Vietnam: Laying the Path for the 10 th National Congress

Summary

The past 12 months have been a very successful year for Vietnam's foreign relations. The single most important event in Vietnam's foreign relations calendar in 2005 was Prime Minister Phan Van Khai's six-day visit to the United States from 19 to 25 June. The visit, the first by a national leader of Vietnam to the United States in 30 years, coincided with the tenth anniversary of the normalization of relations between the two countries. The event is also important as it came exactly 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War when the two sides faced off in the conflict. On his return to Vietnam, the visit was celebrated as a huge success, and the event was described by Prime Minister Khai as an event that would hardly have been possible only ten years earlier.

The success of Khai's visit is significant for Vietnam in at least three ways: first, it points to the further improvements in the Vietnam-US relations; second, it reveals the unconventional Vietnamese stance on several important issues affecting the nation; and third, the government hopes to capitalize on the successes in its foreign relations to strengthen its position in domestic politics, especially in the run-up to the 10 th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in 2006.

In 2005, however, domestic issues continued to dominate much of Vietnam's politics. The ruling party, the CPV, faced challenges in pursuing its reform programme without compromising its position as the paramount party in the country. The threats posed by endemic corruption and the government's efforts to overcome it, questions relating to religious freedom and the government's handling of political dissidents continued to dominate much of Vietnam's domestic politics as well as getting the attention of its leaders. The pace of equitization of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), by turning them into joint stock companies, and Vietnam's pending entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) were two of the main economic concerns.