The flags of the DPRK and US fly near the Opera House in Hanoi (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – The selectionof Vietnam as the host of the second DPRK-USA summit has significant meanings,held Abdel-Moneim Said, chairmanof the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies(RCSS) in his article run by Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly.
In the article, the author said thatto his generation, Vietnam was about the Vietnamese struggle against theAmericans, the epic of a small Third World country fighting the world’ssuperpower.
More than four decades have passedsince then. Today, Vietnam, and its symbolic capital Hanoi, is once againheadline news, wrote the article, stressing that Vietnam has changedcompletely.
The author noted that in 1986,Vietnam adopted economic reforms, shifted to a market economy and encouragedforeign investment. In the framework of the Doi Moi (renewal) programme, as itwas called, new laws and regulations were introduced to deregulate the economyand enable market forces to become the prime determinant of prices andproduction.
In 2000, the stock exchange wasestablished. This inspired a new trend in Western and Asian writings whichhailed “modern Vietnam”, the “Paris of the East”, the “Vietnamese ascendancy”,the “Vietnamese dragon” and the “Vietnamese model” and stressed the need tostudy this model in order to understand how such a poor country that had beeneconomically shattered from intermittent wars succeeded in becoming an emergentregional power and a prime example of the ability to transcend the past, anability that is associated with some important aspects of Vietnamese culturesuch as a strong work ethic, a spirit of discipline and an emphasis oneducation.
It may be worthwhile to return to the“Vietnamese experience” another time, but our point, here, is that Hanoi as achoice of venue reflects the horizons of the forthcoming talks, Abdel-MoneimSaid wrote.
Meanwhile, The Egyptian Gazgette newspaper of Egypt assessedthat Vietnam plays the role of more than a neutral and convenient destinationfor the summit. To developing countries, including the DPRK, the SoutheastAsian nation is a model in economic reform, it said.
Noting that the per capita income of Vietnam increased from95 USD per year in 1990 to 2,342 USD in 2017, the paper underlined that Vietnamhas shown the world that every poor economy can reduce poverty towardsindustrialization through the application and combination of policies in aproper way.
At the same time, Egyptian analysts explained that the USand DPRK leaders chose Hanoi for their second meeting as Hanoi is a safe place thatmeets all necessary diplomatic conditions for the success of the summit whichis expected to result in breakthroughs in the relationship between Washing tonand Pyongyang.-VNA
VNA
