DPRK-USA Summit: Vietnam’s hosting role lauded by Egyptian media

The flags of the DPRK and US fly near the Opera House in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)

The selection of Vietnam as the host of the second DPRK-USA summit has significant meanings, held Abdel-Moneim Said, chairman of 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 that to his generation, Vietnam was about the Vietnamese struggle against the Americans, the epic of a small Third World country fighting the world’s superpower.

More than four decades have passed since then. Today, Vietnam, and its symbolic capital Hanoi, is once again headline news, wrote the article, stressing that Vietnam has changed completely.

The author noted that in 1986, Vietnam adopted economic reforms, shifted to a market economy and encouraged foreign investment. In the framework of the Doi Moi (renewal) programme, as it was called, new laws and regulations were introduced to deregulate the economy and enable market forces to become the prime determinant of prices and production.

In 2000, the stock exchange was established. This inspired a new trend in Western and Asian writings which hailed “modern Vietnam”, the “Paris of the East”, the “Vietnamese ascendancy”, the “Vietnamese dragon” and the “Vietnamese model” and stressed the need to study this model in order to understand how such a poor country that had been economically shattered from intermittent wars succeeded in becoming an emergent regional power and a prime example of the ability to transcend the past, an ability that is associated with some important aspects of Vietnamese culture such as a strong work ethic, a spirit of discipline and an emphasis on education. 

It may be worthwhile to return to the “Vietnamese experience” another time, but our point, here, is that Hanoi as a choice of venue reflects the horizons of the forthcoming talks, Abdel-Moneim Said wrote.

Meanwhile, The Egyptian Gazgette newspaper of Egypt assessed that Vietnam plays the role of more than a neutral and convenient destination for the summit. To developing countries, including the DPRK, the Southeast Asian nation is a model in economic reform, it said.

Noting that the per capita income of Vietnam increased from 95 USD per year in 1990 to 2,342 USD in 2017, the paper underlined that Vietnam has shown the world that every poor economy can reduce poverty towards industrialization through the application and combination of policies in a proper way.

At the same time, Egyptian analysts explained that the US and DPRK leaders chose Hanoi for their second meeting as Hanoi is a safe place that meets all necessary diplomatic conditions for the success of the summit which is expected to result in breakthroughs in the relationship between Washing ton and Pyongyang./.

VNA