During the official state visit of General Secretary To Lam, First Lady, and the high-level Vietnamese delegation to the United Kingdom (28-30 October 2025), a cordial meeting took place at the Raffles Hotel, London, with representatives of the Vietnamese community, associations, intellectuals, students, and officials of the Vietnamese Embassy.
Introduced by the Ambassador to the UK, H.E. Do Minh Hung, Professor Nguyen Xuan Huan, Chair of the Vietnamese Intellectual Society in the UK and Ireland (VIS), was honoured to represent VIS at the event and deliver remarks on the organisation’s contributions and mission of developing Vietnam-UK-Ireland relations. In his address, Professor Huan emphasised the importance of understanding and addressing Vietnam’s development bottlenecks through collective expertise, proposing ways VIS can contribute solutions through research, dialogue, and joint projects. VIS recognised and appreciated the new and positive developments in Vietnam guided by several Politburo’s important Resolutions, particularly with the new direction of ‘introducing disrupted ideas,’ ‘clearing and solving bottlenecks,’ ‘investing and accepting risks of failure’ in science, technology and innovations (STI) in Resolution 57. He reiterated VIS’s responsibility and commitments to: i) provide a database of VIS experts, ready to address various challenges in Vietnam’s economic and social development; ii) support Vietnamese students and early career researchers/lecturers – nurturing a generation of innovators and changemakers. He also shared a powerful message for Vietnam’s HE education: “Students used to study to find a job. Now, they must study to create jobs.” On behalf of VIS, Professor Huấn also wished to witness the creation of a common research fund between the UK and Vietnam, supported by the two governments, to deliver jointly and highly strategic research projects between two countries in priority areas of STI, matching with the recent elevation of the Vietnam-UK relation to the highest and most comprehensive level.
General Secretary To Lam expressed warmly his appreciation for the contributions of overseas Vietnamese intellectuals and other Vietnamese communities, acknowledging their continued engagement with the country and their pivotal role in national development, especially in STI and education. He affirmed that the Vietnamese government values and welcomes the participation of global Vietnamese experts in building a prosperous and innovative nation, whether remotely or through activities in Vietnam, short-term or long-term.