Deeply adhering to the Party’s guidelines and viewpoints on building the provinces and centrally-governed cities as solid defensive areas, Quang Ninh Province consistently promotes socio-economic development while enhancing the defensive area capability to lay a solid foundation for strengthening national defence and security. This is a significant and challenging task that requires long-term, persistent implementation early from afar.
Quang Ninh is a border province located in the northeast of the country, with diverse geographical features, including borders, seas, islands, seaports, and border gates. As a result, military and defence work encompasses various complex tasks such as island and forward-line defence, cross-national crime combat, people’s diplomacy, and international defence cooperation, among others. These tasks impose high requirements on the capability and posture in building the defensive area. Additionally, in the process of globalisation, Quang Ninh is also affected by the negative impacts of global economic recession and faces new challenges in protecting its border, sea, and island sovereignty. In this context, the Provincial Party Committee and People’s Committee have been actively innovating the growth model, restructuring the economy, and shifting from “brown” to “green” development while ensuring strong national defence and security. After nearly three years of implementing the Resolution of the Provincial Party Congress (2021-2025 term), the average economic growth rate has reached 10.3%/year, with a GDP per capita exceeding 7,600 USD/year. The political and social situation has remained stable, and defence and security have been strengthened. Meanwhile, the external relations have expanded, creating a solid foundation for enhancing the province’s defensive area capability.
In the coming years, the cooperation and economic development of the Province will deepen and expand, with many achievements in science and technology being applied in both economic and military fields, significantly altering the mindset about the Province’s defensive area. However, natural disasters, pandemics, and the risk of high-tech crimes in financial, telecommunications, biological, and environmental sectors have given rise to many non-traditional security threats. To shift and mobilise resources effectively for national defence activities when necessary, the Province continues to lead and direct its agencies, units, and localities in flexibly exploiting their potentials and advantages in human resources, geographical features, and natural resources, and promote sustainable socio-economic development while consolidating national defence and security, especially enhancing the defence capability in the defensive area. In this regard, the focus is on effectively implementing several key measures as follows:
Firstly, to strengthen the leadership, direction, management, and operation of Party committees and authorities at all levels. Staying close to the results and experiences of 10 years of implementing Resolution No.28/NQ-TW, dated September 22nd, 2008 by the Politburo, on building the defensive areas, and 10 years of implementing the Strategy for the Fatherland Protection in the new situation, the Provincial Party Committee and People’s Committee continue to study, supplement, and complete Action Program No.27-CTr/TU of the Provincial Party Committee on “Building a solid provincial defensive area in the new situation”; issue, supplement, improve, and amend instructions, resolutions, plans, and directives to carry out local defence and military work by phases, such as building the self-defence forces, the people’s militia on the border and key defensive areas; strengthen the leadership over the local defence and military work in the 2020-2025 period; develop the planning for construction of the military posture in the defensive area and guidance on implementation, etc.; direct agencies, units, and localities in developing regular leadership resolutions to persist in their goals, concretise objectives, and devise effective implementation measures in line with the actual situation, based on each year and phase; enhance the capacity for strategic consultation, guidance, and organisation to implement defence and military tasks by the Military, Public Security, and Border Guard; and improve and frequently operate the mechanism for leadership, command, and coordination among forces in building and operating the defensive area.
Secondly, to build a comprehensively strong political foundation and enhance political and mental power. First of all, the Province continues to innovate, reorganise, and streamline the political system to ensure its operational effectiveness and efficiency; implement the project on unifying advisory and assistance agencies and the model of agencies specialising in assisting on the common issues of the political and social system at all levels; harmonise official titles; complete public service units; and assign Border Guard cadres to participate in the Party committees of border and island communes and wards. It also continues to direct the armed forces to regularly grasp the situation to advise the Party committees and authorities to effectively resolve complex situations. In this regard, the people’s self-defence forces enhance coordination with the communal Public Security in maintain political security and social order; coordinate with the Border Guard in patrolling and preventing violations of borders and boundary markers; and actively mobilise the masses to build a solid political foundation. The Party Committees of the Border Guard stations sign cooperation charters with the Party Committees of border and island communes and build border and boundary marker self-governing models and councils, etc.
In addition, the Party committees at all levels must prioritise the development of grassroots Party cells to eradicate non-Party-member villages and hamlets and build unified and cohesive Party organisations and government bodies with strong capacity for leading and managing the defensive area activities. To achieve this, it is crucial to strengthen the detection, selection, and training of new Party members; cultivate a dedicated and exemplary cadres and party members who are committed to their ideals and goals; promote the fight against corruption, hunger eradication, and poverty alleviation; narrow the wealth gap between regions, improve the living conditions, ensure social justice; promote the people’s autonomy to allow them to supervise, criticise, and contribute ideas for the development of the Party and government; emphasise the practicality of activities; enhance the quality of movements and competitions; build culturally rich villages, hamlets, and residential areas; effectively address policies concerning veterans, martyrs, contributors, ethnic minorities, and religious groups; establish secure, self-reliant, and combat-readiness areas; and combat erroneous viewpoints and thwart the subversive actions of hostile forces... to create the foundation for mobilising the collective strength of the political system and the people in building the Party and government and socio-economic development, especially in constructing a “solid people’s heart and mind” posture.
To achieve high efficiency, the Province places significant emphasis on innovating and enhancing the quality of education and fostering of national defence and security knowledge to various target groups; extending the scope of education to religious dignitaries, border and island household breadwinners, and ethnic minority communities; enhancing propaganda and education on military affairs and national defence through maintaining dedicated sections and columns in mass media, as well as leveraging the role of grassroots propaganda teams; regularly consolidating and improving the quality of propaganda personnel; developing additional materials, brochures, and audiovisual content on relevant laws, such as civil defence, prevention of crimes and drugs, ethnic affairs, religious affairs, borders, and seas; and mobilising community dignities, people understanding the history of the border areas and landmarks, and those having relatives in both sides of the border to provide information for safeguarding national borders and territorial sovereignty.
Thirdly, to enhance the effectiveness of managing the process of socio-economic development linked with strengthening the defence and security capability. The Provincial Military Command continues to play a pivotal role in advising the Province on adjusting the overall socio-economic development planning in line with the national defence planning by regions and periods; planning economic, defence, and security clusters, aiming to form economic development clusters integrated with defensive combat at all levels; evaluating and monitoring the implementation of projects; investing in coastal and maritime infrastructure; developing and protecting forests, managing mineral resources, and safeguarding strategically valuable terrains; prioritising the development of mechanical, metallurgical, chemical, and electronic industries, as well as logistics centres and multi-functional fishing trades serving marine exploitation in the Gulf of Tonkin; constructing civilian seaports with defence elements on islands; upgrading the capacity of large-scale seaports; prioritising the development of a reliable telecommunications infrastructure for combat bases and key defensive areas; consulting on upgrading national highways; and adopting policies to attract various economic components to invest in infrastructure development, including rural infrastructure and social welfare projects; and upgrading and developing roads to connect localities, economic and industrial regions, and ports to establishing an interconnected and smooth transportation infrastructure, meeting the needs of civilian life and facilitating economic and defence activities. The Province also encourages the expansion of competitive industries, utilising local labour to create large-scale production areas and combining economic development with military human resource reserves; conducts regular surveys and supports enterprises with the potential for defence production to devise manpower mobilisation and dual-use equipment plans; and actively promotes sustainable tourism, modern and extensive healthcare, telecommunications, high-tech agriculture to ensure food security and mobilisation readiness.
Finally, to build strong local armed forces. Continuing to strictly implement and execute Resolution No.05-NQ/TW, dated January 17th, 2022 by the Politburo and Resolution No.230-NQ/QUTW, dated April 2nd, 2022 by the Central Military Party Commission on leading the implementation of the Vietnam People’s Army organisation for the period of 2021 - 2030 and beyond, the Province focuses on building a “lean, efficient, and strong” standing force and developing comprehensively strong and armed forces at all levels; enhancing the quality of the cadre contingent, particularly the capabilities for advising local Party committees and authorities in leading and directing defence and security tasks; building a “strong and widespread” people's self-defence force with a rational structure, appropriate composition, and high quality; effectively managing reserve resources, organising them in proximity to their designated areas, and maintaining military professionalism; regularly updating combat plans, mobilisation plans, and plans for transitioning localities from peacetime to wartime conditions; intensifying training, political education, and party member admission to develop both quantity and quality in tandem, particularly emphasising political reliability and local situational awareness; enhancing defensive area exercises at various levels alongside improving military infrastructure projects; swiftly extracting leadership, command, operational, and defence mechanisms insights from these exercises; refining scenarios for A2 mobilisation and counter-terrorism at sea, as well as receiving refugees, especially in constructing Plan B; and incrementally integrating information technology to simulate exercise processes and conducting remote command for actual combat situations.
Concurrently, the Province prioritises building infrastructure and concentrated population centres; offering employment opportunities for ethnic minority communities in border areas; conducting forest cultivation and protection to aid poverty alleviation efforts; promoting the people’s resettlement in bordering and island regions, Tran Island... These measures collectively reinforce the Province’s defence potential in the defensive area, ensuring its readiness to protect the locality and the Fatherland under any circumstance.
Senior Colonel KHUC THANH DU, Member of the Provincial Party Committee Standing Commission, Commander of the Provincial Military Command