Ceremony Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Traditional Day of the Culture Sector: General Secretary Tô Lâm Assigns 10 Key Tasks for the Culture Sector

On the morning of August 23, 2025, at the Hanoi Opera House, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism organized the Ceremony to Commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the Traditional Day of the Culture Sector (August 28, 1945 – August 28, 2025). The event was attended by General Secretary Tô Lâm and Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính. In his speech at the ceremony, the General Secretary emphasized the requirement: “Culture must take the lead,” playing a guiding role, strengthening national resilience, consolidating faith, and building the nation’s soft power in the context of rapid global changes, strategic competition, information explosion, and strong digital transformation.

General Secretary Tô Lâm delivering his speech at the Ceremony. (Photo: Portal of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism)

Culture as the “Root Energy” and Spiritual Foundation of Society

At the ceremony, the General Secretary expressed pride in joining delegates to commemorate the glorious 80th anniversary of the Culture Sector. He recalled the consistent viewpoint of the Party on the special position of culture, from the 1943 Outline on Vietnamese Culture with its three principles “National – Scientific – Popular,” to the affirmation that “Culture lights the way for the nation,” “Culture is a front,” and cultural workers are fighters. According to the General Secretary, through various Party Congresses, Resolutions, Conclusions, and Directives of the Central Committee, Politburo, and Secretariat, there has been unanimous emphasis: Culture is the spiritual foundation of society, both a goal and a driving force for development; culture is soft power and the “root energy” of the nation.

Culture lights the way for the nation. (Photo: Portal of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism)

In practice, the General Secretary stressed the need to integrate culture closely with political, economic, and social life; to infuse culture into every policy decision, every project, every community, and to make it present in thoughts, actions, and behaviors. Culture, he said, helps shape the national value system, family value system, and the value system of Vietnamese people in the new era, characterized by qualities such as patriotism, compassion, unity, honesty, responsibility, creativity, discipline, and aspiration.

10 Key Tasks and Solutions

Accordingly, the General Secretary outlined 10 key tasks that the Culture Sector must focus on implementing:

First, continue to thoroughly grasp and comprehensively implement the Party’s guidelines and viewpoints on culture; place culture on par with economy, politics, and society; concretize this through strategies, plans, programs, and focused projects; ensure adequate resources, breakthrough mechanisms, clear decentralization and delegation; strengthen supervision, evaluation, and inspection.
Second, build a healthy cultural environment in families, schools, and society; promote the exemplary role of cadres and Party members; intensify education on ethics, lifestyles, digital skills, and behavioral culture; prevent and combat domestic violence and school violence; develop civilized and safe digital culture; build grassroots cultural communities rich in identity, bright, green, clean, and beautiful.
Third, nurture, value, and honor intellectuals, artists, coaches, athletes, tourism entrepreneurs, and cultural workers at all levels, especially at the grassroots; establish mechanisms for commissioning, awarding prizes, supporting creativity, protecting copyright and related rights; improve material and spiritual lives for cultural workers; encourage young talents; discover and nurture creative seeds from schools, clubs, and grassroots cultural facilities.
Fourth, develop cultural industries and the creative economy as new pillars of growth; complete the cultural market institution, financial mechanisms, tax policies, credit, land, investment, and data; encourage cultural enterprises and creative startups; develop digital infrastructure for production, distribution, and consumption of cultural products; build creative clusters and zones linked to major cities and tourism centers.
Fifth, preserve, restore, and promote heritage in connection with community livelihoods and sustainable development; strongly apply digital technology and artificial intelligence in digitizing heritage, exhibitions, performances, and education; build “digital culture” institutions, “open museums,” “mobile theaters,” and “digital libraries” friendly to all ages; develop responsible heritage tourism; nurture “living cultural assets” such as artisans and folk artists.
Sixth, achieve breakthroughs in mass sports and high-performance sports; emphasize physical education in schools; develop club systems and public sports spaces; improve scientific and sports medicine capacity; recruit and train young athletes to modern standards; expand international cooperation; set high, sustainable, and humane goals.
Seventh, restructure and enhance the quality and competitiveness of Vietnamese tourism; develop products with cultural identity and rich experiences; promote smart, green, clean tourism with reduced emissions; foster inter-regional and inter-sectoral connectivity; improve human resource quality; enforce discipline and standardize services; build destination brands.
Eighth, strengthen cultural diplomacy and promote the national image; actively participate in international creative networks; organize regional and global-scale events, festivals, and cultural weeks; bring Vietnamese excellence to the world and bring global excellence to Vietnam in a spirit of respecting differences, mutual learning, integration without assimilation.
Ninth, comprehensively promote digital transformation in the sector; build large databases on heritage, arts, sports, and tourism; complete open standards and digital cultural maps; develop digital content distribution platforms and copyright protection tools; apply data analysis and extended reality technologies in museums, performances, and education; enhance information security, combat harmful and distorting content.
Tenth, continue to defeat plots of “peaceful evolution” in ideology and culture; resolutely protect the Party’s ideological foundation; build a “soft shield” of values, faith, and social norms; improve policy communication capacity; proactively inspire positive values and replicate good people and good deeds.

Tribute to Generations of “Cultural Soldiers” and Recognition of the Sector’s Contributions

The General Secretary also expressed gratitude to generations of cadres in the Culture, Information, Sports, and Tourism sectors; artists, journalists, educators, researchers; grassroots cultural workers, librarians, museum staff, heritage site staff; tour guides, tourism entrepreneurs; coaches, athletes, and non-professional cultural workers in villages, hamlets, and residential groups.

General Secretary Tô Lâm emphasized: We will forever remember the first steps of cultural fighters during the revolutionary upsurge, when every propaganda poster, song, newspaper page, or performance in village courtyards or rice fields became flames.

In the General Uprising to seize power and the early days of building revolutionary government, we cannot forget the great cultural figures who created the National Flag, Anthem, and Emblem of the Democratic Republic; during the resistance against colonialism and imperialism, countless generations of artists, information and propaganda cadres, and grassroots cultural workers merged with the people, carrying passion across mountains, plains, and cities.

They traversed every region, “enduring rain and eating rice balls” on battlefields with soldiers, civilian laborers, and military campaigns, lighting oil lamps in field bunkers, playing instruments by campfires, writing poems and songs, drawing sketches from the front lines where arrows and bullets flew; they engaged in psychological warfare through culture, fought the enemy with musical instruments and pens… Many comrades fell, sacrificing youth and talent, so that culture became a sharp weapon, faith spread, and indomitable will multiplied.

In peacetime, construction, development, and renewal, culture remains the vanguard on the ideological and spiritual front. Movements such as “All-people unity to build cultural life,” “Building new rural areas and civilized urban areas,” and developing cultural schools, agencies, and enterprises have contributed to transforming the face of life.

Generations of heritage cadres braved sun and rain to preserve ancient roofs, plaques, and bricks; countless librarians diligently worked among books; countless artists quietly rehearsed behind stage curtains; countless reporters and photographers captured iconic moments of life’s breath; countless tour guides added smiles to the national brand; countless coaches and athletes shed sweat and tears for the Vietnamese flag to fly on international arenas.

We bow in tribute to the martyrs, wounded, and sick of the sector; express gratitude to families and loved ones of generations of cultural cadres. Every contribution and sacrifice forms our shared memory, creating a vivid bas-relief of modern Vietnamese culture.

General Secretary Tô Lâm, on behalf of Party and State leaders, presented the First-Class Labor Medal to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. (Photo: Portal of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism)

Within the ceremony, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism received the First-Class Labor Medal; many individuals and collectives with outstanding achievements in the 2023–2025 period were commended and honored.

In his response, Minister Nguyễn Văn Hùng, on behalf of the Ministry’s leadership, respectfully thanked and affirmed that the Ministry would seriously absorb the General Secretary’s directives to concretize them into plans and action programs in the coming time; he also requested Party committees, authorities, and political-social organizations to continue paying attention, creating favorable conditions, and mobilizing social resources for the development of culture, sports, and tourism.