Summary and overview

The main outcomes of my reseach is to do research on the current situation of Ho Chi Minh City's subnational friendly international cooperative relations by discovering its process from 1975 to clarify overview of the relations, the process of formation and development, affecting factors; achievements and shortcomings of the subnational friendly international cooperative relations of the city, then to forecast the development trend of Ho Chi Minh City's subnational friendly international cooperative relations and propose solutions to improve Ho Chi Minh City's subnational friendly international cooperative relations.

When collecting and analyzing data to answer the three reseach questions, I found that choosing Neo- functionalism as main theory of theoretical framework (in combination with Historical Institutionalism and Rational Choice theory) was suitable because Neo-functionalism assumes that integration takes place in low politics. In case of Ho Chi Minh City, the demand of economic, trade, tourism and others factors play significant role in boosting the City process of strong international cooperative relations.

In addition, Ho cHi Minh City, as subnational/substate government, and as other actor involved in international relations, not only in scale of nation. When having its certain activeness in subnational friendly international cooperative process, Ho Chi Minh city acted as an integration model for subnational/substate governments. It could learn from the way Vietnam participated in international political life, from which Ho Chi Minh city could take advantage of this model, or resources from their countries when participating in international activities. My research results also showed the interaction between Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh city in the integration process.

I also found that the process of the city’s subnational friendly international cooperative relations arised some main points as follows:

Starting as a fairly conservative locality in international relations after the liberation period, being limited to relations in the socialist bloc, so far the city has established friendly international cooperative relations with 53 localities on all continents, with cooperation projects spanning across a variety of fields. Through each stage, the speed of expanding subnational/substate friendly international cooperative relations of the City is increasingly fast. The city is becoming more proactive in identifying partners and areas of cooperation on the basis of its development priorities. The content of the documents signed in the framework of relations is increasingly substantive. Commitments are effectively implemented in reality, contributing to the implementation of national foreign policy; promoting the image and enhancing the international position of the City; promoting

88 trade turnover, capital inflows and foreign tourists to the City; bringing resources of capital, technology, experience, and helping to improve the quality of human resources of City officials. The results of the relationship also spill over to the non-state sector with the increasing participation of institutes, schools, businesses, social, and professional organizations in the process of implementing and benefiting from commitment within the framework of the relationship.

However, as a young locality in international cooperation activities, with limited external capacity of civil servants, also bound by both mechanical and legal constraints, the city inevitably restricts its implementation of the subnational/substate friendly international cooperative relations. The initiative of the City is generally not high, both when selecting partners and when implementing relations, so the effectiveness of the relationship network has not been maximized. Geographic diversity in the partner local system is not guaranteed, and the majority of localities where the city has a cooperative relationship were concentrated in Asia, especially in Northeast Asia, and have not focused on exploitation of good cooperation potential with developed partners in European and American countries. Collaborative projects are large in number but the quality of implementation and effectiveness is not uniform, some of them are still in the form of political gifts or are ‘clinically dead’. These limitations, if not frankly recognized and treated with a timely remedy, will be a significant deterrent to the City’s effort to fully exploit the important resources that this relationship group has brought about.

In the next five years, subnational/substate friendly international cooperative relations will still be an important external channel that helps the City mobilize external resources for socio-economic development. The degree of initiative from the two sides in the relationship will be gradually balanced as the city’s needs and priority development areas are increasingly clearly defined. The cooperation connotations in the framework of relations will increasingly approach the world, gradually getting into the trajectory of urgent needs that global megacities are focusing on solving, such as infrastructure, climate change, environmental pollution, renewable energy, sustainable development, etc. In addition, based on the development goals, the city’s demand for resources and the evolution of relations in recent years, it is reasonable to assume that the potential of existing partner localities will be better exploited by the City, while the subnational/substate friendly international cooperative relations of Ho Chi Minh City will be expanded to new areas, and the most promising are the Middle East and Africa. Besides, it is undeniable that in addition to the subnational/substate friendly international cooperative relation, other channels of cooperation such as cooperation with financial institutions, direct cooperation with foreign governments through the Foreign Mission and the Consulate Delegation, intensive cooperation in each field with international subnations/substates

89 (instead of signing an agreement to establish a comprehensive relationship framework) will increasingly dominate the international cooperation of the City.

In this context, in order to promote the aforementioned trends and improve the efficiency of the subnational/substate friendly international cooperative relations in attracting resources for development, the City needs to seriously consider the limitations in relations and causes of restrictions to conduct timely and synchronous remedies.