How can you become a tiger if you "hide in your shell"?

Prof. Dr. Tran Ngoc ThemThe idea explains why Vietnam missed the opportunity to become a fierce tiger, and how to quickly escape the current deadlock.

How do you explain the Vietnamese mentality, which is always strong when pushed into a corner, but immediately after, when “guns and swords are thrown away, they become as gentle as before”. Is this one of the reasons that holds us back, making it difficult for us to break out like our neighbors?

Prof. Dr. Tran Ngoc Them:That's right! Practice has proven that Vietnamese people are always extraordinarily strong when pushed to the wall, when they are in a "dead end".

The line “Gun and sword thrown away, the gentleness remains as before” by poet Nguyen Dinh Thi has accurately described the nature of the Vietnamese people! When the crisis passes, we always tend to crawl back into the shell of “stability”, becoming people who are easily satisfied with reality, afraid of change… This is a negative manifestation of the negative culture of the Vietnamese people, as I always say.

Vietnam’s initial stage of Doi Moi was a very good momentum to create a long-term leap. If we had maintained that speed, we would have certainly gone much further, perhaps even becoming a formidable “tiger” among the tigers in the region.

Throughout history, our nation has missed several “golden opportunities”. For example, during the Nguyen Dynasty, we had many people who kept up with the times, such as Nguyen Truong To; King Tu Duc was famous for his intelligence, but his reform efforts failed. According to him, the reason was

Prof. Dr. Tran Ngoc Them:Many people believe that Confucianism with its conservatism is the cause of the tragedy of “missed opportunities” in Vietnamese history. I think that is not the case.

Influenced by Confucianism, why has Vietnam so far missed the opportunity more than once, while Japan was able to modernize so early? Why has China, the cradle of Confucianism, also undergone strong reforms since the Qing Dynasty?

The fact that Vietnam missed the opportunity for reform was not due to the influence of Confucianism but also due to its cultural identity, which was contrary to the West and very different from the intermediate cultural identity of the Northeast Asian region.

OpportunityIt is a pity that the 'fierce tiger' has passed, but at least it gives us a regrettable lesson that needs to be seriously dissected so that it does not slip out of our hands again. Photo: newszing.

The culture of rice-growing people is often oriented towards stability and creates a sense of village community with an education that encourages a mentality of being ambitious rather than studious, preferring to follow others rather than having the courage to think independently; creating a habit of leveling, not accepting people who are better than oneself, or have more progressive ideas than oneself.

All of these are the reasons why the Minh Mang dynasty, and then Tu Duc dynasty, with its mandarins heavily influenced by the corrupt Song Confucian ideology (which had been abandoned in China), always stubbornly rejected all ideas of Westernization and fiercely opposed all reform initiatives. As a result, proposals for comprehensive, scientific and progressive reforms were often not accepted.

These studies have explained the question of why Vietnam's opportunity to become a "tiger" in the 18th and 19th centuries was missed.

Many opinions say that the cause and motivation of innovation and Doi Moi in Vietnam always has motivation or impact from both inside and outside, is that correct?

Prof. Dr. Tran Ngoc Them:Reform or Innovation, if it is our own business, we must do it ourselves, then there must be a need from within. Whether or not there must be an impact from external factors at the time of reform, in my opinion, depends on three factors: whether the relationship with the outside world is strong or not, whether the culture is of the negative or positive type, and whether the country is strong or weak.

A strong country with a positive culture can carry out reforms at any time, regardless of its relations with the outside world. A weak country with a positive culture will find it difficult to survive independently for long, and sooner or later it will be assimilated by stronger positive countries.

Vietnam is a country with a negative cultural tendency.

According to VNN