Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam is living up to its ASEAN 2020 chairmanship theme of“cohesive and responsive” amid challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, tensionsin the East Sea, and US-China trade tensions, according to a Singaporean-basedscholar.

Vietnam’srelations with the rest of Southeast Asia have never been better, Yang RazaliKassim, Senior Fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies(RSIS) at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), wrote in acommentary.

After 25years in ASEAN, he wrote, Vietnam’s economy has developed rapidly. It is nowone of the fastest-growing new economies in Asia. This positive change iswidely acknowledged by ASEAN leaders. One of the engines of Vietnam’s rapideconomic growth is its bilateral ties with the more developed ASEAN economies,especially Singapore.

The firsttime Hanoi took up ASEAN chairmanship was in 1998 - just three years after itjoined the bloc, Kassim continued. As its confidence grew, it took up therotating chair again in 2010 and this year for the third time.

ASEANchairmanship is significant as it underscores the depth of trust and comraderythe rest of ASEAN has in Vietnam, he said. As this year’s Chair, Vietnam’sobjective is for ASEAN to be “Cohesive and Responsive”.

Cohesivenessrefers to Hanoi’s aim to reinforce ASEAN unity and solidarity in the face ofcommon challenges. Responsiveness was on display in relation to COVID-19, whereVietnam demonstrated its hope of giving ASEAN a large degree of resilience toshocks and crises, and the disease was certainly a major shock.

Thepandemic was unprecedented, wreaking havoc globally and in Southeast Asia justas Vietnam took over the rotating ASEAN Chair. COVID-19 is no doubt thetoughest of challenges and has been severely testing Vietnam’s role as ASEANChair. While the country has to rally ASEAN towards a common strategy to fightthe deadly virus, it also has to take care on the homefront.

Vietnam’sfirm prevention strategy eventually slowed down the spread of the disease,having just 342 confirmed cases and no deaths as of June 18. It is now being toutedas a model for how to successfully manage COVID-19.

Hefurther noted that Vietnam’s chairmanship suffered a setback when COVID-19forced the postponement of the US-ASEAN Summit and the 36th ASEAN Summit, whichwere originally scheduled for April.

Amidlockdown throughout the region, Vietnam hosted the first teleconference of theASEAN Coordinating Council Working Group on public health emergencies, on March31.

It thenhosted a virtual Special ASEAN Plus Three (APT) Summit on April 14 with China,Japan, and the Republic of Korea, which led to a decision to set up a jointfund to fight COVID-19. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong emphasisedhow critical it was for ASEAN to mount a united response to the pandemic,“because of how connected and interdependent we are.”

Againstthe current exacting backdrop, Vietnam is hosting the delayed ASEAN Summit onlineon June 26, and the country will competently coordinate and marshal fellowmember states to manage the challenges together./.