Located in the heart of Northern Vietnam and the economic triangle of Hanoi – Hai Phong – Quang Ninh, Hai Duong holds an important position, particularly in economic, defence and security fields. Perceiving that and grasping the Party’s military and defence guidelines, over the past years, the Provincial Military Command (PMC) has proactively cooperated with committees, sectors, organizations, and localities in advising the Province’s Party Committee and People’s Committee on leading and directing the implementation of various measures to build defensive zone and gained positive results, thereby contributing to maintaining political security and fostering socio-economic and cultural development in the area.
To mobilize the entire political system and people in this important task, the PMC has actively studied and grasped the particularities of the area and the province to counsel the Province’s Party Committee and People’s Committee to issue resolutions, action plans and projects on building defensive zone in light of the 10th Politburo’s Resolution 28-NQ/TW, the 11th Party Central Committee’s Secretariat’s Directive 07-CT/TW, and the Government’s Decrees 152/2007/NĐ-CP and 02/2016/NĐ-CP. Focuses have been placed on combining socio-economic development with defence-security consolidation; building the all-people national defence posture associated with the people’s security posture; building the potential and posture of the defensive zone with the “people’s hearts and minds” posture as the core; and making local armed forces strong. Over the past time, the province has developed and actively implemented resolutions and plans/programs on building the defensive zone, such as the Action Programs 38-CTr/TU and 42-CTr/TU by Hai Duong Provincial Party Committee on implementing the Politburo’s Resolution 28-NQ/TW; the Resolution 04-NQ/TU by the Provincial Party Executive Committee on leading the building of the provincial defensive zone in 2016-2020 period, and the Project “Building Hai Duong province’s defensive zone in 2016-2020 period”. As a result, the task of defensive zone building has been led and directed on a close, comprehensive, concentrated, uniform basis; the provincial defensive zone’s potential and posture have been strengthened; regulations on the building and operation of the defensive zone have been supplemented and completed in accordance with reality. Organizations of the defensive zone, such as the Steering Board for People’s Air Defence, the Military Service Council, the Council for Defence and Security Education, the Supply Council, and especially the Steering Board for defensive zone building at all levels, have been consolidated, thereby making an important change in performing this mission.
Fully aware that the political-spiritual potential, whose core is the “people’s hearts and minds posture”, serves as the basis for building other types of defensive zone potential, the PMC has closely worked with committees, sectors and organizations to advise the province on enhancing the work of propagation and political, ideological education, and improving the quality of defence-security education for objects, particularly key officials at all levels and students. Over the past years, the province has successfully implemented the Law on Defence and Security Education and set the work of defence and security education in order with improvements in contents, forms and methods of education. In this regard, attention has been paid to raising awareness of the importance of the building of defensive zone in the new situation, partners and opponents, and “peaceful evolution” strategy by hostile forces in the area; to achieving a sense of consensus between awareness and action among sectors, forces and people towards the military and defence tasks as well as the building and operation of the defensive zone. Alongside the building of political and spiritual potential, the province has combined socio-economic development with defence-security consolidation in the area, and considered this as a central task of the provincial armed forces. Fully understanding that “every socio-economic development will help strengthen national defence and security”, the PMC has advised the Provincial Party Committee and People’s Committee on closely combining socio-economic development with defence-security consolidation via master and periodic plans for development. Advocating the line on “not developing the economy at any rate”, the PMC has actively cooperated with sectors and localities in reviewing, assessing, closely supervising the zoning and planning of economic zones, industrial zones, export processing zones, and new urban zones. At the same time, it has advised the province on completing the Master Plan on defence disposition in combination with socio-economic development until 2020. Over the past years, despite robust, rapid socio-economic development and investment in the province’s area, most of the projects to build industrial zones and new urban zones have been planned and closely managed to avoid affecting its defence and security.
It should be noted that the PMC has given advice to the province on building the all-people national defence posture in association with the people’s security posture, particularly completing the Plan for the defensive zone’s military posture, converting the land use, and actively mobilizing resources to build defensive works as planned. Over the past years, Hai Duong province has spent nearly one hundred billion VND on building key combat and defensive works in the key defensive area as well as combat bases, initially forming an inter-connected posture among levels, which has been highly appreciated by the Military Region 3. Promoting the recorded results, the PMC has counselled the province to develop and approve the Project on “Building the logistics base and the rear base”. It is striving to basically complete the construction of the Headquarters in the provincial defensive zone’s combat base by 2020.
Building comprehensively strong local armed forces represents an element deciding the quality and effectiveness of the local defence and military work in general, the building and operation of the provincial defensive zone in particular. Perceiving that, the province has paid due attention to making local armed forces politically, ideologically, and organizationally strong, with the high combined and combat strength, and capable enough to be the core in the building and operation of the defensive zone, meeting the requirements of Homeland protection in the new period. Over the past time, the province has consolidated and made the local armed forces “compact, solid” in accordance with the mission requirements for each force and the particularities of each area. Addition to building “revolutionary, regular, elite, gradually modern” active forces, the province has formulated and gradually implemented the Project on “Building strong, widespread militia and self-defence forces, meeting the requirements set by defence-security tasks in the new situation at grass-roots level”. At the same time, it has stepped up the building of the reserve forces under the guidelines “closeness, compactness towards the area, troops in sync with cadres”. In response to the robust development of types of production and business in the area, the PMC has counselled the province to accelerate the building of the self-defence forces within enterprises; to regularly consolidate the structure of Military Command in organizations and offices; and to pay due regard to developing new party members to quickly build party organizations in foreign-invested enterprises. Thanks to that approach, up to now, the province has completed the organization of reservists into 100% of the units while building the “strong, widespread” militia and self-defence forces with nearly 530 bases whose staff members account for 1.5% of the population.
Besides building the forces, military commands at all levels have strictly maintained the order for combat readiness, with a focus on improving the quality of training and exercises, particularly provincial and district-level defensive zone, departmental and sector-level defensive, and commune-level combat exercises. In 2017, the PMC took part in the MB-17 exercise held by the Ministry of National Defence. It counselled the province to hold defensive zone exercises in the districts of Kinh Mon, Tu Ky, and Ninh Giang as well as operational support exercises for the Departments of Health, and Information and Communications; and to direct localities to organize defensive exercises in 66 communes, wards and towns. Results of those exercises have contributed to supplementing and completing the regulations on the operation of the defensive zone; to enhancing the synergy of the provincial armed forces and all-level party committees and authorities’ capability to deal with defence-security situations in the area. Moreover, grounded on the Government’s Decree 77/2010/NĐ-CP and the Decision 2652/QĐ-UBND by Hai Duong Provincial People on issuing the Regulations for Coordination between the Military and Public Security Forces, the PMC has closely cooperated with the Province’s Public Security in maintaining national security and social order and performing defence-security missions. In this regard, significance has been attached to improving the quality of studying and anticipating the situation; to opportunely, effectively dealing with the situations at grass-roots level to avoid passivity. Due attention has been paid to proactively developing and readily implementing projects for riot, disturbance, terrorism, natural disaster and incident prevention and control as well as search and rescue, and to maintaining political security and social order, thereby creating favourable conditions for the province’s socio-economic development and defence –security consolidation for the sake of Homeland construction and protection.
Sr. Col. Nguyen Huy Thang, Deputy Commander, Chief of Staff of the Provincial Military Command