Long Live the Socialist Republic of Vietnam!

On September 2, 1945, the historic August Revolution of the Vietnamese people was successfully concluded and Vietnam emerged a sovereign independent country putting an end to a 1,000-year history of Chinese rule and close to 100 years of French colonial oppression and Japanese fascist occupation.

On that date, President Ho Chi Minh issued Vietnam's Declaration of Independence in Ba Dinh Square, Hanoi. Before a jubilant assembly of close to one million of his compatriots, he declared, "We, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country -- and in fact is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty."

National Day is ardently celebrated by close to 100 million Vietnamese in their homeland, the patriotic diaspora and friends of Vietnam worldwide. It is an occasion when Vietnamese people take stock of their achievements under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

It was in this spirit that Vietnam's President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his spouse chaired a ceremony in celebration of Vietnam's National Day at the International Convention Centre in Hanoi on August 31, attended by foreign diplomats and heads of international organizations.

Speaking at the event, President Phuc pointed out that since declaring its independence, Vietnam has surmounted countless difficulties and challenges to firmly maintain independence, reunify the country, and obtain many proud development achievements.

In his remarks, President Phuc highlighted Vietnam's achievements in foreign relations. It has diplomatic ties with 190 countries and played an important role in various international fora and meetings in recent years. For example, Vietnam successfully hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings throughout 2017, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea-United States Summit in 2019, chairing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2020, and serving as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for 2020-2021. It was recently elected to the UNESCO Executive Board for 2021-2025 and re-elected to the International Law Commission.

President Phuc expressed appreciation for the precious support and effective cooperation from countries, international organizations and partners, businesses, investors, friends, and people around the world for Vietnam, especially in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

He used his remarks on National Day to call on other countries to expand cooperation with Vietnam to help achieve fast and sustainable development. The President suggested four cooperation priorities: sustaining peace and stability, respecting international law and the UN Charter, maintaining a favourable international environment for economic recovery cooperation; continuing to substantively promote cooperative ties, with a focus on developing infrastructure, ensuring sustainable supply chains, and effectively implementing the agreements on digital transformation, green economy, human resources, and science-technology; enhancing partnerships in climate change response, epidemic prevention and control, health care capacity and social security improvement, and wealth gap and social inequality narrowing; and increasing forms of connectivity, all-level mutual visits, exchanges of business delegations, and people-to-people exchange.

On the anniversary of Vietnam's hard-won independence, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) extended its warmest revolutionary greetings to the Communist Party of Vietnam, the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnamese people everywhere.