Enhancing the Party's strategic leadership capacity in building and defending the Fatherland until the mid-21st century

ASSOC. PROF., DR. NGUYEN VIET THAO
Institute of Leadership and Public Policy, Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics

1. Introduction
Strategic leadership includes three contents: strategic analysis, strategic planning, and strategy implementation.
Strategic analysis involves analyzing and evaluating the internal and external environment, strategic goals, and space, as well as the gap between the present and the strategic objectives.
Strategic planning is determining the motto, roadmap, steps, plans, and resources to implement the strategy that has been set out.
Strategy implementation is making strategic decisions, proactively responding to strategic situations, and organizing the successful deployment of the strategy (1).
Thus, to enhance strategic leadership capacity, it is essential to effectively carry out these three components.
From now until the mid-21st century, Vietnam’s strategic goal is to achieve a wealthy people, to be a strong country, democratic, with justice, and civilization, with specific objectives: by 2025, to become a developing country with modern-oriented industry, surpassing the low-middle income level; by 2030, to be a developing country with modern industry and high-middle-income; and by 2045, to become a developed, high-income country.
2. Successfully leveraging all opportunities, potentials, and advantages
Vietnam and other countries around the world are undergoing
profound, unprecedented changes in all aspects of human life. To achieve further development, especially to advance to a new level of development, the country first needs the correct and appropriate leadership of the Party, which must be both persistent and creative, inheriting and renovating, while respecting objective laws and adapting to specific conditions so as to maintain the path of national independence and socialism, successfully implement strategic tasks, and specific goals determined for the milestones of 2025, 2030 and 2045. These key theoretical and practical issues are integrated into the category of strategic leadership by modern leadership science, which, for a single ruling and leading party like the Communist Party of Vietnam, must be creatively approached and effectively implemented in fundamental aspects.
The world’s major trend continues to be peace, cooperation, and
development, which is a valuable opportunity that Vietnam needs to take advantage of. Looking back at the history of the Vietnamese
revolution from 1930 to the present, it can be very clearly seen that for many decades, our Party and people had to build the country and socialism under the circumstances of war, both at the national level and on a global scale , placing Vietnam’s development path and goals in the unique context of war, which presented many disadvantages, obstacles, and difficulties.
Since the late 20th century, many new trends have emerged in the
world, with the major trend being peace, cooperation, and
development. Although there are still many severe and complex
conflicts, nations around the world and global forces prioritize
development goals to avoid the risk of, or even overcome, relative and absolute backwardness in socio-economic develop. Instead of the win lose (zero-sum) mindset, the dominant mindset is win-win, with cooperation being the primary method in international relations.
Bilateral and multilateral cooperation; Cooperation at sub-regional, regional, inter-regional, and global levels; Cooperation in economic - trade, cultural-social, scientific-educational, military-security and political diplomatic; Cooperation between governments and non-governmental organizations;
Cooperation at levels of most-favored-nation status, partnership, and strategic partnership, etc., are creating an increasingly comprehensive and extensive picture of cooperation that binds nations through various forms of interests, making them
interdependent entities in an increasingly organic and vital manner.
Global security remains complex and unpredictable, but peace is ensured by the factors of today’s world, which according to international strategic researchers can last for the next few decades.
The great and historically significant achievements of the renovation process have brought the country new fortune, stature, prestige, and strength, creating comprehensive potential for the country’s development path and goals. The country has attained great achievements of historical significance, developing strongly and comprehensively compared to the years before the renovation process. The position and power, national synergy, international prestige, and people’s trust are increasingly enhanced, creating important premises to build and protect the Fatherland.
The GDP scale in 2023 reached USD 430 billion; GDP per capita reached USD 4,285; Total import-export turnover reached USD 683 billion, trade surplus was nearly USD 28 billion (the highest ever until 2023), contributing to increasing national foreign currency reserves. Many reputable international organizations highly
appreciate the results and prospects of the Vietnamese economy.

Fitch Ratings upgraded the long-term national credit rating to BB+ (from BB), with a “Stable” outlook (in the Asia-Pacific region, only 02 out of 62 countries were upgraded). Vietnam’s national brand value reached USD 431 billion, increasing 1 place to 32nd out of 100 strong national brands and having the fastest value growth rate in the world during the 2020–2022 period.

From a country under siege and embargo, Vietnam now has diplomatic relations with 193 countries, including 7 comprehensive strategic partners, 11 strategic partners, and 12 comprehensive partners; has economic and trade relations with more than 230 economic entities around the world, attracting over USD 450 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) and over USD 150 billion in official development assistance (ODA).

Vietnam’s geopolitical and geo-economic position lies on the mainstream of the most dynamically developing region in the world today, the Asia-Pacific, creating significant advantages for Vietnam on its development path. The Asia-Pacific is a region bestowed with huge oil and gas reserves; is one of three global economic centers (40% of population, 60% of GDP, 50% of trade) and the most dynamic development region, home to the world’s 3 largest economies — the US, China, and Japan — with 9 members of the G20 group and many emerging and dynamic economies such as China, India, newly-industrialized countries, successfully reformed and renovated countries, and so on.

Entering the 21st century, the economies of East Asian countries, the pillars of the Asia-Pacific region, have made great strides: accounting for 30% of the world’s total exports, 2/3 of the total foreign reserves of the world’s exchange rate, 36% of the global economic share, surpassing Europe and North America, with regional multilateral cooperation mechanisms constantly improving, innovating, leading the world in economic-commerce freedom. The current GDP scale of East Asian countries calculated by purchasing power parity (PPP) is approximately USD 35,000 billion, equivalent to 40% of the world GDP. It is forecasted that by 2050, the economic share of the three regions—East Asia, North America, and the EU—will be 42%, 15%, and 10%, respectively.

Looking back at history, there was a time when the world’s center of development existed in Asia; then it shifted to Europe - Atlantic, and in contemporary times it is returning to Asia - Pacific. Since 1945, there have been successive miracles of development—Japan after World War II, the Asian Tigers (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) in the 1990s, and China becoming a major power in the early 21st century. The major flow of world history is creating trends and valuable opportunities for countries in the region, including Vietnam, to enjoy a wave of strong and sustainable growth and development.

3. Proactively facing threats, risks, and challenges in the mid-21st century
Vietnam is located on the battlefield in the strategic competition among major countries in the Asia-Pacific region, a situation fraught with risks of conflict and war. Over the past 500 years, the world has undergone a competition for hegemony between emerging powers and existing superpowers 16 times; only 4 of these instances occurred in relatively peaceful contexts, while the remaining 12 resulted in major wars. This reality has caused historians to see war as a destiny of humanity every time a new global power appears, with this time being between the superpower of America and the largest rising power, China(2).

With the tremendous and comprehensive achievements of its reform and opening up policy that began in 1978, China has risen powerfully, becoming a unique major power entering a new era. It is now the world’s second-largest economy, the “global manufacturing hub”, the leading trade power, a scientific and technological powerhouse, and possesses one of the world’s top militaries. China proactively leads international integration on a truly large scale. It is both an indispensable partner and a challenging rival for the U.S. superpower. However, above all, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg pointed out in June 2020, China poses too great a threat [to US hegemony] for the U.S. to handle alone(3).

From the beginning of 2018, successive US administrations have openly launched strategic competition, trade wars, serious sanctions, and even military threats, etc., against China. The two countries have entered into an uncompromising battle to compete for the top position of world power. The consequences of the US-China strategic competition on the development path and goals of the world, especially countries located in the Asia-Pacific battlefield, including Vietnam, are highly complex. Domestically, four existing risks have intensified, together with ecological environmental risks, which are becoming huge risks and challenges for the country.

Firstly, the country may fall into the middle-income trap if the policy system does not create enough motivation for the country to develop rapidly and sustainably. Therefore, there is a need for a policy system that simultaneously promotes rapid development and sustainable development. The challenge lies in the capacity and skill to combine these two different, even opposing, policy systems into a unified development process.

Secondly, the global value chain has been seriously disrupted due to crises, epidemics, etc., stagnating Vietnam’s production and business activities. According to statistics from international organizations, since 1970 there have been dozens of economic crises and many health crises caused by global pandemics, negatively affecting all economies and countries in the world, especially countries with large economic openness like Vietnam today.

Thirdly, climate change, global warming, and rising sea levels, in the worst-case scenario, will put Vietnam in unpredictable turmoil that could destroy living space, land, and the livelihoods of tens of millions of people in the Mekong Delta and coastal localities. Unrest and even social disorder could occur in such situations.

4. Ensure correct and timely leadership vision in a changing world
The leadership capacity to implement Vietnam’s development path and strategic goals until the mid-21st century is, first of all, the capacity to build the following urgent visions:

The vision of the world’s sustainable development trend. Since the end of the twentieth century, the international community has become increasingly aware of the connotations of development and there have been more and more voices demanding the addition and completion of a suitable and inclusive development model. In particular, after the 2008 crisis, the international community agreed to completely shift to a sustainable development model. In 2015, the United Nations announced 17 sustainable development goals (SDG), concretized into 169 very vivid targets for the governments of the 193 member countries to implement and finalize by 2030(4). This is an inclusive and comprehensive development model; today’s development must be the premise for tomorrow’s development. It emphasizes that economic growth should not come at the expense of culture, social progress, or the ecological environment. No individual, social class, community, or nation should be excluded from the development process, etc.

The vision of the turning point in the world’s movement created by Industrial Revolution 4.0. Development is a historical-natural process from a lower level to a higher level, ultimately determined by objective material factors, including human resources, natural resources, manufacturing materials, and so on.

In this historical-natural process, developmental leaps and stages are associated with historical inventions, the birth of major civilizations, and industrial revolutions. Industrial Revolution 4.0 began in the early 21st century, giving birth to many new technological platforms (internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D technology production, genetic modification, and biotechnology, etc.), forcing all areas of social life to undergo a digital transformation, connecting physical reality with virtual reality, the natural with the artificial, living and working in an environment with almost no distance in space and time, etc.

All of Vietnam’s future goals and development paths must be placed within the framework of this new era — an era of digital transformation, network structures, artificial intelligence, science becoming direct productive forces and so on.

The vision of the competition for opportunities and development conditions currently taking place in the world today. The 13th National Party Congress pointed out: “Economic competition, trade wars, competition for markets, resources, technology, high-quality human resources, and attracting foreign investment among countries are increasingly fierce, strongly affecting the global production and distribution chain”(5).

The demand for development in countries around the world is enormous, but the ability to meet these needs through available resources is very limited, and many resources have already been depleted. In both the current and the long-term contexts, countries, especially powerful ones, will compete uncompromisingly with one another for strategic resources such as fuel, food, fresh water, iron and steel, minerals, trained human resources, components, high-tech equipment, currency, information, consumer markets with large purchasing power, and so on.

In this competition, the basic logic is still zero-sum: if one force gains opportunities and development conditions, other forces will inevitably face corresponding losses, much like the life-and-death logic between a lion and a gazelle in an environment where a win-win scenario is impossible(6).

5. Build, supplement, and perfect the right and appropriate strategic thinking
To lead the successful implementation of Vietnam’s development path and strategic goals by the mid-21st century, it is necessary to have correct strategic thinking, in accordance with objective rules, specific conditions, and with the interests and aspirations of the people. In the current context, the following requirements should be emphasized:

Firstly, master and implement the basic elements of strategic thinking: consistent strategic goals; clear strategic guidelines; specific strategic roadmaps; adequate strategic resources; and ready-to-use strategic contingency plans. Among these 5 elements, for Vietnam today, it is necessary to fully and promptly prepare strategic resources to ensure the successful realization of goals, such as having an industry oriented toward modernization, surpassing the low-middle-income level by 2025; having a modern industry, and achieving an upper-middle-income status by 2030; and becoming a developed, high-income country by 2045.

Input resources for production shall be a top priority. Currently, Vietnam imports goods, mainly raw materials, equipment, and components for production, worth about USD 350 billion each year. In many fields, 70–80% of inputs must be imported, and in some fields, this figure exceeds 90%. This situation has persisted for many years as an inevitable consequence of the lack of foundational and supporting industries. This has revealed one of the weak points in strategic thinking that needs to be promptly overcome.

Infrastructure resources in our country still do not meet development needs. Although there have been many advances, the infrastructure system still has many limitations, weaknesses, outdated elements, lack of synchronization, and has poor connectivity, which currently serves as a bottleneck in the development process. The information infrastructure, digitalization, logistics, etc., also have not met current and future development needs.

Scientific and technological resources are inadequate and weak in many fundamental areas. The level of national science and technology autonomy is still low; nearly 65% of technology being used in Vietnamese enterprises comes from developing countries, of which more than 30% comes from China(7). It is impossible to maintain independence, autonomy, and national sovereignty in this day and age without basic autonomy in science and technology.

Human resources are Vietnam’s final weakness on the path of development toward the goals of the mid-21st century. Even though the scale is quite large: approximately 56 million workers out of a total population of nearly 100 million people (by 2022), the quality of human resources is not high: only about 15% have received formal training; there is a huge gap between urban areas and rural and mountainous areas; there are over 1 million unemployed people, etc. According to the 2020 Report of the Asian Productivity Organization (APO), Vietnam’s labour productivity is 60 years behind that of Japan, 40 years behind that of Malaysia, and 10 years behind that of Thailand(8).

Secondly, develop breakthrough thinking and identify priorities in the socio-economic development strategy. Breakthrough thinking, also called extraordinary breakthrough thinking (EBT) in some places, is the combination of rational thinking, using scientific intelligence, with intuitive thinking, using emotional intelligence, to recognize and solve the vast and novel problems of today’s world. This thinking emphasizes the uniqueness of solutions for each problem and the systematic connection between solutions, with a strong focus on outlining one solution after another.

For Vietnam, a country with a unitary political system, with a single leading and ruling Party, breakthrough thinking provides a necessary additional value for the principle of unity in guidelines, policies, direction, leadership, management, and administration. Breakthrough thinking is very consistent with the dialectical materialist methodology, which centers on “specific analysis of a specific case”; and also has similarities with Ho Chi Minh’s view that “for every strategy, there must be ten solutions”.

In the context of a developing country with a low middle-income economy striving to achieve higher levels of development in the next 2–3 decades, Vietnam needs to prioritize industrialization and modernization. This is a comprehensive and far-reaching economic, technical-technological, and socio-economic process aimed at transforming Vietnamese production and society from an outdated agricultural level to an industrial level with increasingly advanced and modern technological foundations.

Experts around the world have summarized 4 levels of industrialization from low to high: the lowest is the assembly level; the next is the level of production with proprietary techniques; the higher level is the production with proprietary design; the highest level is production with proprietary brands(9). In many aspects, Vietnam is now at a very low level.

In today’s world, the industrialization process of each country cannot be carried out in isolation, but must be integrated into the global production and business chain. However, to advance to an increasingly high level of industrialization, each country must have a number of foundational industrial production industries, without which other industries cannot be deployed. The industries of metallurgy, mechanics, manufacturing, energy, chemicals, etc., are the foundations that enable other industries to be built and developed.

In fact, many countries have not paid strategic attention to these industrial sectors. The direct consequence is that the national industrial production basically remains at the assembly level, and supporting industries cannot develop, leaving the national industry increasingly inferior to industrial establishments belonging to foreign investors.

For Vietnam, participating in the global value chain is a requirement that has become extremely urgent because our country’s economy has been deeply integrated with the world economy: the total import-export turnover has been 160–200% of GDP in recent years. Therefore, the process of industrialization and modernization in our country must be a process of restructuring the economy based on competitive advantages; ensuring national economic autonomy through technological renovation and improving labor productivity as well as production and business efficiency.

6. Conclusion
After nearly 40 years of renovation, Vietnam has become a prime example of successfully emerging from underdevelopment in a short period; a dynamic market and a stable country with comprehensive and extensive international integration. On a large scale, this is the success of renovative thinking that respects objective laws and closely follows the specific conditions of the nation as well as major world trends. It is also the success of the wise and timely strategic leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam. From now until the mid-21st century, the country is in dire need of renovative thinking and correct, creative strategic leadership at even higher levels: the level of a nation striving to reach the status of a developed country, and the level of the world in the era of Industrial Revolution 4.0.

Received: April 12, 2024; Revised: April 19, 2024; Approved for publication: April 22, 2024.

Endnotes:
(1) Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff: Strategic Thinking – Practical Game Theory (translated by Nguyen Tien Dzung and Ngoc Lien Le), Dan Tri Publishing House, Hanoi, 2023.
(2) Graham Allison: Destined for War (translated by The Phuong), National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2021.
(3) NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg sounds warning on China’s rise, https://www.dw.com.
(4) Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN: The 17 Goals, https://sdgs.un.org/goals.
(5) CPV: Documents of the 13th National Party Congress, vol. I, National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2021, p.106.
(6) Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum: Vision to Change the Nation – Miracle in Dubai, World Publishing House, Hanoi, 2019.
(7) “90% of patents in Vietnam are granted to foreigners”, https://nld.com.vn.
(8) https://mof.gov.vn/webcenter/portal/vclvcstc...
(9) Understand ODM, OEM, OBM, https://www.starlity.com/post/odm-obm-oem.