Embedded Files
From: Shawn McHale
Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:40 AM
Dear list,
There is something darkly amusing about a government that, faced with the task of deciding what topics in this vast cosmos can be studied, comes up with a precise number: 317. That is exactly what the Vietnamese government has done in Decision 97, which outlines the kinds of knowledge that organizations can study.
Here is the text of Quyết định 97/ Decision 97 (in Vietnamese):
http://www.vietlaw.gov.vn/LAWNET/docView.do?docid=23551&type=html&searchType=fulltextsearch&searchText=
The Decision notes that individuals who set up research organizations cannot publicly oppose the Party's policy and party line, or that of the State.
A cursory look at this list shows that individuals cannot set up institutes to study politics. In fact, "politics" -- chính trị -- is not on the list of acceptable fields for organizations to study. At first glance, this is perhaps not terribly surprising. But following this list, it seems to me that it would be illegal for an individual in a university to set up a center studying international politics. Could this possibly be true? And there are other cases where it is simply not clear if something would be allowed or not. For example, one can set up organizations to study sociology/ social issues -- but does that mean that one is allowed to study ethnic conflicts? I doubt it. Risk assessment? Human security? Tourism studies?
This gets back to one of the giant flaws in this decision. It would have been easier to write a decision spelling out what was *banned.* Instead, the Vietnamese government has come up with a maddening list of what is *allowed*, sometimes being quite specific (nanotechnology, chemistry of polymers) and at others, extremely vague.
Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
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From: Bill Hayton
Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 1:26 PM
Hi all,
There's obviously a negative way to look at this but there might also be a positive one. My Vietnamese isn't good enough to read the text of Decision 97 but from what I've heard it allows - for the first time - private organisations (ie those not affiliated to any Party or state body) the right to research topics - albeit non-controversial ones.
Perhaps this is the kind of loophole which - just like Decree 25-CP did all those years ago with SOEs and market trading - might ultimately allow a much greater liberalisation than the one it was trying to prevent.
Any thoughts?
Bill
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From: Fr Peter Hansen
Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 4:31 PM
Thanks Shawn, for this item.
I'm very much interested in its impact on my area, namely religious studies.
The National Centre for Social Sciences and the Humanities has long had an
Institute for Religious Research, where I worked in 2003-45. It is, of
course, far from unique in Viet Nam, where religious studies seems to be
something of a growth area. Interestingly, at the National University in Ha
Noi, religious studies - which has a recently-established religious research
centre, under the leadership of Prof. Do Quang Hung, previously head of the
institute within the National Social Sciences Centre - as a discipline has
been included within the Philosophy Department, which to me always seemed a
little incongruous.
But in this edict, the field is not specified within either "Khoa Hoc Xa
Hoi" or "Khoa Hoc Nhan Van". I note (unless I missed it) that the list in
the edict referred to by Shawn makes no reference to religion. It does
refer to Philosophy, but in the list that follows philosophy (examples or
prescription?), makes no reference to religion as a branch of philosophy.
In any case, am I right in assuming that academic faculties and
state-established Centres of research - are not included in the direction,
which is aimed at self-initiated bodies emer4ging out of civil society?
Peter Hansen
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From: Adam Fforde
Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 6:43 PM
This probably won't stop here.
I cannot see how foreign commercial interests will be interested in
co-financing research with commercial and policy implications if the results
can only legally be given to the Party and State, as required by Art 2.1,
which says (in the translation I have) - " If there is criticism about the
guidelines, strategies and policies of the Party and State, that criticism
shall be sent to competent agencies of the Party and State and shall not be
publicized in the name or in connection with the name of a science and
technology organization."
So if MegaCorp, registered in Geneva, wants to research compliance of (say)
its bio-technology packages with Vietnamese government policies, and
suitability to Vietnamese farmers' conditions, and so it co-finances
research with Viet Tien Corp, Ninh Binh (you never know, perhaps Binh Dinh),
and if the research by Viet Tien concludes that policy can be improved (and
is therefore necessarily critical of policy) the Vietnamese institution can
ONLY communicate with the Party and State, and not MegaCorp? Sounds bad for
business.
And, if it Is not MegaCorp but Nam Viet Dai Tien, registered in Ca Mau, that
is financing the research at Viet Tien? Seems to me they cannot be told
either.
Adam
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From: Adam Fforde
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:01 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Interesting - what about organisations set up under the VFF umbrella as
'Associations' or whatever? Is this not how many local NGOs got started?
Adam
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From: Minna Hakkarainen <minna.hakkarainen@helsinki.fi>
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:50 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
According to the information just received over the phone from Hanoi, decision 97 also does not include member organizations of VUSTA, which seems to have already increased interest to register under its umbrella. What are the wider consequences of this, remains to be seen.
Best,
Minna Hakkarainen
MA, PhD candidate
Institute of Development Studies
University of Helsinki
FINLAND
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From: Adam Fforde @ UoM
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 3:08 AM
If an interest in registering under the VUSTA umbrella is to avoid the requirements, imposed on those who do not, that they deliver criticisms of policy etc only to the Party and State, then this is rather interesting. If VUSTA-registered bodies’ legal advisers tell them (having asked the right people) that they indeed can, legally and of right, “publicise criticisms of the Party and State”, a right apparently denied to non-state and non-VUSTA centres, according to Decision 97, that this would be very positive, or would it not? On that basis can we now expect a range of such centres to increase their active participation in the discussions leading to the next Party Congress? And re-examination of the 1991 ‘cuong linh’?
Adam
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From: Dan Enbysk
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 3:29 AM
Dear list,
Shawn's point is well taken. To what extent has the government shown willingness to move towards more transparent legal policies and conformance to the rule of law? Saying what is not banned leaves the government wide discretion to interpret the rule as they see fit (or what is banned) with regards to things they deem threatening to the authority of the state (anything? everything?). A component of rule of law society is transparency and the ability of all citizens to understand the rules. This rule seems to encourage arbitrariness - and thus seems not to be a rule at all. This may be a flaw, but I doubt it is an innocent one.
Regards,
Dan Enbysk
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From: Jason Morris-Jung
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:11 AM
i'm not sure to what extent this degree was even meant as a general regulatory tool for civil society organizations and not just, baldly, directed specifically at one or two organizations in particular. in this regard, it has had its desired effect (i.e., IDS). for the rest, the decree may be largely inconsequential, although it certainly adds, as already pointed out, a level of arbitrariness that is potentially threatening to any organization within its scope. of course, i don't have any evidence for this, but it is what some people have suggested to me.
jason morris-jung
****************************************
Jason Morris-Jung
PhD Program
Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management (ESPM)
University of California - Berkeley
Trudeau Foundation Scholar, SSHRC Doctoral Fellow
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From: Jim Cobbe
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:50 AM
There are areas of policy (e.g. education) where centrally-promulgated 'norms' are for long periods internally inconsistent -- it is impossible for lower-level managers to abide by them all. Cynics have suggested that one reason these inconsistencies persist is that they imply that all officials are violating some 'norm' -- and therefore could be disciplined if higher ups desire. A possible parallel with this? Jim Cobbe
--
Jim Cobbe
Professor,
Department of Economics
Florida State University
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From: David Marr
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 3:02 PM
So far I think this VSG exchange about Decision 97, although interesting from a technical point of view, is missing the eminently political character of what is going on. The 14 September decision of Vietnam's Institute of Development Studies to dissolve itself is more significant than parsing the phraseology of the `Quyet dinh'. The key QD wording: "critical" (phan bien) opinions of scientific organizations must be submitted to the party-state, not issued publicly. But this just states what was expected for decades. What is new is the public condemnation of that practice by an IDS board that reads like a Who's Who of senior academics/public intellectuals across the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. It's a major event in the ongoing tussle over when and how citizens can criticize party-state policies and practices.
Incidentally, today I tried to go back to the IDS website and was not able. Fortunately the board's protest can be found on the dien dan website.
David Marr
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From: Adam Fforde
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 5:57 PM
Interesting. I had not read the Vietnamese original. 'Phan bien' could also
be better read as 'oppositional'? Is this not the terminology used in a
formal thesis examination in Vietnam? If so the semantic range is different
from the English 'criticise', and for me this implies a denial of a formal
function and responsibility to the defunct Institute rather than the wider
and more demotic 'criticise', so that again this could argue that the same
formal function (to 'oppose') remains the responsibility of the VUSTA and
State centres. I think I have seen the term also used in situations where a
draft policy or proposal is sent out for 'formal criticism' as part of a
formal process.
In my opinion, for what it is worth, there are some seriously high quality
intellects associated with the late Institute. I gave one of them (the
person, not the intellect) a book length manuscript one afternoon (in
English, before publication) and received detailed comments the next day. A
'class act', as we would say in London.
To mangle Han Solo -
"I've been to a lot of universities and I've seen a lot of Professors, and I
know class when I meet it".
Adam (Fforde)
PS If you Google the Institute and hit 'cache' you get Google's stored
pages.
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From: Bill Hayton
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:41 PM
David's right to remind us of the political context and in that we
should remember that the founders of the VNIDS knew exactly what they
were doing when they exploited a loophole in the law to set up an
independent 'scientific' institute to debate controversial issues.
They were attempting to widen the space for 'civil society' and in so
doing issued a deliberate challenge to the Party leadership. Over the
past two years, the leadership had used many means to try to persuade
the Institute's board to close down voluntarily or to get the Hanoi Dept
of Science and Technology to de-register them but they all failed.
Decree 97 was the last resort and should be read as a clear message. I
still think the decree could have unintended consequences though...
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From: Jason Morris-Jung
Date: Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 9:03 AM
To take up Prof. Marr's proposition--although I am not sure anyone on VSG is missing the political character of what is going on--I would like to pose a question, or a few questions. The enactment of Decision 97 and IDS's subsequent dissolution are surely significant, but I would be very curious to hear thoughts from VSG members on WHAT exactly is their significance? Does IDS's declaration give evidence to some kind of evolution in civic freedoms in or a growing and diversifying political space here in Vietnam, one that has been perhaps even more evident in the recent campaigns against bauxite mining in the Central Highlands, most notably, and also the successful campaign against the Accor hotel in Thong Nhat Park earlier this year? For the many of you who have a much longer experience than me in Vietnam, how are they different from other protests against state policy in the past, including perhaps even the political convolutions that led up to đổi mới? I mean, there is an example of political turmoil that led to dramatic reforms of an economic character, but not necessarily political ones? What kind of impact are these more recent events actually having on the current political structure? Is the Party worried? Or, conversely, is the dissolution of IDS more evidence of the Party's power, perhaps an even growing power abetted by the right hand forces of transnational neoliberalism and the left hand backstopping of the Chinese Communist Party? Or, again, is this turn of events something more symptomatic of the usual tussle and political maneuvering that accompanies the years and months leading up to a National Congress, where different political factions are struggling to control who says what about whom. Another interesting recent event not yet reported on VSG I don't believe is that Đoàn Văn Kiển, Director of TKV, the state-owned mining company that has 100% of mining rights to the bauxite reserves in the Central Highlands, is also currently being disciplined bị kỷ luật by the Party and may lose his position (this is, on the surface at least, in relation to various coal mining projects). If we interpret the action against IDS as an effort to stifle civil society, what kind of broad interpretation should we give to this action against Mr. Kiển?
These are all genuine questions, as I, personally, am having much difficulty finding a way through them. I think many of us are clear on what we would like to see happen here, but what are we really seeing?
jason morris-jung
****************************************
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From: Adam Fforde @ UoM
Date: Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 3:28 PM
Oh well. Here goes.
I think the position is deeply contradictory, and the available facts fit a wide variety of possible interpretations. I think this is itself very indicative.
On the one hand, it does not seem to be an indicator of a ‘strong’ regime if there is such concern over the activities of a dozen now rather old but rather talented, and clearly loyal, people. Rather the reverse - why bother? We all know the articles and books stressing the role of the intellectual in Vietnamese political culture, but at the end of the day, why bother? They are not politicians.
On the other, the widespread sense that crucial aspects of Vietnam’s politics are not clear, from various classic perspectives, as well as common sense, would suggest that the core groups that articulate the meaning of the political culture are themselves not clear. This is hardly surprising. One can find answers, but I do not think they amount to the sort of reasoned statements that one should normally expect, especially from people like the Vietnamese. Things are not clear. Try this one – what is the Vietnamese state? Does it include the Mass Organisations? Are they part of civil society? What is a cadre? What is a citizen? What is a public servant? These terms are, all academics know, blurred and contested, but in most political cultures, as terms, these questions have consistent answers to them. And they should. Otherwise things get unnecessarily complicated.
As a German Ambassador once put it, if they cannot ‘market the plan’, then how can they ‘plan the market’? We therefore find, in the literature that many of us produce, either one of the usual series of imposed analytical frameworks (such as your attempt to merge neoliberalism with VCP ‘back-stopping’), which gets the article written and probably published if you can find an editor who has the same priors, or a sense of vacuity (see Martin Gainsborough’s recent JVS article – it is all simply ‘factions’, whatever that means – which is easier to get published in an area studies journal as the editor tends not to like the general analytical frameworks), or something else – there are many journals.
Personally, I think this sense of vacuity, of the lack of clear answers, is a ‘Cheshire Cat’, simply a reflection of Vietnamese lack of clarity, and lack of relative consensus (of course, contested) over what their politics is, which is not surprising, nor necessarily that much of a bad thing, given some of the alternatives.
Which is why the recent Plenum’s reported statement of the need to re-examine the ‘cuong linh’ of 1991, which arguably stopped a number of processes of reflection and discussion on just how things might be, in which “the now rather old but rather talented, and clearly loyal, people” were closely involved (quite rightly, given their status and talents) suggests that the Vietnamese are up to something. Just what, I guess we have to sit and watch. Just what politics better suits more than 80 mn of that dynamic and creative mob will be interesting to see. As one of “the now rather old but rather talented, and clearly loyal, people” has been reported saying, they can of course continue to have their own opinions. Anybody who has any experience of Vietnamese in full argumentative spate will have some idea of what this can mean.
Before the battle of Waterloo Wellington was said to be reviewing the Scots Highland Regiments, and remarked to an aide “I don’t know if they frighten the French, by My God they frighten me”. I have no idea whether this is true but in those political cultures where I have citizenship it is a useful story.
Adam
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