Vuong Quan Hoang to serve VIASM during 2021-24

Phenikaa Uni (25-9-2021). — The VIASM root traces back to August 2007, following the IMO-48. The Government of Vietnam had decided to develop a “National Program for the Development of Mathematics until 2020” (NPDM) under the direct guidance of the Deputy Prime Minister, Professor Nguyen Thien Nhan. The chief of the Drafting Committee was a mathematician – Professor Tran Van Nhung, then Vice-Minister of Education and Training. Many Vietnamese mathematics professors joined the Drafting Committee. As determined by the Drafting Committee from the outset, the critical point of the program was to set up an advanced research institute.

Liu Zongzhou

Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (personal name Xianzhang 憲章, courtesy name Qidong 起東, literary names Niantai 念台, Jishan 蕺山; b. 1578–d. 1645) was an important Neo-Confucian thinker in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) of China. Born as a posthumous child in Shanyin (Shaoxing) of the Zhejiang province, he was brought up by his mother, educated by his maternal grandfather and became a successful candidate of the metropolitan and palace examination in 1601. In 1621, as the Supplementary Secretary in the Ministry of Rites, he began to impeach the corrupt but powerful eunuch Wei Zongxian. In 1624, he declined the offer to be Junior Vice Commissioner of the Office of Transmission, and his status was reduced to that of a commoner. In 1629, he resumed office as the governor of Shuntian Prefecture, and resigned the next year to establish the Zhengren 證人 Association and to lecture at the Shigui 石匱 Academy. In 1636, he became Senior Vice Minister of Works. Yet he soon resigned to criticize the Senior Grand Secretary Wen Tiren 溫體仁, and this led to the degradation of his status to a commoner again. In 1642, he was promoted to Censor-in-chief, but he was relieved of his office when he antagonized the emperor by trying to save two censorial officials. During the fall of Beijing, he resumed his office as Censor-in-chief. He attacked the corrupt officials Ma Shiying 馬士英 and Ruan Dacheng 阮大鋮 and finally left his office. His official career lasted for forty-five years, during which he had held office six and a half years, was in active service at court only four years, and had been degraded to the status of commoner three times. With the fall of Nanjing and Hangzhou in succession to the Manchus and his decision to express his loyalty and patriotism to the country, he ended his life by fasting for twenty days. Liu distinguished himself as a Neo-Confucian philosopher and scholar. The main doctrines of his teaching are “vigilance in solitude” (shendu慎獨) and “sincerity of will” (chengyi誠意), which originate from the two Confucian classics Doctrine of the Mean and Great Learning. Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (b. 1610–d. 1695), his important disciple and a well-known intellectual historian, placed him and his school of thought in the last part of Huang’s influential work, The Records of Ming Scholars. Huang not only compared him to the most significant Neo-Confucian philosophers, but also hinted that his philosophy signified the final summation of the Neo-Confucian tradition from the Song to Ming dynasties. He is commonly regarded as one of the most important Song-Ming Neo-Confucian thinkers. It is the creativity and depth of his philosophy that deserves scholars’ attention.

Sen

This chapter narrates how Sen and her husband, Nhieu, worked “directly for the people” through acts of charity. It explains how Nhieu's appointment as vice minister of health in South Vietnam provided cover for their clandestine actions, such as supplying food, donating medicines, arranging lodging for agents whose families disowned them, or who came to the city to give birth. It talks about the fear of Sen's friends of meeting her and her husband after the revolution and reunification, attributing her wealth to being guilty. The chapter explores Sen's belief that northerners and southerners are very different in how they live but they share patriotism as the one thing they have in common. It describes how Sen immersed herself in family and friends who remained in Saigon and was happy even if her friends formed at Lycée Marie Curie took different paths during the war.

Abenomics and the Break with the BOJ Orthodoxy

This chapter addresses how Prime Minister Abe Shinzō circumvented the monetary policy network by changing the membership of the Policy Board and how he reoriented monetary policy to reflect his reflationary priorities. Upon coming to power, Prime Minister Abe launched his Abenomics agenda based on a strategy of “three arrows”: expansionary monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy (stimulus followed by longer-term fiscal consolidation), and supply-side focused structural reforms. To push his agenda further and to lock changes in, Prime Minister Abe changed the leadership at the Bank of Japan (BOJ). He appointed Kuroda Haruhiko, a former Ministry of Finance (MOF) vice minister of international affairs who had long been an outspoken critic of the BOJ, as governor. Upon becoming governor, Kuroda moved the Policy Board to embrace an aggressive approach to combating deflation. Since the start of Governor Kuroda's much bolder deployment of unconventional monetary policy, a number of economic measures have shown improvement.

Introduction

It was one o’clock in the morning of December 8, 1941. Peng Leshan, the head of the radio office of the Ministry of Information’s International Department in Chongqing, was waiting in front of the wireless receiver in his office to pick up news updates from contacts in Los Angeles. Suddenly a message came through his headphone—the Japanese army had attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States would wage war against the Japanese Empire. Alone in the office, he wondered whether the news was true or whether he had simply misheard it on account of his fatigue. Hesitating to report it to his superior Hollington Tong, vice minister of information, he decided to reflect on what he had heard before dialing Tong’s number. Around four o’clock, the phone at Chiang Kai-shek’s mansion rang—Tong reported the attack on Pearl Harbor to Chiang....

Between Permanent Revolution and Permanent Liminality

After traditional academics mobilized university autonomy against government intervention and supported the coup d’état against Hugo Chávez, his government created a parallel system of public universities. María Egilda Castellano headed the effort to extend university access to poor Venezuelans. The events of her terms as vice minister of education (1999–2002) and rector of the Bolivarian University (2003–2004) and her subsequent career show the difficulty the Bolivarian government has had in creating sustainable institutions and challenge the applicability of the concept of permanent revolution to the Bolivarian process. Después de que los académicos tradicionales usaron la autonomía universitaria en contra de la intervención del gobierno y apoyaron el golpe de estado contra Hugo Chávez, su gobierno creó un sistema paralelo de universidades públicas. María Egilda Castellano dirigió el esfuerzo por extender el acceso a las universidades a los venezolanos pobres. Los resultados de su trabajo como vice ministra de educación (1999–2002) y rectora de la Universidad Bolivariana (2003–2004) y su subsiguiente carrera profesional demuestran la dificultad que el gobierno bolivariano ha tenido para crear instituciones sostenibles y pone en duda la aplicabilidad del concepto de revolución permanente al proceso bolivariano.

Jianguo Hou: major reforms in China's S&T funding mechanisms

In late June, the first batch of National Major R&D Projects was announced on the Public Service Platform of National Science and Technology Management Information System (http://service.most.gov.cn/index/). This signified a new round of major top-down reform of China's S&T program management reform, a reform generally considered to be unprecedented in both scope and depth. In line with rapid economic growth, China now produces more research articles than any other country except the USA, boasting the world's highest number of researchers (∼3.8 million). Yet, these impressive numbers are insufficient to meet the need for innovation in Chinese economy, which is still relying heavily on imported core technologies. The S&T program management has long been plagued by fragmentation, duplication and diffuseness, with widespread complaints by researchers on the lack of both openness and transparency in funding review processes. In a recent interview with NSR, the Vice Minister of Science and Technology Jianguo Hou elaborated upon the new reform of S&T program management that aims to address many of these problems, and new polices that impact on how research will be conducted in China.