Vol 4, No 4 (2020)

The article reveals the specificity of Vietnam’s approach to cooperation with China from the perspective of Digital Silk Road (DSR) as one of the directions of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The actuality of the topic stems from the need to analyze both the SRV response accounting for increased attention to its cyber security and digital competitiveness and interim results of the DSR implementation in Southeast Asia amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Although some elements of the topic, mostly, the DSR specificity and its implications for Southeast Asia, are covered by K. Hernandez, S. Hong, A. Schwartz, C. Diamond, A. Dutta, R. Green, P. Triolo, B. Ly, B. Harding as well as Khanh Lan, Trần Quang Phú, Pedanov V., Mitrokhin M. and other researchers, their works lack a specific Vietnamese focus. From the theoretical and methodological perspective, the research is premised on the synergy of system-historical approach and political neorealism. It is founded on various informational and statistical sources, including those in Vietnamese. This allowed analyzing both long-term trends of global and regional development, and the specificity of Vietnamese policy towards the problem discussed. The academic significance of the paper stems from its analytical focus, as the authors, apart from analyzing the DSR as a BRI direction and assessing its aftereffects for Southeast Asia from the potential risk perspective, specify Vietnam’s approach to cooperation with China on the DSR. In the authors’ opinion, the Digital Silk Road can significantly contribute to the BRI from the perspective of increasing the efficiency of China’s industrial and technological policy and its external economic policy support. The implementation of the DSR in Southeast Asia narrows the possibilities of those countries to pursue an independent policy in the ICT-sphere. Realizing this, the SRV leadership follows a selective course regarding joint Vietnam-China efforts towards the DSR. Simultaneously, Hanoi strives to increase its digital competitiveness. This gives reasons for pessimistic assessments of prospects for realizing the DSR by joint Vietnam-China efforts. The DSR is unlikely to markedly intensify cooperation between Vietnam and China.

COVID-19 pandemic has been making significant changes to every aspect of human life. As a country of high trade openness, having extensive trade relations with many economic partners, Vietnam’s export and import are severely affected by the wave of the epidemic. Therefore, this paper focuses on analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 outbreak on Vietnam’s foreign trade, apart from that proposing some prospects and solutions for this branch to overcome this global pandemic.

Vietnam’s feudal dynasties always combined firm military measures with civilian, flexible diplomacy notably the “diplomatic tribute” and “diplomatic marriage”; where the border protection was the excuse for the Southward territory expansion; using the strategy “people enlarge land ownership first, the state governs later” to confirm the sovereignty. The task of “Southward march” and “Eastward march” not only provided new resources for Vietnam’s growth but also set up a geographical “trap” in Vietnam’s state administration career, especially in solving and balancing the power among the regions as well as in protectingthe national sovereignty and border security on both land and sea. However, the lack of strategic vision in developing national synergy limited Vietnam’s strategic space, pushing the country backward and becoming a French colony.

The article discusses the first meetings of Vietnam with the West through the Catholic literature, which partly shows the multi-dimensional nature of the relation of Vietnam with the West in the early 17th century, i.e., in the pre-colonial period of Vietnam. The activities of the first European people arriving to Vietnam in the early 17th century were related with Christian missionaries. Due to the adaptation of Christian literature and the collaboration of the European Jesuits with the Vietnamese writers in creating Catholic Nôm texts, the first steps of Vietnamese Catholic literature were made, leading to the big changes of Vietnamese literature in the succeeding centuries. Jeronimo Maiorica and some of his Nôm hagiographic works as expression of acculturation of Vietnam in the seventeenth century will be examined from a Western-Vietnamese comparative viewpoint.

The review describes reports on Vietnam at international conferences “Languages and Cultures of Asian and African Countries”, “70th Anniversary of Vietnam-Russia Relationship in the Science and Education”, Maklay Readings 2020 and “The Interaction of Christianity with the Traditional Spiritual Values of the South and East Asian countries. History and Modernity».

The article reviews the book “Half a Century with Vietnam. Notes by a Diplomat”, in whichA.S. Zaitsev, one of the first Soviet scholars on Vietnam, shares his memories of working in Vietnam in the60s-70s, of travelling to this country in the 80s, of meetings with famous Vietnamese and Soviet eminent figures. Readers will learn a lot of interesting and useful information not only about Vietnam, but also about the most important events in the world history in the second half of the 20th century, of which Vietnam became a part.service.