HANOI LOOKS TO BECOME A CENTER FOR CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
Hanoi is currently one of 246 cities in the world participating in The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), to take cultural resources and cultural creation as the foundation for the sustainable development of the city.
On October 30, 2016, Hanoi was designated as part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.
Stay competitive with other cities in Southeast Asia
This is not only a highlight and mark of pride but also an opportunity to encourage the capital’s development in the coming time. Hanoi has been implementing many breakthrough solutions, actively participating in the entrepreneurial spirit hailed by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. The encouragement of the entrepreneurial spirit is one of the strategic tasks for the development in the coming years.
Hanoi is aiming to be the leading center of science-technology, innovation, application, and technology transfer nationwide.
The Prime Minister said that with a new position, Hanoi will head toward being the political, economic, and cultural center of Southeast Asia. By 2045, Vietnam will have been defined as a developed country, Hanoi must achieve its vision of being one of the centers of East Asia. No longer aims to be in the running with other national localities, the city focus on staying competitive with other cities in Southeast Asia. To achieve this goal, Hanoi firstly prepares favorable opportunities.
To promote the value of human resources, the Prime Minister affirmed that Hanoi needs to nurture spiritual values, innovation, and entrepreneurship through an environment that encourages new ideas and innovative activities, inventions and forges an entrepreneurial spirit. He believes that Hanoi has the potential to make the vision possible and that soon, Hanoi will confidently position itself as the economic-political, cultural-educational center of not only the capital area but also Southeast Asia and East Asia.
Favorable factors
Vice Minister of Ministry of Science and Technology (S&T), Le Xuan Dinh, assessed that in terms of science and technology, Hanoi has the strongest infrastructure, has many professors and doctors contributing the most to national S&T potential, gets the highest investment resources, is the strongest city in terms of products with international publications (in 2019, Hanoi had nearly 5,000 international publications on science and technology research, accounting for 40% of the country), impacts the most on socio-economic development through the science and technology development, has the highest labor productivity over the country. Shortly, Hanoi will have been improving and developing science- technology, innovations, and creations.
Hanoi Party Secretary, Vuong Dinh Hue, said that Hanoi aims at being the leading center for innovation, scientific research, application development, and technology transfer nationwide, proceeds to be the innovative center of Southeast Asia in terms of some certain fields, and become a creative city of UNESCO.
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According to Mr. Ngo Van Quy, Vice Chairman of Hanoi People’s Committee, since 2016, there have been 346 city-level science and technology tasks implemented (of which there are 212 tasks of science, 84 tasks of social sciences and humanities, 50 experimental production projects) with a total budget of over 633 billion VND. It’s over 85% of the research results after inspections are used in practice application. Particularly, researched products in the fields of industry, automation, electricity, electronics, and telecommunications have helped to perfect and develop new products’ competitive ability, and expand their markets to replace imported products.
Research activities in science and technology have initially formed several machining hubs, which become the nuclear factor for industrial zones, high-technology parks. Also, they can support training and researching the practical application in the industry. Scientific research activities in the fields of new materials, biotechnology, information technology, high-tech agriculture, also achieved much success and made important contributions to the development. Now, Hanoi has focused on developing S&T infrastructure, especially high-tech parks, software cities, information technology zones, transaction centers, technology transfer …
Minister of Ministry of Science and Technology, Chu Ngoc Anh affirmed that the science and technology sector will work with other sectors to formulate longer-term development policies, thereby promoting the development of science and technology in the coming years and being the driving force of other industries and sectors. When there is plenty of fiscal space for development, Hanoi needs to renovate scientific research programs (including financial mechanisms, policies, and procedures), focus on research programs for key product development, take businesses as the key point for the development policies of the science and technology, create the connection between training institutions and local research institutes.
Mr. Vuong Dinh Hue said that Hanoi has 124 universities, 113 research institutes, 14 national key laboratories, and thousands of potential S&T enterprises; and despite these rich potentials, the contribution of the science and technology into the economy is modest and is not commensurate with the available favorable factors. Therefore, Mr. Vuong Dinh Hue desires Hanoi to become a pioneer in the cooperation between the locality and the Ministry of Science and Technology to promote research and application activities.
8 petitions and proposals
Hanoi has made 8 recommendations and proposals to the Ministry of Science and Technology, with the proposal that the Government adjusts financial policies for scientific tasks, simplifies procedures, and facilitates scientists so they can focus more on research … According to Mr. Vuong Dinh Hue, the city and the ministry will cooperate to focus on building the specific mechanisms and policies, implements the pilot specific mechanisms, betters the recruiting policies to attract the intellectuals, particularly, the S&T experts, overseas Vietnamese scientists; thereby, they can coordinate in solving urgent problems of the capital and improve the state management competence in the science-technology area. Mr. Vuong Dinh Hue said that the “Hanoi Network Initiative” could be launched in October.
Article and photos by BACH HUY THANH