(VOVworld) – Vietnamese localities are celebrating the 100^th birth anniversary of late Party General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh, a prominent student of President Ho Chi Minh. Mr. Linh was best known as the architect of Vietnam’s renewal. 

Party leader Linh’s life was linked with Vietnam’s revolution through the 2 national resistance wars against foreign invaders. But he was best remembered for initiating Vietnam’s renewal process. In the 1980s Vietnam was experiencing high inflation because the economy was devastated by the war and hindered by a US embargo. Linh applied the practical experience of HCM city to reforming Vietnam, focusing on 3 major economic programs centered around production. Associate Professor Doctor Nguyen Trong Phuc, former Director of the Institute of Party History of the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Public Administration, said: “With the Party politburo Party leader Nguyen Van Linh discussed national renewal based on the experience of HCM city and the southern region. He was considered the architect of Vietnam’s renewal process.”

According to Mr. Linh, renewal was a revolution, a complicated and contentious process that required consistency. With daring measures to tackle issues concerning economics, the market, and commodity production with a focus on economic efficiency, Mr. Linh helped to design a new management and production method, which eased the rigid control of the central bureaucratic, administrative, subsidy system. In 1989, 3 years after the 6^th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Vietnam began to export rice for the first time. Rapid progress bolstered people’s trust in the Party’s renewal policy and socialism. People’s teacher Dao Xuan Sam, former head of the Economic Management Department of the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Public Administration, said: “The 6^th National Party Congress accepted a market economy under state management with the domestic market linked to the world market. At that time we decided to liberalize prices and give up coupons. This was the most important turning point in the renewal process. For the first time, people went to the market to spend money instead of coupons and they no longer had to wait in long queues.”

Party leader Linh was a staunch, innovative leader, who always adhered to socialist orientations with respect to the people’s right to mastery. Professor Doctor Pham Ngoc Anh, Director of the Institute of Ho Chi Minh and Other Party Leaders, said: “Party leader Linh had an innovative working style. He was a practical man.”