The auditorium at the National Convention center erupted in applause when President Nguyen Minh Triet told overseas Vietnamese that they were the “blood and bones” of Vietnam.

Triet’s speech marked the opening of the first-ever international conference on overseas Vietnamese, known as Viet kieu, a three-day event that ended Monday in Hanoi.

The nearly 900 overseas Vietnamese, who traveled to the conference from 101 countries and territories worldwide, showed a keen desire to learn more about Vietnam’s economic progress and its administrative reform movement.

Flow of funds

In 2008, Vietnam’s overseas remittances totaled US$7.4 billion, which director of the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Nguyen Thanh Son said was incredible considering that total ODA (official development assistance) committed to Vietnam over the period stood at around $5 billion.

However, Pham Van Thanh, chairman of the Association of Overseas Vietnamese Entrepreneurs in Canada, said overseas investors still encountered many risks on the Vietnamese market and had to deal with burdensome administrative procedures.

Thanh suggested Vietnam allow overseas Vietnamese investors the right to withdraw and remit their investment funds back to their countries if necessary. He also said assistance programs for overseas Vietnamese returning here for business would encourage more Viet kieu investors.

“I think it is not just about having a resolution. It’s about making the overseas Vietnamese community feel that they are an inseparable part of this country,” Thanh said.

Cultural inheritance

The conference also focused on the issue of maintaining Vietnamese culture and traditions abroad, especially among the second and third generations of Viet kieu.

Le Thi Bich Huong, an overseas Vietnamese from Brazil and head of the Italy-Brazil joint education project, said Vietnam should consider implementing cultural exchange projects with relevant ministries in other countries.

Huong, whom the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had previously awarded with a certificate recognizing her efforts to promote Vietnamese culture in Brazil, said activities that promote Vietnamese cultures in Brazil were still very limited.

“The things I’ve done to promote our culture abroad originate from my love for this country,” Huong said. “There should be more coordinated efforts from our government agencies abroad to organize such activities.”

Huong said in the near future she planned to work with the Vietnamese Embassy in Brazil to hold photo exhibitions, Vietnamese film festivals in her hometown of Belo Horizonte, and also to introduce water puppets and quan ho kinh bac (northern folk songs) at local schools that are under her program.

Questions

Thirty-two-year-old Nguyen Duc Khuong left Vietnam in 2000 for France after graduating from Hanoi University of Commerce.

Now an associate professor of finance and head of the Department of Economics, Finance, and Law at the ISC Paris of School of Management, Khuong said many Vietnamese intellectuals who left the country to study in France had never lost the desire to work in Vietnam.

“I’ve read about our policies to encourage overseas intellectuals to return home and work but the question is where they should be placed and whether they can find an appropriate position,” Khuong said.

He noted that qualified Viet kieu would not want to start at zero, meaning low-level positions. He said whether or not Viet kieu would come back to work in Vietnam would depend on “whether we give them enough responsibility.”

The State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese estimates only about 200 out of 300,000 Viet kieu intellectuals return annually to Vietnam for research, work or teaching-related purposes.

Tran Dinh Lam, a professor at Abai University in Almaty City, Kazakhstan, which is considered one of the leading universities in Central Asia, said most overseas Vietnamese professors hoping to return to work in Vietnam were not worried about salaries.

“I think we have to ask the questions of whether the Ministry of Education and Training, along with our universities, would allow them the right to teach and conduct research if they return.”

VietNamNet/Thanh Nien