Solana, Vincent

Soliva, Lean Roi

November 2022
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Economic Policies

Vietnam's leadership's "changing energetic thought" has been reflected

in its exterior approach as the nation has rapidly transitioned

through some stages of a larger transition. Vietnam's "Doi Moi"

(update) method was set up in the midst of the 6th Party Congress in

1986, a time when the country put a strong complement on its ties with

the past Soviet Union and saw them as the establishment of

its inaccessible approach. Two decades later, the Politburo altered the

country's external strategy to address the "unused circumstance"

caused by the 1986 decision to liberalize the family economy, shifting

away from a steadfast union with the Soviet Union and toward a

cutting-edge strategy of "more companions and less enemies" during

this time, the goal of which was to live in peace with China, ASEAN,

and the United States.

Vietnam once again changed its center in 1991 at the 7th Party

Congress, this time concentrating on strengthening its ties with Laos

and Cambodia and animating the normalization process. (Global

security Org).
It was not until 2001, during the 9th Congress, that Vietnam became an

issue. The Vietnamese call the Government's current foreign policy the

"friendship with everyone" approach, while the Party calls it the

diversification and multilateralization of independent and self-reliant

international relations. Compared with the fair contribution, Vietnam's

current policies and actions are considered insufficient. The 1.5 is

shared orbit corresponds to 350 MTCO2e in 2030; however, current

policies will reach around 528 MTCO2e by 2030. This difference shows

that Vietnam needs more national policies and international support for

Vietnam to comply with the Paris Agreement, with the exception of the

Paris Agreement. LULUCF.

The conditional and unconditional targets will be easily achieved by

Vietnam under current policies and action plans. Excluding LULUCF,

Vietnam's emissions in 2030 would be between 84-97% higher than

the 2010 level. Much lower than the 1.5°C temperature limit set forth in

the Paris Agreement. If all countries followed Vietnam's strategy, global

warming would exceed 4 degrees Celsius. The rating for Vietnam

ranges from very poor to very poor. Vietnam's ranking could easily

increase with more policy changes. Thus, the total score of Vietnam

may be tilted towards "very unsatisfactory". On January 1, 2022, a new

law on environmental protection will come into effect, replacing an

outdated law from 2014.

Foreign Policies

In the study of every presidency, there comes a time when scholars

turn from the issues that drew all the contemporary attention, to other

matters, those that were less dramatic, less telegenic perhaps,

sometimes less easily characterized (or caricatured) in terms of

individuals and interpersonal conflicts. This is especially true regarding

the foreign policies of postwar presidents. Studies of Truman

administration foreign policy eventually moved beyond arguments

about who started the Cold War; scholars of the Eisenhower

administration got past debates about whether Dwight Eisenhower or

John Foster Dulles wore the foreign policy pants in that Republican

administration. The study of the foreign policy of Lyndon Johnson has

reached this third generation.

For obvious reasons, the Vietnam War dominated contemporary

coverage of Johnson`s foreign policy, and for most of those same

reasons, as well as a couple just cited, it dominated the early histories

of the Johnson years. Kennedy's overriding interest had always been

foreign policy. Eisenhower, which was determined in part by a fear that

global activism and higher defense spending would bankrupt the

nation, Kennedy's policy operated under no such constraints. As far as

defense was concerned, domestic and foreign interests were assumed

to be complementary; the economy could withstand and even benefit

from spending for national defense.

Insofar as process was concerned, Kennedy attempted to be less tied

to what he conceived as the over-bureaucratized National Security

Council. Kennedy continued to listen to Secretary of Defense Robert

McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, but the president relied

primarily on Bundy.
Review of the related literature

Studying contemporary Vietnamese politics means examining the

characteristics and dynamics of power relations, showing how social

power is distributed, exercised, acquired, fought, reproduced and

transformed. Such views reflect an understanding that politics and

power relations permeate all aspects of social life and that analysis of

politics itself includes, but is by no means limited to, the realm of formal

political institutions or procedures. I'm here. Although the CPV need not

be the focus of contemporary Vietnamese political research, a nuanced

understanding of the characteristics of the dominant organizations and

parties in CPV Vietnam is essential. The CPA seeks to govern Vietnam

through a comprehensive party-state structure. The formal institutional

attributes of the CPV party-state are set out in the Vietnamese

Constitution (final amendment 2016) and numerous official documents,

and are extensively described in the literature (see London 2009,

especially Croissant and Lorenz 2018).

The Constitution itself reflects a multifunctional organizational and

institutional complex designed to govern all spheres of society. Article 4

of the Constitution establishes her CPA as Vietnam's main political

force, and other sections reaffirm this principle. Organizationally, the

Party State he consists of five distinct but operationally intertwined

areas. (2) a legislative branch controlled by a nominally representative

political party; (3) a government bureaucracy appointed and controlled

by a political party; (4) a legal and supervisory system subordinated to

a political party; (5) to operate political parties and mass organizations;

Party-led security services permeate and envelop the entire apparatus.

The party organizes its activities through the organization's own

network and the activities of party cells embedded in most workplaces

and all residential areas. Ideology is important to the party and how it

works. But it is also necessary to understand the difference between

ideal and practice. Throughout its history, the party has used its claim

to be the sole legitimate representative of the Vietnamese people's

democratic aspirations to justify its perpetual monopoly on political

power. The CPA remains openly socialist-oriented, and its economic

and social policies are in fact largely redistributive (more on this later).

And under CPV rules, social relations in the economy are capitalistic in

nature, but party-controlled circuits of capital accumulation and

opportunity storage are the main drivers of social inequality (London,

this volume, Vu ed. 2022). The lifeworld of the Party can sometimes

seem like a kind of political religion, replete with the systematic use of

symbols to control, direct, and influence the public consciousness.

Studying his CPA as a dominant organization in Vietnam means

exploring the qualities, sources and limits of its power in different social

fields and contexts.

The party's influence is far-reaching. Their membership represents

about 5% of the population, but 15-20% of the population has direct

ties to party members due to family ties of party members. In practice,

the political unity of the party functions as a vast redistributive coalition

that is discriminatory accessible to ordinary Vietnamese (Gray 2018;

London 2020). Power within the party can appear decentralized and

fragmented, or it can appear highly centrally coordinated. Mann's

(1986) classic distinction between despotic power (a handful of

individual leaders) and infrastructural power (power exercised by the

system) is useful when thinking about Vietnamese politics. Party

members are more concentrated in the Red River Delta, the central

north, and the northwest than in other regions, but party structures are

strong everywhere. Vietnam and the Party are nominally governed by

formal organizations and subject to formal institutions (laws, policies,

etc.), the latter of which is governed by interpersonal bargaining politics

based on coercion, cooperation, reciprocity and exchange. often

provide a shell that is customer base.

Party practices deviate from the formal institutions it created. The

principles of the rule of law, separation of powers and freedom of

expression and association are enshrined in the constitution but are not

fully implemented in practice. Party members and those affiliated with

the party can use their superior access and command to opportunities,
resources, and information to benefit their families and networks of

patrons and clients. The party controls the country's duly representative

parliament, government, bureaucracy, courts, mass media, and

thousands of state-affiliated institutions, including businesses, schools,

and hospitals. The party uses mass organizations (along with the mass

media) for mobilization and moral advocacy, and its impressive security

apparatus to chastise and punish dissent. Chapter 2 provides an

overview of the party and examines how it has shaped Vietnam's

institutional development in the areas of politics, economy and social

policy. The contributors of this volume examine various aspects of the

party's state. Paul Schuler (Chapter 3) focuses on the Vietnamese

parliament and examines the characteristics of political representation

and the party-parliamentary relationship both in principle and in

practice. In (chapter 4), Ben Kerkvliet examines the party's methods of

dealing with public political criticism, stating that while the party

primarily bans political opponents, it selectively punishes political

critics, indicating imprisonment.One of the major issues in Vietnam

today concerns the status of civil society, a concept the party itself is

wary of.

Andrew Wells-Dang (chapter 5) traces the development of civil society

and advocacy networks in his contribution to this volume. The party-

state's enforcement powers are reinforced by large-scale security,

police and military apparatus, subordinate to the party, and

encompassing the party and almost all aspects of domestic social life.

In this volume, Carlyle Thayer (chapter 6) examines the organization

and functioning of this important aspect of the party-state apparatus.

Although the CPV recognizes greater individual liberties, the party's

record on civil rights and human rights remains poor. Gisle Kvangin

(Chapter 7) tracks recent developments in his contribution to this

volume. To study Vietnam as politics and power relations is also to

study the continuity and changes in characteristics of its relationship

with the world. In recent decades, the CPA has redefined the country's

relationship with the world. On this issue, Le Hong Hiep (Chapter 8)

indicates that his CPV stance in the international realm was to maintain

Vietnam's national independence while maintaining domestic political

control.

Hanoi uses long-standing ties with Moscow to procure weapons and

has obvious political affinities with the Chinese and Cuban communist

parties (Brundenius and Le 2014; Chan and Unger 1999). But

Vietnam's foreign policy is guided more by realism than old loyalty.

Ironically, Vietnam's security and economic interests in Asia are most

closely aligned with those of the United States. While China remains an

important trading partner, and the ruling parties of each country

maintain important political affinities and ties, China's expansionist

tendencies have put Vietnam's independence and its relations with the

world on a continual and direct path. Tuong Vu (2014) presents a

controversial issue on this issue of the CPA's relationship with China. A

revised and updated version of his analysis can be found at Vietnam

Handbook.org.
Discussion

Over the past two decades since the early of 1990s, the Vietnamese

Communist Party and government have made radical policy changes

especially changes in creating a level playing field for enterprises of all

economic sectors and in liberalizing international trade and investment.

Indeed, in 2005 after many times of incremental adjustments, the

Enterprise Law and Investment Law were approved to remove all the

legal discrimination between state-owned and private enterprises and

between domestic and foreign enterprises in Vietnam. The two laws

have provided an integrative legal framework for the establishment and

operation of enterprises in all economic sectors regardless of

ownership. The Investment Law of 2005 unified separate laws in the

field of investment including Law on Foreign Investment of 1996

(revised in 2000), the Domestic Investment Promotion Law of 1998.

The Enterprise Law of 2005 replaced the Enterprise Law of 1999 and

the Law on State-owned Enterprises of 2003.

In the area of international trade and investment, Vietnam have signed

a number of trade agreements with key partners and adopted radical

legal reforms to create favorable conditions for foreign direct

investment and international trade. Beginning with the trade agreement

with the European Union (EU) in 1992, Vietnam joined the Association

of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ASEAN Free Trade Area

(AFTA) in 1995 and committed to fulfill the agreements under AFTA

by2006. In 1998, it became a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic

Co-operation(APEC), and in 2000, signed the critical Bilateral Trade

Agreement with the United States. In November 2006, Vietnam made a

major decision to join the World Trade Organization after 11 years of

negotiation, marking the completion of the institutional integration into

the world economy. To attract foreign direct investment, the first

cornerstone of the legal framework was the Foreign Direct Investment

(FDI) Law promulgated in December1987.

At that time, the law was relatively progressive that welcomed FDI in all

economic sectors, permitted 100 percent foreign ownership, provided

generous tax and duty exemptions in various areas, and guaranteed

unrestricted repatriation of capital (Chu & Dickie, 2006). The law was

consciously revised in 1990 and 1992 and then replaced by the new

Foreign Direct Investment Law of 1996. In response to fierce

competitions from countries in the region after the Asian Financial

Crisis in 1997, the Vietnamese government adopted many regulatory

changes in harmonizing the business environment from 1998-2001

including one-price policy applied to all economic sectors and revised

the Foreign Direct Investment Law of 1996 in 2000 to create more

favorable conditions for FDI. In 2005, pressed by commitments made

under international agreements, in particular the Vietnam-US Bilateral

coming into effect from 2002, the full implementation of AFTA

agreements and the conditions to access WTO by 2005, Vietnam

adopted the unified Investment Law provide equal treatment to foreign-

owned enterprises in accordance with the rule of nondiscrimination

under WTO (Muller, 2005). The law removes a number of constraints

on foreign-owned enterprises such as the constraints on importing

goods related to their business lines (Pham H. T., 2011).

Summary

Vietnamese people are encouraged to actively participate in the world's

forums and activities and contribute to the struggle for peace, equitable

and sustainable development, democracy, and social progress. China's

President Xi Jinping Jinping has pledged to push ahead with foreign

economic activities and integrate more deeply and fully in global,

regional, and bilateral economic institutions.

In order to leverage the achievements of comprehensive economic

Renovation during the last over 30 years,based on the foundations of a

socialist-oriented, modern and internationally integrated market

economy institutions, and opportunities brought about by the Industrial

Revolution 4.0, a focus must be placed on implementing economic

policies with strong aspiration of reaching higher.

The Vietnam Economic Policy conveys a clear message to the

business community, international organizations, managers and the

entire Vietnamese people about the determination to build a

developmental, action-taking and integrity state to continue pushing up

the course of reform, improving the business and investment

environment, and mobilizing resources for development with an aim to

jointly building Viet Nam into a prosperous, harmonious and

sustainable nation.
QUESTION

1. How would you define Economic Policies and Foreign Policies in

Vietnam?

2. How did Vietnam affect Economic and Foreign Policies?

3. What experience does Vietnam face in Economic and Foreign

policies?

4. Can you compare the Economic and Foreign policies in

Vietnam?

5. What your insight about Vietnam Policies?

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