Looking back at the last decade, we continue to achieve growth quantitatively from what nature has bestowed on us but too little change in term of quality and we have not been able to create any base for a breakthrough in the future.
In the sacred transitional moment of the year when we see off the old year and welcome the new year, each of us should spare a some time to reflect and reminisce on the last year deeds, what we have achieved and what we have not and to think of the new year with all the previsions, intentions and aspirations for the country, for the people and naturally for oneself.
Creating Realistic Changes
We must think before acting, as everything will start with action before creating realistic changes. The Year of the Tiger (2010), the last one of a decade, is also an opportunity for us to look back at the last ten years and our plan for the next ten years.Following the first years of reform and integration of the nineties, during this decade (2001-2010), Vietnam continues to obtain definite achievements praised by the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that often cited us as a model for poor and less developed countries for our economic high growth and rapid hunger elimination and poverty alleviation work. Some people use the allegory of the "good child" score card of a kindergarten child to describe this praise.From 2008 onward, we have passed the gate of "low income countries" ($935 per capita) -- a superlative to designate poor countries -- to join the group of middle income countries, even though we have not reached the lowest level among this group. These are real laudable progresses though still not at par with the potential of the country and of the Vietnamese people.
Sicknesses and Weaknesses
Maybe there are not many people who can remember that the World Bank, in its book The Miracle of East Asia has spared no words to praise Indonesia and took the Indonesian economic model for us to study in those first days of Doi moi (Renewal), until this country tumbled into the financial crisis of 1997. The one who praises is not held responsible when the praised succumbed. The praise is sweet for the ear but will not help to discover our sicknesses and weaknesses.Any people responsible for oneself must create a democratic mechanism to discover in time its shortcomings and has enough courage to correct itself and move forward. And all the more we should not take other's praise to gloss over or to hide our shortcomings.Looking back at the last decade, we continued to achieve growth quantitatively from what nature has bestowed us but too little change in term of quality and have not created any base for a breakthrough in the future.The structure of our export commodities is slow to change and after ten years, it was still mainly crude oil, textiles and garments, leathers and shoes - all of which are labor intensive products made under processing arrangements to benefit from the low cost workforce. The percentage of high-tech products has increased from two percent in 1999 to eight percent in 2008 thanks to the foreign invested businesses.According to the evaluation of the World Bank (2006), 76 percent of our gross national assets are natural resources (land, forest, timber, and so forth), 20 percent are tangible assets already built (roads, bridges, ports) and only less than 7 percent of the assets come from knowledge, trained people and institutions while in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with per capita income over $10,000 the ratio is 2 percent for natural resources, 17 percent for physical assets and 80 percent for knowledge. Particularly, in Japan natural resources only account for a little bit over zero percent.In the last ten years, we have made very little progress on education and training, on the fight against corruption and on the reduction of traffic accidents while environment pollution, traffic jams, water logging and flooding have increased dramatically.From 20 06 to this date, Vietnam has fell 11 ranks on the classification of global competitiveness while China, South Korea and other economies have made headway progress based on knowledge, institutions and human creativity.Facing the danger of climate change, our natural resources are threatened to be seriously reduced and the vision of growth based on natural resources exploitation is really sinister and obsolete.
Changed Situation
We must candidly asked ourselves why we are so slow in progressing in areas that we already knew the issues as we have used eloquent words such as "national disaster" or "internal aggressors" to describe corruption; and how many times we are "resolute" or "determined to fight" but the results in reality are still minimal and basically, the situation has changed much.When we have made every possible effort for so many years but without any success then we should reconsider the way we carry out these efforts and see the real causes of those diseases.Former Prime Minister Pham Van Dong often said: "All of us are at the same time the victim, the culprit, the prosecutor, the judge and the defendant". Maybe, on the spiritual aspect, as a patriotic Vietnamese, nobody would have the heart to excuse one's responsibility before the people, but the responsibility of a farmer in Mu Cang Chai village and the responsibility of the ruler of a country over these problems are quite different.It is still better to light up a match than to sit lament in the darkness. In these spring days when we make offerings to our ancestors and reminisce about the heroes who have sacrificed their lives to save this country for the people, each of us should think and act more than just lighting a match.
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