Wednesday, April 26, 2017, 15:42 (GMT+7)
A new mask of “peaceful evolution”

Appealing to “Vietnam for ending its struggle against peaceful evolution”(!) represents anti-communist forces’ new mask, but it is deluding a number of people. We need to recognize this label to avoid being deceived.

New mask, unchanged aims

Shifting away from denying the existence of the “Peaceful evolution strategy”, regarding it as “a bugbear” that the Communist Party of Vietnam used to “threaten” the people, several individuals indifferent to the Party’s leadership have recently confirmed that “Vietnam no longer need to counter peaceful evolution”(!). Evidently, they have switched from denial to recognition of this strategy. However, in order to cheat public opinions and make people fall into neglect, they affirm that “this strategy has accomplished its designated mission due to the fact that Vietnam’s old enemies have become its comprehensive or strategic partners”(!).

This theoretical point of view has been spread far and wide on social network and Western media, especially after events, including the establishment of Vietnam – U.S. Comprehensive Partnership on the occasion of President Truong Tan Sang’s official visit to U.S. in July 2013; reciprocal official visits paid by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong and U.S. President Barack Obama in July 2015 and May 2016 respectively. In addition, the Resolution of the 4th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (12th Tenure) on Party building and rectification has also been exploited through covering up the relationship between “peaceful evolution” and “self-evolution,” “self-transformation,” to make allegations that “today, the Party no longer requires efforts to counter peaceful evolution, but focuses on combating “self-evolution,” “self-transformation” among officials and party members”(!).

It can be affirmed that, the aforementioned changes in attitudes to “peaceful evolution” constitutes a new trick, aimed at executing the “peaceful evolution” strategy more successfully in the new context of Vietnam. That expedient is extremely sophisticated and malicious since it would lead to vagueness and lack of vigilance among our officials, party members and people, particularly those unaware of the nature and ruse of this strategy. On that basis, they would be able to achieve their ultimate goal of abolishing socialism, mirroring a statement made by U.S. President Richard Nixon in the book titled “1999: Victory without War.” Therefore, while “implementing consistently the foreign policy line of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development; diversification and multilateralization of international relations; proactive and active engagement in international integration; being a friend, reliable partner and responsible member of international community,” we must stress the need of constant vigilance, patiently realize the principle of “both cooperation and struggle,” and be determined to defeat the hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution” strategy.

The ongoing fight

The struggle against “peaceful evolution” are still going on. First, the ultimate goals of the “peaceful evolution” strategy, which is to abrogate socialism completely, is still ahead. The formation and completion of the “peaceful evolution” strategy have shown that, from initial ideas (in late 1940s) to a complete strategy (in late 1980s), the “peaceful evolution” strategy used to be a fundamental element in the imperialists’ reactionary global strategy to abolish socialism in every field, regardless of being an ideology, trend and movement, or a bygone socio-economic complexion, political system, and so on. Hence, once socialism still exists, in any form, the “peaceful evolution” strategy will never terminate its missions as being preached. Accordingly, the fight against “peaceful evolution” launched by advanced forces in favour of peace and socialism will inevitably continue. And Vietnam is not an exception.

Second, this is a war with no clear-cut front line, but persists drastically in every aspect of social life. “Peaceful evolution” represents a succession of anti-communist forces’ politics, but by means of unarmed combat, reflecting the complexity and endurance of the struggle between proletarian class and reactionary bourgeoisie. Through “tacit” and “soft” attacks in every field of social life and under the cover of American style “freedom,” “democracy,” “human rights,” etc., “peaceful evolution” targets the establishment of opposite elements to the Communist Party and socialist values within socialist countries, promoting “self-evolution,” “self-transformation” in these countries. “Peaceful evolution” is implemented in the direction of combining internal sabotage with external assistance, internal and upper self-transformation with rioting and subversion when the time is ripe, in order to achieve the goal of abrogating socialist regime. Consequently, tricks employed in “peaceful evolution” are sophisticated, difficult to be identified and delineated precisely, and prolong many generations. It was former U.S. President Richard Nixon, who, in his book, affirmed that “in the long term, we can encourage “peaceful evolution” inside socialist nations, however, that mission cannot be accomplished in several decades but several generations.” To carry out that strategy in Vietnam, hostile forces and reactionaries hope to use “junior communists to topple senior ones.” Therefore, this is an endless struggle, once Vietnam is still consistent in the way advancing towards socialism.

Third, Vietnam is still a major target of the hostile forces and reactionaries’ “Peaceful evolution strategy.” Given its ongoing cause of building socialism and geostrategic position in Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific, Vietnam has been considered as a major target of the “Peaceful evolution strategy” by hostile forces. “Vietnamese communists won the war, but they would be defeated in peace. In the past, the communists used weapons to kick Americans out of Saigon. Today, Americans will use their dollars to kick the communists out of Saigon,” said Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In his remarks announcing the normalization of diplomatic relations with Vietnam on July 11, 2995, U.S. President Bill Clinton did not hide the intention of transforming political regime in Vietnam. “I believed normalization and increased contact between Americans and Vietnamese will advance the cause of freedom in Vietnam, just as it did in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union,” said President Clinton. While making a speech at the National Convention Centre, during his official visit to Vietnam, U.S. President Barack Obama did not forget to “suggest” that Vietnam implemented American standards on human rights such as “freedom of speech,” “freedom of demonstration,” etc. – issues being employed by hostile forces in the “Peaceful evolution strategy” to sabotage Vietnam.

It should be noted that building mutually beneficial and equal cooperative relationship with many nations (regardless of their political regimes) and international organizations has created favourable conditions for the development of Vietnam over the past few years. Nevertheless, given the duplicity of several Western administrations, there remain plots and activities that take advantage of cooperative relationships to carry out the “Peaceful evolution strategy” in Vietnam, notably support of several administrations for individuals and organizations hostile towards Vietnam. These organizations still capitalize on American standards on “democracy,” “human rights,” “freedom of speech,” “freedom of religion,” etc., to slander Vietnam about violation of democracy and human rights; use it as a driver to bolster the domestic forces politically and spiritually. Despite having established “comprehensive partnerships” or “strategic partnerships” with Vietnam, the political radicals in U.S. and European Union (EU); organizations such as U.S. Department of State, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), European Parliament, Human Rights Watch (HRW), etc., still hold hearings, workshops and press conferences, issue statements and resolutions that distort human rights in Vietnam. U.S. Department of State publishes the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The latest report was published in April 2016, which continued to twist human rights practices in Vietnam. Some U.S. congresspeople, including Alan Lowenthal, Loretta Sanchez, Tony Smith, etc., usually give their opinions, or create conditions for other people to slander human rights in Vietnam. They also urge U.S. Congress to adopt Vietnam human rights acts and call for Vietnam to be placed back on the “country of particular concern” (CPC) list. At a workshop held on the occasion of the Human Rights Day on December 8, 2016, by Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (a bipartisan caucus of the United States House of Representatives), Alan Lowenthal distorted the aim of passing the law on belief and religion of Vietnam’s National Assembly. He condemned this as “excessive suppression of religions,” “restriction of religious freedoms of millions of people,” and repeated the allegation that “Vietnamese administration is detaining hundreds of prisoners of conscience, and so on”(!). Every year, the France-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) entitles itself to assess press freedom in every country. In the 2016 World Freedom Index, released on April 20, 2016, RSF continued to misrepresent the situation in Vietnam by saying that: “bloggers and citizen journalists – sources of independent information in Vietnam – are subjected to severe suppression”(!). Early this year, the U.S.-based Freedom House also continued to rank Vietnam as “not free”(!) in its annual index of freedom around the globe.

Having the support of hostile forces abroad, several internal reactionaries, opportunists and degenerate elements also step up their subversive activities. They try their best to deny the scientific and revolutionary nature of Marxism and Leninism, citing the “introduction of Marxism and Leninism to Vietnam as a mistake”; separate and make Ho Chi Minh’s thought contradictory with Marxism and Leninism; and claim that “the way chosen by Uncle Ho is not socialism”(!). To abolish the Party’s leadership, they negate achievements recorded by Vietnam’s revolution under the Party’s leadership and call for removing Article 4 of the  2013 Constitution and applying the “multi-party political system.” They speed up distorting history to alter facts and create confusion between people who have contributed to the revolution and sinners, and between revolutionaries and reactionaries. They also take unfair advantage of sensitive issues, including sovereignty over the East Sea, environmental incident caused by Formosa Steel Corporation in 4 central provinces, and issues related to religious practices, ethnicity and democracy in several localities, to incite people to go on demonstrations, disturb the peace, undermine our Party and State’s foreign policy line and political stability in Vietnam, and create “pretexts” for instigating violent disturbances and seizing power when the time is ripe. As far as defence and security are concerned, they call for “depoliticizing” the VPA and police; requesting these forces to safeguard the nation and the people, not the Party(!).

Those realities show that hostile forces will not give up “peaceful evolution” in our country. Thus, the struggle will continue.

How to win the struggle?

Anti-peaceful evolution constitutes a struggle between classes and peoples in the new context, with a view to successfully implementing the goals of national independence and socialism. The aim of “peaceful evolution” is very malicious, but its success depends on us. “No one can destroy us, except for our mistakes,” said Vladimir Lenin. Thus, to win this battle, we need to build our country domestically strong. Accordingly, it is necessary to bring into play the strength of the whole nation, step up the renewal process in an inclusive and synchronous manner, and accomplish successfully the fundamental goals and directions set forth by the Party’s Platform for National Construction during the Period of Transition towards Socialism (amended and developed in 2011). While seeking to fulfill six key tasks identified in the Resolution of the 12th Party Congress, attention should be paid to execution of the following measures:

First, to promote education and raise the awareness of officials, party members and people from different walks of life about nature, goals and tricks of the “Peaceful evolution strategy”; about the close relationship between “peaceful evolution” and “self-evolution,” “self-transformation,” prompting everyone to take the initiative in improving their vigilance to avoid ambiguity and being tricked by the hostile forces’ subversive ruses.

Second, to strictly implement the Resolution of the 4th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (12th Tenure) on Party building and rectification; preventing and pushing back on degeneration of political ideology, ethics, and life styles and manifestations of “self-evolution,” “self-transformation” within the Party.” This is the decisive solution to neutralizing the impacts of “peaceful evolution” because the ultimate goal of this strategy is to foster “self-evolution,” “self-transformation” within the Party, aimed at using our own hands to abolish our political regime.

Third, to closely combine proactive prevention with proactive attack from their inception, from the source of the hostile forces and reactionaries’ “peaceful evolution” plots and tricks; hindering them from establishing leading actors and opposition organizations. Therefore, Party executive committees and authorities at all levels must concentrate on resolving the issues of social security, empowering people’s mastery, and timely addressing urgent issues related to people’s relationship with authorities, facilitating the building of “people’s heart and mind posture,” neutralizing all of the hostile forces’ plots and tricks.

There is a need to introduce synchronous measures to construct and defend our country; combine “construction” and “defence” in all fields, taking the building of pure and strong party organizations as the core and fundamental therapy to win the struggle against “peaceful evolution.”

Nguyen Ngoc Hoi

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