PANO – Over the past 30 years, localities across the country have always earmarked a considerable part of their budget to invest in cultural facilities and build up cultural institutions with the aim of improving the people’s right to enjoy cultural products. The State has also increasingly invested in the cultural sector in accordance to economic growth.
Everyone knows that the status and power of a country depends on a number of factors. Together with a good political system suited to the people’s aspiration, a growing economy and defence forces strong enough to firmly defend the country, culture plays an increasingly important role in the country’s sustainable development. Perceiving the role of culture, the Party and State of Vietnam has crafted directions and policies to promote cultural development, contributing to improving people’s cultural life and rights.
Photo for illustration: VNA
Do not judge Vietnamese cultural life like “blind men and elephants”
Looking into some unhealthy cultural phenomena elsewhere in the country, people with hostile views hold that the Vietnamese cultural environment is “muddy,” Vietnam’s cultural life is “poor,” and cultural ethics are seriously “downgraded.” Particularly, some even argue that the Vietnamese people are “forced” to absorb “dogmatic culture,” have “random chance to open their mouths,” and have “little access to the international civilization.”
It must be said that the above views are like the story “Blind men and elephants.” In fact, these people have judged the Vietnamese culture in an incomprehensive and subjective manner. They have only looked at some phenomena without careful study and then come to a wrong conclusion; otherwise they have tried to worsen the issue for their bad political purposes.
Admittedly, the cultural life of some Vietnamese people, particularly those living in remote areas, is not very rich. Several aspects of culture and ethics are seen as downgraded, and unhealthy cultural phenomena still remained unsolved. But these drawbacks are not the “main stream” of the Vietnamese culture. Thus, it is necessary for one to judge a country’s culture by comprehensively studying policies, institutions and laws related to culture to the organization and implementation levels and practical cultural life of people of all social strata.
In fact, the Party and State of Vietnam always pay close attention to building a healthy cultural environment and improving cultural life of people, alongside continuously improving living and economic conditions for people. Since the Resolution on building and developing the Vietnamese culture with rich national identity issued in 1988 by the fifth meeting of the Party Central Committee of the 13th tenure, the Party, National Assembly and Government of Vietnam have crafted more than 140 resolutions, directives and decisions related to culture with the aim of creating favorable mechanisms and a legal framework to promote national cultural development.
It is not by chance that an international organization has rated Vietnam as one of the happiest nations and as the one with the highest optimistic index among other nations in the world. Although the rating is a reference, these figures still make sense.
Everyone knows that a nation’s power is constituted mainly of human and material resources, economy and culture. Although Vietnam obviously does not have a powerful economy or modern infrastructural facilities, the cultural life of the Vietnamese people has continuously been improved. The Vietnamese people in general have more and more opportunities not only to enjoy good cultural values and activities, but also absorb the quintessence of foreign cultures via the mass media and the internet. This results from the launch of Doi Moi in 1986, which indeed created a good platform for the country to develop its national culture as well as favorable conditions for people to enrich their cultural life.
According to the 2015 report by independent expert in cultural rights of the UN Human Rights Council Farida Shaheed, Vietnam has achieved remarkable results in fulfilling the UN Millennium Goals as well as improving economic and cultural rights of people in the countryside and remote areas.
Party and State improve cultural life of people
Over the past 30 years of Doi Moi, authorities from the Central to local levels under the leadership of the Party have earmarked a large proportion of the State Budget and local budget to build cultural facilities and organize cultural activities. According to reports from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the State invested some VND 37,670 billion during 2006-2010, up by 1.8% against the 2001-2005 period, in the culture and information sector. In other words, the investment in the sector usually represented around 2% of the annual total expenses of the State Budget. This was a recognizable effort of the State when Central and local governments had to prioritize budget sources for social welfare and hunger elimination and poverty reduction.
One of the noticeable cultural achievements after 30 years of Doi Moi is the continuous rise in the number of good cultural institutions and projects, which better serve people’s and communal cultural activities. Before Doi Moi, many localities, particularly in mountainous areas, did not have a communal cultural house and other cultural facilities. Today, more than 5,000 communes and urban wards have cultural and sporting centers; nearly 55,000 villages have cultural houses; there are more than 36,200 commune-level soccer stadiums, 38,400 basic-level sports clubs, 6,900 playgrounds for young children, and 17,316 medium- and small- scale libraries; and 98% of the total number of communes have post offices. As of the end of 2015, 96% of the total territory was able to listen to radio programs, and 98% of the total territory was covered by T.V. broadcasting.
Meanwhile, infrastructure of communications and the internet has reached almost all mountainous, border and difficult communes in the country. Additionally, authorities at all levels have continuously created various healthy cultural spaces for all kinds of people to enjoy and develop their traditional culture.
What is more, the Party’s and State’s cultural policies also bear their humanity. This is clearly reflected in the national cultural goals with many practical programs, such as anti-degradation of historical relics, preservation and development of intangible cultural values of the 54 Vietnamese ethnic groups, promotion of culture and information at the basic level and improvement of the cultural life of people in disadvantaged areas. The spending only on the implementation of the national goals on cultural development in the 2012-2015 period reached VND 7,400 billion.
With the motto “Focusing on the basic level and prioritizing ethnic minorities,” many mountainous, border and island areas have so far built cultural and sporting centers, post offices, public reading halls and public internet centers.
Under the policies on the preservation of ethnic minorities’ heritages, the cultural sector has restored and preserved 54 unique traditional festivals of ethnic minority groups, which had nearly fallen into oblivion. Additionally, the sector has supported the conservation of 23 traditional hamlets. In fact, mountainous people have been very pleased with the Party’s guidelines and State’s policies on development and preservation of culture and traditions of ethnic minority groups.
Promoting national culture in international integration
Under the leadership of the Party over the past 30 years of Doi Moi, the Government, the cultural sector and localities have successfully promoted the national culture around the region and world. At the same time, the cultural sector has tried to bring good and beautiful cultural features of other nations to the Vietnamese people. In doing so, the sector has provided favorable conditions for cultural businesses to import foreign movies, pictures, books and music to the domestic market, as well as organized hundreds of music and artistic programs with the participation of famous foreign artists, international beauty, dance, song, photo and painting contests, and other international cultural and arts events.
Thanks to the Party’s and State’s open-door policies on culture, a number of cultural festivals of foreign origins are now organized in Vietnam. Such festivals as Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Christmas Day have now become popular in the country, although they are celebrated in the Vietnamese way.
The open-door cultural policy has also spread Vietnamese culture to the region and world. Since the complex of the ancient capital of Hue was recognized by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site in 1993, 20 more Vietnamese relics have been honoured. Of the 20 relics, only two are natural heritage and one is a comprehensive heritage sites, while 17 remainders belong to the category of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Additionally, the tug-of-war game practiced in Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines and the Republic of Korea was listed as the intangible heritage of the humankind.
The above demonstrates that arguments of the hostile forces that Vietnam “did not want to integrate into the international culture” are completely wrong.
The Party and State of Vietnam understand clearly that culture is not only the face of a nation, but also the source of national vitality and the power of the nation. As a result, Vietnam has paid close attention to developing the nation’s culture in order to build up the national power, promote the Vietnamese culture in the region and world in the context of regionalization and globalization, and continuously improve the cultural life of the Vietnamese people.
To conclude, cultural achievements of the Vietnamese people under the leadership of the Party over the past 30 years are evidently remarkable and worth to be proud of. In other words, the Doi Moi policy initiated and conducted by the Party in 1986 has brought about large achievements in culture, alongside socio-politics, economy, science, technology, security and defense.
These positive results of Doi Moi in culture serve as the premise for the nation to follow the Party and continue to carry out Doi Moi in the coming years.
Written by Thien VanTranslated by Thu NguyenRelated stories: Part 1: The evident truth about Vietnam’s economic growthPart 2: Reforming without decoloring
Part 3: People’s right to enjoy cultural products increasingly improved Related image(s)
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