Vol 5, No 3 (2021)

The 13th Party Congress represents 30 years since Vietnam embarked on a multidirectional foreign policy. This foreign policy is centered upon diversification, multilateralization, and continued integration into the international economy. To achieve these aims, Vietnam utilizes strategic and comprehensive partnerships, free-trade agreements, and multilateral forums such as ASEAN and the UN. This foreign policy has helped Vietnam achieve rapid economic development, gain a high amount of security without compromising its autonomy or independence, and seen it play a more proactive role on the international stage. The 13th Party Congress saw a continuation of this foreign policy with an added emphasis on comprehensive diplomacy. This study explores the intervening years to the congress, arguing that multidirectionalism has helped Vietnam manage the turbulence of increased big-power tensions, anti-globalization, anti-multilateralization, and China’s belligerence in the South China Sea. Furthermore, a proactive, multi-pronged diplomatic initiative in the years after the 12th Party Congress turned many of these challenges into opportunities, allowing Vietnam to further its national interests. As a result, these initiatives have now blossomed into a comprehensive diplomatic strategy at the 13th Party Congress, adding another mechanism to Vietnam’s foreign policy arsenal.

The purpose of the study is to empirically examine the interaction between innovation, energy consumption, trade openness, urbanization, economic growth and the emission of carbon dioxide in Vietnam during 1986-2020. The article contributes to the assessment of impact of technological innovation on carbon emission in Vietnam that has not yet been examined. Firstly, the article shows the negative interrelation between technological innovation and carbon emission in Vietnam. Secondly, this research evidences the existence of the pollution haven hypothesis having shown that trade openness has led to the environmental deterioration in Vietnam. Thirdly, the author revisits the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and provides evidence that economic growth in Vietnam starts to enhance the environmental quality. Fourthly, energy consumption increases the environmental deterioration while urbanization seems not to be blamed. Besides increasing government investment in innovation, policy makers should consider the country’s level of trade openness and energy consumption instead of urbanization and economic growth when formulating policies to reduce environmental deterioration in Vietnam.

In the current literature on the Vietnam Nationalist Party (Việt Nam Quốc dân đảng), besides the literary works and memoirs, a number of articles and monographs have dealt with the establishment, organizational structure, operational sites and provided some preliminary assessments of this political party. However, there are still some issues that need further research. By studying documents about the guiding principles, action plans and statute of the party, referencing and making comparisons with the notes and reports of the Indochinese General Security Department, and summerizing and analyzing the historical information provided by domestic and foreign works on revolutionary leader Nguyễn Thái Học and the Nationalist Party, the article seeks to clarify the two following issues: the Vietnam Nationalist Party’s political views on the ‘national liberation’ question, and the role of the Vietnam Nationalist Party in Vietnam’s nationalist movement prior to the rise of the Communist Party.

The article discusses “The General Retires” (1987), a story by Nguyen Huy Thiep, one of the most well-known Vietnamese writers of the last quarter of the 20th century. His prose marked the break with the literature of socialist realism, dominated in the DRV from the mid-20th century. The center of the story is a hero of socialist realism characterized with a set of certain traits which let him serve a role model to educate a builder of a new socialist society.The theme relevance is determined with the insufficient study of the Vietnamese type of socialist realism, as well as its fading in the Post-Renovation period.The analysis of the story has shown that among its characters only the General possesses some traits of the socialist realism hero. He is a fighter for high ideals. The rest are common people with their merits and defects. Thus, the writer fixes the change of the ages: the heroic age is fading being changed with the ordinary age. The socialist realism hero is transformed into an individual with his individual interests. The new hero has been taken out of the context of struggle for a better future, obligatory for the literature of socialist realism. So, the General's death is symbolic; it may be interpreted as the farewell with socialist realism and with the hero typical of it.

The survey is a brief summary of the work of the 12th International Convention of Asia Scholars - ICAS-12, the greatest world forum of scholars-orientalists of 2021, held from August 24 to 28 in online format in Kyoto (Japan). The survey focuses on the 12th international conference with the theme “Engaging with Vietnam and ASEAN: Mobilities and Identities in an Age of Global Transformation” held at the “Engaging with Vietnam: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue - EWV” platform, the independent part of the Convention. The survey covers the topics of the papers of the EWV participants and other events in the frameworks of the sessions of the Convention.

This is a review of the collection of articles, published by the RAS Institute for Far Eastern Studies, after the transactions of the conference timed to the 75th anniversary of the August Revolution in Vietnam. The authors are Russian and Vietnamese researchers, specialists in various academic disciplines, attempt to make a comprehensive analysis of Vietnam’s history since the mid-20th century to the present. Significant attention is paid to changes taking place in the economy, social sphere and relationships with the world outside.The review analyses and compares positions of historians, political scientists and economists on both sides, who have addressed these relevant subjects.