Distorting and denying the leadership of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) of national building and development is a malicious trick of hostile forces. Unmasking and countering that ruse is to contribute to protection of the Party and today’s cause of nation building and defence.

On identifying the CPV’s leadership as the factor that decides socialist-oriented development of the country, hostile forces regularly use subtle, malicious tricks to distort and deny the Party’s leadership. On the one hand, they openly appeal for removing Article 4 of the 2013 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, which stipulates the CPV’s leadership of the State and society. On the other hand, they skillfully cover their true objective when claiming that “The Communist Party of Viet Nam is credited for national liberation, but incapable of leading the country in globalisation” – in other words, “the Communist Party of Viet Nam excels at leading the country in wartime, but does not have leadership skills in economic development in peacetime”. Hence, “the historical role of the Communist Party of Viet Nam has ended, and it should hand over the leadership of national construction and development to other political forces. In essence, they are calling for transferring the leadership to those opposing the socialist path in our country. These allegations are repeated all the time, in various forms, on many occasions, especially when our Party convenes a national congress, or the country is in difficult socio-economic circumstances, and during important events of the Party and the country. They hope that those allegations will contribute to enhancement of “deterioration in political ideology, morality, and lifestyle”, “self-evolution”, and “self-transformation” among cadres, party members, and people, resulting in the disintegration of our Party.

The true objective of the aforementioned allegations is to remove the CPV’s leadership of the State and society and call for “pluralism and a multi-party system” in Viet Nam. In a broader sense, they aim to eradicate all revolutionary achievements and our people’s path to socialism, steering today’s cause of national building and development to capitalism. According to them, if the CPV no longer assumes the leadership of the State and society, inevitably, the country will not pursue the path to socialism. This is what hostile forces and opposition groups did successfully in the Soviet Union in the last decade of the previous century, and they hope the same in Viet Nam today. However, outcomes of national building and development in Viet Nam under the Party’s leadership, particularly during 35 years of reform, are vivid realities to reject every distortion and denial of the CPV’s leadership of national construction and development.

Ten years after the liberation war, our country faced a serious socio-economic crisis. This was partly due to our country’s low starting point of development, the severe aftermath of war, and American and Western economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the main cause is that we made subjective mistakes and violated objective rules in governing socialist transformation, industrialisation, and economic management mechanism. Given the spirit of “facing the truth, evaluating the truth correctly, and telling the truth”, at the 6^th Party Congress, our Party seriously criticised itself, admitted shortcomings, proactively worked out and led a major renovation (Doi Moi) in the direction of wiping out the bureaucratically centralised mechanism of economic management and moving to a state managed, multi-sector, market economy, with socialist orientations; adopting a foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development, multilateralisation, diversification of relations, proactive and active international integration.

Thanks to sound reform guideline, in the past 35 years, our country has recorded great achievements of historic significance and developed more vigorously and comprehensively than the pre-reform period. Isolation and sanctions were lifted. Viet Nam successfully overcame socio-economic crisis, poverty, and underdevelopment to become a middle-income developing country and is stepping up industrialisation, modernisation, and international integration. The economy has witnessed an average annual growth rate of around 7% over the past 35 years. Viet Nam’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased from around 6.3 billion U.S. dollars in 1989 to 342.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 and is in the world’s top 40 largest economies and the fourth largest economy in ASEAN. Export turnover was only 2.4 billion U.S. dollars in 1990, but amounted to over 280 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, growing 120 times within 30 years. The country’s socio-economic infrastructure experiences a fairly rapid development, with many big modern projects, bringing about drastic changes. The economic structure is shifted towards industrialisation and modernisation, with industry and service accounting for around 85% of GDP currently. The socialist-oriented market economy is step by step established and developed. There are 79 countries recognising Viet Nam as a market economy. In 2021, despite negative influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to efforts of the whole political system under the Party’s leadership, businesses, and people from various walks of life, after one month’s implementation of the Resolution No. 128/NQ-CP of the Government on “Safe adaptation, flexible, and effective control of the COVID-19 pandemic”, the economy has witnessed signs of strong recovery. The index of industrial production (IIP) in November 2021 grew by 5.6% compared to the same month in 2020. The IIP for the first eleven months of 2021 increased by 3.6% compared to the same period the year before. New businesses registered in November 2021 grew by 44.6% in terms of number, 38% in terms of registered capital, and 30.2% in the number of workers employed as compared to the previous month. Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows continue to revive. As of November 20^th 2021, the total value of newly registered capital, adjusted capital, and capital contribution or share purchased by foreign investors reached 26.46 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 0.1% over the same period in 2020. This proves that foreign investors maintain confidence in Viet Nam’s investment environment. The total value of import and export turnover of goods in the first 11 months of 2021 still achieved encouraging results and reached 599.12 billion U.S. dollars, up by 22.3% over the same period in 2020, in which the total value of export turnover was 299.67 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 17.5% compared with the same period the year before.

External relations are increasingly developed in both depth and width and gradually shift away from “active participation” towards “proactive contribution to establishment of universal rules and norms”. Our country has established diplomatic relations with most of the United Nations member states, strategic partnerships with 16 countries, and comprehensive partnerships with 11 countries, including five permanent members of the UN Security Council; had economic, commercial, and investment ties with 230 countries and territories so far. Viet Nam is a member of many major international economic institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and so forth. Our country has served as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) twice (in 2008-2009 and 2020-2021 tenures) and assumed many important responsibilities in other international organisations. A series of official visits made by leaders of our Party and State to the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, China, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, some countries in Western Europe, the Vatican, etc., and visits of these states’ leaders to our country in recent years have affirmed increasingly high position and prestige of Viet Nam and the CPV in the international arena. Viet Nam has sent officers and soldiers to UN peacekeeping operations since 2014, which proves its responsibility for confidence building, maintenance of peace and stability in the region and the world.

People’s standard of living has been greatly improved owing to economic development. Per capital income increased from around 250 U.S. dollars in the early years of Doi Moi to 3,512 U.S. dollars by 2020, which was ranked sixth in ASEAN. Socialist democracy is brought into play and increasingly promoted. Social progress and equality achieve many impressive outcomes. Viet Nam is one of a few countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Social security is always ensured even in the event of severe impacts by the global economic recession or the COVID-19 pandemic.  The rate of poor households has reduced from 58% in 1993 to 5.8% in 2016 according to the Government’s poverty line and to below 3% in 2020 according to the multidimensional poverty line. Viet Nam’s human development index (HDI) rose by approximately 46% in the 1990-2019 period, which placed Viet Nam among the group of countries with the highest HDI growth rates in the world. In 2019, Viet Nam’s HDI reached 0.704 and became one of the few countries with high HDI growth rates in the world, especially in comparison with countries of the same level of development.

Sociopolitical is stable. National defence and security are strengthened. Independence and national sovereignty are firmly preserved. Building of the Party and political system, especially prevention and response to corruption, wastefulness, and wrongdoing are enhanced and carried out sternly, synchronously, comprehensively, and into depth, which bring about positive, obvious changes. Therefore, people’s confidence in the Party, State, and socialist regime is further bolstered and enhanced. The turnout of 99.6% for the elections of deputies to the 15^th National Assembly and all-level People’s Councils for 2021-2026 during the outbreak of COVID-19 is a clear proof for people’s confidence in the political institution led by the CPV.

The above-mentioned great achievements of historic significance are all linked to the CPV’s leadership. It is convincing evidence for the Party’s leadership capabilities in the past as well as in the cause of building and safeguarding the Fatherland in the context of international integration. It is also an objective reality which serves to reject every distortion and denial of the Party’s leadership of national construction and development. As has been said by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong: “There are no other political forces in Viet Nam except for the Communist Party of Viet Nam, which has sufficient steadfastness, intelligence, prestige, and capabilities to lead the country to overcome all difficulties and challenges and to lead our people’s revolution from one victory to another”. In a joint study conducted with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), researchers at Harvard Institute for International Development state that “In Viet Nam, it is hard to imagine a social basis for the birth of a party capable of competing with the Communist Party of Viet Nam in the future”. Over the past 90 years, most of people acknowledge that the Party’s sole leadership is the deciding factor in the success of Vietnamese revolution; fondly call the Communist Party of Viet Nam “our Party” and regard the Party as a faithful representative of their interests because of the fact that the Communist Party of Viet Nam not only represents the working class’s interests, but also represents the working people and the entire nation’s interests.

Resolution of the 13^th Party Congress “stresses the importance of and further promotes Party building in terms of politics, ideology, morality, organisation, and cadre”, considering this a key task to further preserve and strengthen the Party’s leadership of national building and defence in the new era. Strict, drastic, synchronous implementation of Party building in connection with stepping up studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s thought, morality, and style, is the most effective way to reject plots and acts of distortion and denial of the Party’s leadership of national building and development in a context of international integration.

NGUYEN NGOC HOI