Although the executive branch only drafted the Law on Cultural Industry Development, Minister Lâm Thị Phương Thanh declared that “next year at the latest, the law will take effect and be put into practice.”
Shortly after, her speech disappeared.
The Latest: On the evening of Oct. 12, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism’s Facebook page posted the full text of Minister Lâm Thị Phương Thanh’s speech.
- She delivered the address earlier that afternoon at the launch of the “Việt Nam Cultural Industry Development Network.”
- However, by the morning of Oct. 13, the speech was taken down and replaced with a general “Overview of the Việt Nam Cultural Industry Development Network Launch.”
The Details: The Law on Cultural Industry Development is currently only a draft and is expected to go before the National Assembly at its session in late October. Despite these developments, in her deleted speech, Thanh stated verbatim:
“The Law on Cultural Industry Development was originally expected to be submitted next year. However, in response to urgent practical demands, we proposed that the Government direct an acceleration of the timeline. In the coming period, next year at the latest, the law will take effect and be put into practice. This is a crucial legal foundation.”
It remains unclear why the ministry’s page removed the full speech.
- Luật Khoa, our sister magazine, could not verify the exact time the post was taken down.
- Furthermore, while the Nghệ An Provincial Cultural Center and Vietnam.vn also shared the full speech; both of them omitted Thanh’s statement quoted above.
Attempts to Contact: Luật Khoa called the ministry’s Facebook page several times on the afternoon of Oct. 13.
- On the first call, the representative who answered provided the ministry’s phone number and confirmed that the Facebook page’s contact number was correct, but the call was quickly disconnected.
- Later calls did not connect, as the line was busy or went unanswered.
- The Facebook page itself has no messaging function.
- Luật Khoa also attempted to contact the ministry at the official number, but no one answered.
Law on Cultural Industry Development: The Law on Cultural Industry Development was proposed and drafted in less than half a year.
- It is designed to implement the Communist Party’s Resolution No. 80 on developing the cultural industry, issued Jan. 7, 2026.
- This resolution is a major Party document that treats culture not just as something to preserve but as a “resource for development.”
On July 30, the Party’s Central Steering Committee on Vietnamese Cultural Development instructed the ministry to urgently draft the law so the National Assembly could pass it at its October 2026 session under shortened procedures.
- The ministry only recently concluded collecting public comments on the bill, which took place over a 20-day period from Aug. 5 to 24, 2026.
Hoàng Nam wrote this news article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on October 13, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine translated it into English.
