Over the last 20 years of the national renewal process, the Communist Party of Vietnam has renewed its cultural thinking and obtained some remarkable outcomes. Both accession to the WTO and international economic integration have created major opportunities for Vietnamese culture to acquire and select cultural values from other countries in the world. However, this process is also a challenge for our national culture, and requires our Party to further renew its cultural thinking and adopt correct guidelines and policies to develop a progressive Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity.

After reviewing its theories from the last 20 years of the national renewal process, our Party has reached a more profound cultural thinking in order to lead the revolution in the new period:

- Develop a progressive Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity and define that this culture is the special trait and the fourth content to be reached by the socialist system realised by the Vietnamese people under the Party leadership. According to this, this culture must be progressive and patriotic with national independence and socialism at its core.

- Confirm that culture is the objective, motivation and the spiritual foundation of socialism.

- Culture is a factor of sustainable development through the argument, which maintains that economic growth must connect with social progress and fairness.

- Realise two categories of policies, namely, cultural policies in economy and economic policies in culture. Economic development must aim at cultural targets for a fair and civilised society and comprehensive development of the people. Culture is the outcome of economy and at the same time, the motivation of economic development. Cultural factors must strictly connect with social life as well as political, economic, social, and legal activities and be the most important endogenous resource of development.

- Form and gradually define the connotation of political culture and Party culture.

- Strongly develop the cultural industry. This is also the progressive culture development process in the new situation by using positive values of the market economy and high technologies to generate a great progress of culture.

- Access and initially shape the concept, “soft capacity” and “soft power” of culture. This is seen in the thinking that culture is the objective and target of socio-economic development. Culture is the spiritual foundation of society and the ideological, intelligent, moral and humanitarian “support” for the entire social life. Culture is the motivation for socio-economic development and has been considered one of Vietnam’s three development pillars.