Hanoi City Calls on Intellectuals and Scientists to Address Key Challenges

Hanoi City hosted a meeting on July 29 with prominent artists, intellectuals, and artisans from across the city. The event, chaired by Politburo member and Hanoi Party Committee Secretary Tran Duc Thang, focused on exchanging ideas regarding strategic issues for the capital's development in its new phase. During the meeting, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hoai Son, a standing member of the National Assembly's Culture and Social Affairs Committee, presented methodologies for transforming cultural heritage into developmental resources, soft power, sources of creativity, and the capital's competitiveness. He urged Hanoi to establish groundbreaking mechanisms to turn cultural heritage into creative assets and develop the cultural industry to a level befitting the capital. Furthermore, the necessity of constructing and expanding systems for practical real-world problems and open data platforms across various sectors such as transportation, environment, healthcare, education, tourism, and culture was highlighted. The formation of mechanisms allowing the startup community to access high-performance computing infrastructure, laboratories, research equipment, and technology platforms from universities, research institutes, and businesses at reasonable costs was also proposed. Secretary Tran Duc Thang emphasized that Hanoi is entering a new development phase aiming to become a "Civilized-Modern-Happy" capital. He reaffirmed the development path centered on people, based on culture, driven by science, technology, and innovation. The Secretary underscored the crucial role of intellectuals, scientists, artists, and artisans, expecting their contributions to solving 30 major issues and 5 bottlenecks for the capital. Collaboration between universities, research institutes, and the city was called for to promote the development of key laboratories, core technologies, strategic products, technology transfer, and commercialization of research results, especially in fields like AI, semiconductors, biotechnology, healthcare, environment, and new materials. The city committed to fostering connections between research, experimentation, and production to ensure intellectual property is commercialized and contributes to the growth of both the capital and the nation. Artists and artisans are expected to play a vital role in preserving and enhancing the cultural identity of Thang Long-Hanoi, building a civilized living environment, developing the cultural industry, and effectively utilizing heritage spaces such as the Hoan Kiem Lake pedestrian zone and Thang Long Imperial Citadel to improve the spiritual quality of life for the capital's residents. Secretary Thang stated that the voices of intellectuals are critically important in connecting the government with the people, tradition with modernity, and developmental aspirations with the sustainable values of Thang Long-Hanoi. He urged them to leverage their wisdom and influence to collaborate in building an orderly, safe, civilized, and harmonious society.