Abstract:
Developing the digital economy is now an inevitable requirement for countries. In recent years, Vietnam has shown significant interest and has implemented many policies to develop the digital economy. These policies have opened up numerous opportunities and established new requirements for intellectuals, especially young intellectuals. This paper analyzed Vietnam's digital economic development policies and the requirements for young intellectuals in the current period.
Keywords: digital economy, young intellectuals, policy.
1. Introduction
Developing the digital economy is a common trend worldwide and an inevitable requirement for countries today. The value that the digital economy brings to countries is growing every day. Therefore, countries have different strategies and solutions to develop digital technology and the digital economy. In recent years, Vietnam has shown significant interest in the digital economy and has implemented many policies to develop it. These policies have opened up many opportunities and favorable conditions for organizations and individuals to advance their activities.
Intellectuals, especially young intellectuals, are a important resource in the process of developing digital technology and digital economy. This is a well-trained, qualified, and knowledgeable workforce capable of examining and applying new technology products to benefit society and foster social development. In recent years, young Vietnamese intellectuals have strived to demonstrate their role and have made meaningful contributions to the country's development process. However, with the rapid development of digital transformation and the Government's current digital transformation policies, the question that arises and needs to be clarified is: What do young intellectuals need to do to seize the opportunities that Government policies bring to develop Vietnam's digital economy? This article focuses on analyzing Vietnam's digital economy development policies and the requirements for young intellectuals in the current period.
2. Concepts
2.1. Digital economy
There are many different definitions of digital economy. According to the general definition of Oxford's Digital Economy Collaboration, the digital economy is "an economy that operates mainly based on digital technology, especially electronic transactions conducted via the Internet" [4]. The digital economy is also sometimes called the internet economy, new economy or web economy. Most countries and international organizations agree that the digital economy is an economy based on digital technology and digital platforms, with economic activities conducted through and by digital technology and digital platforms, especially electronic transactions conducted on the internet.
According to "Vietnam Private Economic Forum 2019" , the digital economy is all economic activities based on digital platforms. Digital economic development activities involve using digital technology and data to create new business and cooperation models, consistent with the development trend of modern technology [2]. In the digital economy, businesses will innovate traditional production and business processes to an ecosystem model, linking production, trade and use, which will increase labor productivity as well as economic efficiency. The digital economy not only enhances the scale and growth speed of economies, but also transforms economies in two aspects: production methods (resources, infrastructure, methods of organizing production and business activities) and economic structure. In the digital economy, in addition of traditional resources, new development resources such as digital resources and digital assets appear. Financial power is gradually shifting to information power. A country's strength is measured by the development of high technology, information and human intelligence.
2.2. Young intellectuals
In today's knowledge society, intellectuals play an extremely important role, especially young intellectuals. Many different concepts of intelligence have been proposed. However, in the most general sense, intellectuals are people with a systematic education, a tendency to criticize reality and defend social ethical values. The concept of “intelligence” in Russian is defined as a group of intellectual workers in society who work primarily in complex creative fields, develop and disseminate education and culture, and possess distinct spiritual aspirations, morality, duty and honor [5]. According to K. Marx and F. Engels, intelligence was born as a consequence of the historical social division of labor. Intellectuals appear when there is a deep division of labor in society between manual and intellectual labor.
In Vietnam, inheriting the Marxist-Leninist view of intelligence, President Ho Chi Minh clearly defined the nature and characteristics of intellectuals immediately after the Democratic Republic of Vietnam established. He pointed out: “Intelligence is knowledge... A person who has received a university education can be called an intellectual. However, if he doesn't know anything about real work, he only has half the intelligence. His intelligence is educated intelligence, not complete intelligence. If he wants to become a fully intelligent man, he must put this intelligence into practice” [3]. This means that intellectuals must not only be educated but also be able to practice and apply their knowledge to directly serve society.
At the 7th Central Conference, Vietnam Communist Party first introduced the concept of intellectuals: "Intellectuals are intellectual workers, highly educated in certain professional fields, capable of independent thinking, creativity, spreading and enriching knowledge, creating spiritual and material products that are valuable to society" [5].
Thus, there are many different definitions of "intellectual" worldwide. However, each definition only expresses a certain cognitive aspect, generalizing a certain group of characteristics and properties of the object. The Party's concept of intellectuals can be considered as the full and comprehensive concept of intellectuals.
Based on the concept of intellectuals, we see some outstanding characteristics of intellectuals as follows:
First, regardless the place or period, intellectuals are defined as highly educated, deeply specialized in a field and knowledgeable. The educational and professional qualifications of intellectuals are reflected not only in degrees, academic titles, but also in creative capacity, valuable experiences and knowledge that are universal and influential to the community and society. This is accumulated and drawn from the process of intellectual work and scientific thinking, with the capacity for independent thinking and creativity. Moreover, the intellectual work of intellectuals is a regular, continuous, professional activity, involving the application of knowledge to discover and invent products (both material and spiritual). In particular, spiritual products created by intellectuals are very difficult to "value", but often have a strong impact on the development of all aspects of social life.
Second, in addition to the ability to think and work intellectually, true intellectuals also have a positive ideological and spiritual life, moral qualities, self-awareness, and a sense of responsibility to society. They are always devoted to the development and progress of people and society, conscious and ready to defend justice. The products they create provide value by guiding, offering and guiding society towards the values of truth, goodness and beauty, for the people and putting people at the center. If someone has a high level of education but lacks of these elements of personality, morals and ideals, he is not an intellectual in a positive sense.
From the concept of intellectuals, we can infer that young intellectuals are those who are young in both age and career. This is a team of knowledgeable, well-trained, qualified, healthy, youthful and enthusiastic individual with the ability to quickly access and master modern technology. Therefore, in the digital economy, young intellectuals have many opportunities to develop, but they must also make efforts, strive, and improve themselves to meet the requirements and demands of reality.
3. Vietnam's digital economic development policy
In recent period, the Government has issued many policies to accelerate digital transformation according to the trends in the world and meet the requirements of practical. The Government has adopted policies to develop e-transactions (Law on Electronic Transactions), personal data security policies and has promulgated the Law on Cyber Security. In particular, on June 3, 2020, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 749/QD-TTg approving the "National digital Transformation Program to 2025, with orientation to 2030". The National Digital Transformation Program aims at both developing the digital government, digital economy, digital society, and forming Vietnamese digital technology enterprises capable of going global. In particular, specific goals related to the digital economy are as follows:
Table 1: Vietnam's digital economy goals until 2025 and 2030
|
Year 2025 |
Year 2030 |
|
Digital economy accounts for 20% of GDP |
Digital economy accounts for 30% GDP |
|
The proportion of digital economy in each industry and field reaches at least 10% |
The proportion of digital economy in each industry and field reaches at least 20% |
|
Annual labor productivity increases at least 7% |
Annual labor productivity increases at least 8% |
|
Vietnam belongs to the group of 50 leading countries in information technology |
Vietnam belongs to the group of 30 leading countries in information technology |
|
Vietnam belongs to the group of 50 leading countries in terms of competitiveness index |
Vietnam belongs to the group of 30 leading countries in terms of competitiveness index |
|
Vietnam belongs to the group of 35 leading countries in innovation |
Vietnam belongs to the group of 30 leading countries in innovation |
Source: National digital Transformation Program to 2025, with orientation to 2030 [6]
To achieve the above goal, the Program has stipulated many policies for the digital economy, creating favorable conditions for individuals and organizations to operate and develop, including young intellectuals.
First, the Government will create institutions in the direction of encouraging and ready to accept products, solutions, services, and business models, and promote new management methods for newly arising relationships in which ready to accept testing of products, solutions, services, and digital business models while legal regulations are not complete and clear, in parallel with the completion of the legal corridor. This will encourage innovation, creativity, daring to think and daring to do to create new products and new business models. This mechanism of the Government will create favorable conditions for young intellectuals to develop their new, sometimes unusual ideas in order to create breakthroughs and meet the requirements of practice.
Second, the Government focuses on developing digital infrastructure, ready to meet the explosive demand for data connection and processing, network monitoring functions to each network node and ensuring safety and security. The network is integrated right from the design and construction. This is a necessary condition to be able to implement digital economic activities. This will create infrastructure and conditions for individuals and organizations to carry out digital transformation and e-transactions activities.
Third, the Government prioritizes attracting talents and cooperating with large organizations and enterprises worldwide for research, development and innovation. The Government facilitates and formulates specific action programs for research, transfer, and deployment of new technologies in Vietnam, connecting the knowledge chain from research and development to trade. The Government prioritizes research on a number of core technologies that Vietnam can leapfrog and have the ability to create strong breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR). This government policy is suitable and creates many opportunities for intellectuals in general and young intellectuals in particular to promote their research abilities. Competent intellectuals will be respected and facilitated to carry out research activities to create new technologies, especially core technologies for digital transformation development. This will attract intellectuals to focus on researching, developing technology and putting these technology products into practical use. This process will create many "Make in Vietnam" products, thereby increasing the efficiency of investment in research.
Fourth, the Government supports the development of digital technology enterprises, including incentives for startups that apply digital technology to create new products and services in socio-economic sectors and innovative start-up enterprises in digital technology. This is another opportunity for young intellectuals who love and are passionate about business. They will be facilitated and given incentives when starting a business based on their own digital technology research products.
Fifth, the Government encourages and facilitates the development of digital content products, digital media, digital advertising, creative industry development and Vietnam's diverse and attractive digital content ecosystem. Accompanying this policy, the Government will strengthen the construction of infrastructure systems and services to support the development of e-commerce. This opportunity is very good for young intellectuals to promote their youth, content creation ideas and ability to master digital media technology to promote products to the market in the fastest, most authentic and most effective way.
Thanks to national digital transformation efforts, Vietnam's digital economy has expanded in scale to reach 14 billion USD in 2020, contributing 5% of GDP and ranking second in ASEAN in term of digital economic growth rate (after Indonesia). Currently, Vietnam has the largest proportion of the total value of digital economic goods in the region, reaching 4% of GDP; followed by Singapore with 3,2% of GDP; Indonesia with 2.9% of GDP; Thailand and Malaysia each with 2.7% of GDP; and the Philippines with 1.6% of GDP (2020). Regarding the scale of the digital economy, Vietnam ranks 3rd in the region, reaching a value of 9 billion USD (after Indonesia and Thailand) [2].
Figure 1: Proportion of total value of digital economy goods compared
to GDP of some ASEAN countries
Source: FSI (2022), Digital economic development trends of Vietnam and some countries around the world, https://fsivietnam.com.vn/kinh-te-so/ [2]
Thus, we see that Vietnam has paid great attention and has many policies focused on developing the digital economy, toward fast and sustainable development. These policy measures have had a positive impact and opened up many development opportunities for Vietnam. In recent years, young intellectuals of Vietnam have strived, tried and affirmed their role in the process of digital transformation and digital economic development. However, through the practical results that researches has shown, currently, the digital transformation and digital economy development of our country still has some limitations as follows:
- Digital social and e-commerce platforms are still limited, affecting the ability to be autonomous in national digital transformation;
- Human resources for digital transformation have not met the needs of both quantity and quality, and are not evenly distributed;
- Cyber safety and security still have many potential risks;
- Digital economic development must strongly apply modern science and technology, promote innovation and entrepreneurship, in order to improve production capacity, labor productivity, competitiveness, create jobs and livelihood for people.
These are the issues and requirements that need to be resolved so that our country's digital transformation and economic development can succeed and meet practical requirements. This process requires the efforts and contributions of young intellectuals today.
4. Some issues for young intellectuals in current digital economy
Through the above analysis, we see that digital economic development is an inevitable trend. Young intellectuals play an important role in this development process. The current digital economic development environment at home and abroad is bringing many opportunities but also posing many challenges for young intellectuals of Vietnam today. To grasp the opportunities that the Government's policies have paved the way and at the same time contribute to solving the limitations facing the digital transformation process, young Vietnamese intellectuals need to focus on the following issues:
- Enhance learning, improve professional qualifications and technological capacity. In order to access and master the digital economy, young intellectuals need to have good knowledge and professional capacity, in addition to the ability to access and master digital and modern technologies. Therefore, an important and urgent requirement is that young intellectuals need to constantly study and improve their qualifications and technological skills anytime, anywhere, in any working position.
- Young intellectuals need to actively grasp world trends and the Government's orientations and policies. This is especially important. It is necessary to properly grasp and understand the Government’s policies and regulations, so that young intellectuals can comply with the Government’s regulations, avoid violations, and at the same time take advantage of opportunities, advantages and incentives that Government policies bring and determine the right direction for their work.
- Enhance exchanges and cooperation with domestic and foreign intellectuals to learn experiences and cooperate in research and development of digital production and business activities. Young Vietnamese intellectuals are ready to join and cooperate with international research organizations, joint ventures, affiliated companies, and multinational companies to have ready access to new products and new technologies. and new forms of production and business to access and master these contents, while expanding cooperation and affirming the role and position of young Vietnamese intellectuals in digital transformation and the world digital economy.
- Research to master digital technology, produce digital devices, create digital content products, digital media, digital advertising, develop creative industries, promote the development of digital commerce and e-commerce. This is an inevitable trend and young Vietnamese intellectuals need to master and apply this field in life to promote the development of the digital economy.
- Promote creative startups, build enterprises that create products to serve social needs, including the application digital technology and digital commerce to production and business activities. Young Vietnamese intellectuals need to promote creative start-up activities, especially start-ups based on their research and creative products, and increase the use of digital commerce in production and business activities to reduce costs, strengthen connections with the market and improve operational efficiency.
It is especially important that young Vietnamese intellectuals need to focus on fostering moral qualities, self-awareness, responsibility to the community, and always dedicate themselves to the development and progress of people and society, have conscience and are ready to protect justice. The thoughts and actions of young intellectuals should always be directed towards good things for society, for the sustainable development of society, for the development and progress of people in society. All activities of young intellectuals are aimed at serving people, serving society, and making people's lives better. When young intellectuals are qualified, capable, have good moral qualities, and have a sense of responsibility to the community, then they will become a strong resource for the development of the country and the world.
5. Conclusions
In recent years, Vietnam has been very interested in digital transformation and digital economy development. The Government has policies to create favorable conditions for individuals and organizations to implement digital transformation and develop the digital economy. This is a great opportunity for young intellectuals, but at the same time, it also poses many requirements for this team. Young Vietnamese intellectuals need to cultivate their knowledge and technological skills, engage in creative research, production, and business activities, and practice ethics and social responsibility to promote their role and contribute to the sustainable development of the country.
References:
- The Xth Party Central Committee (2008). Resolution No. 27-NQ/TW, dated August 6, 2008, of the Seventh Conference "On building a team of intellectuals in the period of accelerated industrialization, modernizing the country", printed in: Full Party Documents, Publishing House. National politics Truth, Hanoi, 67, 792 - 793.
- FSI (2022). Digital economic development trends of Vietnam and some countries around the world. Available at: https://fsivietnam.com.vn/kinh-te-so/
- Ho Chi Minh: Full volume. Publishing House. National politics Truth, Hanoi, 2011, 5, 275.
- Le Dieu Huyen (2021). Digital economy and development potential in Vietnam. Available at: https://niics.gov.vn/kinh-te-so/kinh-te-so-va-tiem-nang-phat-trien-tai-viet-nam.
- Vu Trong Lam, Conception of intellectual. Available at: https://special.nhandan.vn/quan-niem-ve-tri-thuc/index.html
- Prime Minister (2020). Decision No. 749/QD-TTg approving the "National digital transformation program to 2025, orientation to 2030".
- Ha Van (2023). Prime Minister: 4 priorities for further breakthrough in digital transformation. Available at: https://baochinhphu.vn/thu-tuong-4-uu-tien-de-dot-pha-hon-nua-ve-chuyen-doi-so-102230712181759956.htm.
CHÍNH SÁCH CỦA NHÀ NƯỚC VÀ NHỮNG YÊU CẦU ĐẶT RA
ĐỐI VỚI TRÍ THỨC TRẺ CỦA VIỆT NAM TRONG NỀN KINH TẾ SỐ
TS. Nguyễn Thị Gấm
Học viện Kỹ thuật Quân sự
Tóm tắt:
Phát triển nền kinh tế số là yêu cầu tất yếu hiện nay đối với các quốc gia. Trong những năm qua, Việt Nam đã rất quan tâm và có nhiều chính sách để phát triển nền kinh tế số. Những chính sách này đã mở ra nhiều cơ hội nhưng cũng đặt ra những yêu cầu mới đối với đội ngũ trí thức, đặc biệt là trí thức trẻ. Bài viết này phân tích chính sách phát triển nền kinh tế số của Việt Nam và những yêu cầu đặt ra đối với trí thức trẻ trong giai đoạn hiện nay.
Từ khóa: kinh tế số, trí thức trẻ, chính sách.
[Tạp chí Công Thương - Các kết quả nghiên cứu khoa học và ứng dụng công nghệ, Số 11 tháng 5 năm 2024]
