Vietnam in the center-periphery relations from the viewpoint of sociocultural spatial theory

Abstract

In global world today, the sociocultural space possesses a new important feature, that is inter-spatial relationship. A country can creates sociocultural space beyond its ecological-environmental space. Some researchers have been mentioning the phenomenon of ‘Goodbye China’ or ‘De sinisation’ in Japan and Republic of Korea. Others considers this phenomenon as the ‘breaking from center’ to develop. In fact, according to our opinion, this is the issue of ‘selecting center’, not the ‘giving up the center’ or ‘breaking from center’. Japan and Republic of Korea have reselected the center, moving from old center to the new advanced one, that is the West, creating a inter-spatial sociocultural region. By that way, they have developed in order to tear themselve from periphery status, becoming a new center of the region and even of the world.

In relations between Vietnam and Northeast Asia, Vietnam shouldn't regard China as the only center that satisfies any development requirements. The success of Japan and Republic of Korea indicates the fact that a country can select itself many centers for utilizing advanced conditions to develop. We have been pursuing multilateral policy in international relations. However, scattering multilateral relations will result in dispersive cooperation without utilizing the strong points of some spearheads of the world. In this light, we still utilize the positive resources from the China center, but we should select other centers as partners. We had better place the center-periphery relations as priority, not disperse multilateral international relations. The current center-periphery relations is the center-periphery interaction in sociocultural space of the ‘flat world’ beyond the ecological space. This fact requires us to change our traditional view on close three-dimension sociocultural space. That is the sense of selecting center in global world, if we don’t want to be left behind in periphery status.