National Congress to shape nation’s fortunes

The capital of Hanoi has been draped in red and yellow to welcome delegates to the upcoming Party Congress, Photo: Duc Thanh

As a key political event for the Party, the state, and the people of Vietnam held every five years, the National Party Congress sets critical milestones in Party-building and nation building processes.

The 13th edition will be convened between January 25 and February 2 at the National Convention Centre in Hanoi. The preparatory session is scheduled to take place on January 25, and the opening ceremony will begin the following morning.

The Congress will discuss and adopt the Political Report, which is the event’s keynote document; the wrap-up report of the 10-year Socioeconomic Development Strategy for 2011-2020 and building of the follow-up strategy for 2021-2030; the assessment report of the 5-year Socioeconomic Development Plan for 2016-2020 and orientations and mandates for the next 5-year plan for 2021-2025; the wrap-up report of Party-building work and implementation of the 12th National Party Congress’s Statute; the review report of the 12th National Party Congress’ Central Committee; and also the election of the 13th National Party Congress’ Central Committee (2021-2026 tenure) – the highest leadership apparatus of the Party in between two national congresses.

The drafts put forward specific objectives. By 2025, it is hoped that Vietnam will become a modernity-oriented industrialised developing country and graduate from the lower-middle income group. By 2030, also the centenary of the founding of the Party, Vietnam will become a developing country with modern industry and join the upper-middle income group. By 2045, the centenary of the nation’s founding, it is hoped Vietnam will become a developed and a high-income country.

A total number of 1,587 deputies will attend the 13th National Party Congress, representing more than five million Party members. There are 191 automatically qualified deputies who are incumbent members of the Party Central Committee, or around 12 per cent.

As many as 1,381 deputies are elected at the Party congresses subordinate to the Party Central Committee, around 87 per cent. Fifteen are designated deputies, while deputies with a Master’s degree or above account for nearly 68 per cent.

Apart from official deputies, the Party Central Committee also invited former members of the Central Committee of the third to seventh Party congresses, heroic Vietnamese mothers, representatives from the intelligentsia, artists, religious dignitaries, and exemplary youth figures to the Congress.

According to the World Bank, which has a positive view on Vietnam’s economy, the country’s development over the past 30 years has been remarkable.

Economic and political reforms under doi moi, launched in 1986, have spurred rapid economic growth, transforming what was then one of the world’s poorest nations into a lower middle-income country. Between 2002 and 2020, GDP per capita increased by nearly three times, reaching $3,521 in 2020, and more than 45 million people were lifted out of poverty. The poverty rate declined sharply from over 70 per cent to about 2.75 per cent last year, when the near-poverty rate sat at about 4 per cent.

Statistics from the Ministry of Planning showed that by late 2020, the Vietnamese economy’s GDP reached a record level of $343 billion.

“Vietnam has after nearly 35 years of doi moi transformed itself from being an underdeveloped country with an outdated material-technological base, backward socioeconomic infrastructures, and a low level of development into a middle-income developing country,” said Party General Secretary, State President Nguyen Phu Trong at a ceremony held in Hanoi last February to celebrate the 90th founding anniversary of the Party. “With that, Vietnam has seen its culture and society continuously developed, its population’s material and spiritual living standards improved, breakthroughs in Party-building and the building of political system achieved, all-nation unity unceasingly consolidated, its political and social situation stabilised, its national defense, security, independence, and sovereignty firmly maintained, and its status and prestige in the international arena increasingly elevated.”

“In view of the great achievements attained, we are well-grounded to confirm that never has our country enjoyed such fortunes, potential, status, and prestige as they are today,” he stressed.