HÀ NỘI – Drawing on Party General Secretary and State President Tô Lâm's detailed and practical guidance, artists and researchers voiced confidence that Vietnamese culture will undergo a sharp transformation and truly become both a spiritual foundation and a key driver of sustainable development in the new era.

Artists, scholars and researchers praised the speech as a strategic, action-driven blueprint designed to turn culture into the nation’s spiritual foundation, a source of internal strength and a key engine of national development.

Confronting ‘four gaps’ to unlock breakthroughs

Six months after the Politburo issued the Resolution 80-NQ/TW, Lâm acknowledged initial progress but pointed to “four major gaps” requiring urgent attention and outlined “three major transformations” to align cultural development with the demands of the new period.

Photographer Trần Thị Thu Đông, Vice President of the Việt Nam Union of Literature and Arts Associations and President of the Việt Nam Association of Photographic Artists, said the leader’s four gaps strike at the core bottlenecks.

Those include the limited appeal and reach of Vietnamese cultural values in the digital space, which has failed to keep pace with surging online content. Việt Nam holds a vast cultural trove of more than 40,000 historical sites, nearly 70,000 items of intangible cultural heritage and 38 UNESCO-inscribed elements, yet most remain undigitised, lack standardised data and have yet to be converted into digital knowledge or intellectual property (IP) assets.

Other gaps lie with the country’s limited capacity to create competitive cultural products that could become national icons, a fragmented institutional framework, and an underdeveloped cultural industry ecosystem. The sector contributes roughly 4 per cent of GDP, well below the Government’s 2030 target of 7 per cent.

Against this backdrop, the “three major transformations” set a comprehensive strategic framework: recasting culture from a standalone sector into a spiritual foundation, strategic pillar and new economic growth engine; expanding cultural development into both physical and digital spaces, where sovereignty over data, platforms and content is treated as an integral part of national sovereignty; and shifting from a preservation-only mindset to a model that fuses preservation with innovation.

Đông welcomed the focus on genuine digital transformation rather than superficial digitisation. A heritage asset, she said, is not digitised simply because it has been photographed or uploaded online. Digital records must carry standardised identification, technical specifications, interoperability and the capacity for data sharing and reuse, while serving education, research, tourism and cultural industries. Equally critical is a fair benefit-sharing mechanism among the State, local communities, artisans, creators and businesses, which has been long demanded by the domestic creative community.

 

According to her, the directions come with clearly defined tasks, timelines and measurable targets. Those include completing a legal framework through foundational laws on copyright, artistic activities and cultural industries, developing a National Cultural Index, raising public spending on culture to at least 2 per cent of the state budget, and turning cultural industries into a new growth driver via flagship projects and cultural hubs in key localities.

For artists, cultural managers and researchers, the push represents both a major opportunity, with increased state support and targeted investment in quality works, and a profound responsibility to create works that become national symbols and tell Việt Nam’s story to the world.

From strategic vision to a measured roadmap

Dr Đặng Vũ Cảnh Linh, Deputy Director of the Institute for Personnel Training and Scientific Research under the Việt Nam Fatherland Front Central Committee, said the four gaps the leader identified make the practical challenges of realising the resolution plain. Turning culture into genuine internal strength, soft power and a pillar of national competitiveness requires further refining institutional framework, policies and an ecosystem capable of converting cultural values into data, knowledge, creative works, products and markets that the public voluntarily embraces.

In his view, the address plays a crucial role in translating the resolution from a strategic policy framework into a focused action agenda, complete with clear responsibilities, deliverables, deadlines and evaluation criteria.

Drawing on that detailed and practical guidance, artists and researchers voiced confidence that with the entire political system, businesses and the creative community engaged, Vietnamese culture will undergo a sharp transformation and truly become both a spiritual foundation and a key driver of sustainable development in the new era. VNA/VNS