1. Introduction

The development practices of many countries in the world and Vietnam show that there is a close relationship between economic development and cultural development. Although the economy is always at the core of growth, growth is not only about increasing the numbers in society; it is also about bringing changes in the nature of society. To develop, people always demand that every step of growth should be taken while solving social problems, improving the quality of life and the environment, thus bringing complete development in all aspects—economic, cultural and social aspects. Since then, therefore, economic development creates momentum for cultural and social development and vice versa. Cultural development also contributes to making economic activities sustainable and humane. That is why studies about cultural interference are significant for economic growth.

Furthermore, economic globalization entails the expansion of interference across all sectors along with the exchange and interaction between cultures. According to the process of developing the thinking of the Party, about participating in international integration, it only really started with and can be attributed to the innovation career initiated by the Congress VI (1986). And to Congress VIII (1996) in the Congress’s document clearly stating “Building an open economy, integrating with the region and the world, strong direction on exports, and replacing imports with products effective domestic production” [1] . Vietnam’s international integration has officially started from joining ASEAN (1995)... From the time of Congress X, XI and XII, there is a qualitative change in international integration. Vietnam officially becomes a member of WTO (2007) and in the following years, Vietnam also expands bilateral and multilateral relations such as joining the ASEAN economic community and being a member as well as actively participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and later in the Comprehensive Progress Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). As regionalization and globalization are indispensable, creating the inevitable must integrate to create new bravery and confront new challenges to bring change and grow. Recognizing this fact, the article studies cultural interference in relationship with the economic development within the Vietnamese domestic, which aims to turn it into a development force. It, however, focuses more on Vietnamese membership and import-export activities than going into details in each sector of the whole country.

2. Culture and Cultural Interference

ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), established on December 31, 2015 and signed by 10 leaders of member countries, is one of the three main pillars of ASEAN together with the ASEAN security community and the ASEAN socio-cultural community. This establishment that aims to build a stable, prosperous and highly competitive ASEAN economic region, is the current economic integration that gives our country a big opportunity, besides there also being many difficulties and challenges. Cultural intercourse is an indispensable phenomenon of globalization, which is a common phenomenon of all countries in the world including Vietnam. It is a long-term acquisition process. It can be said that since our forefathers opened and traded goods with other countries, culture was being used to assess the quality of the products sold. Culture is an issue that has been discussed for a long time and now in the context of international economic integration and globalization, this issue is more and more relevant. There are many aspects; many factors related to culture and that is why culture is considered as a standard to measure the value and quality of products (human behavior, intentional actions). So what is culture? Culture has a multitude of different definitions. Edward Burnett Tylor defines culture as follows: “Culture or civilization understood in a broad sense of ethnology is a complex whole consisting of knowledge, faith, art, ethics, law, customs, and any of the abilities and customs that you, as a person, receive as a member of society” [2] . The definition of Associate Prof. Dr. Tran Ngoc Them states, “Culture is an organic system of material and spiritual values created and accumulated by people through the process of practical operation in the interaction between humans and their natural and social environment” [3] ; And UNESCO believes “Culture should be mentioned as a set of mental, material, intellectual and emotional characteristics of a society or a group of people in society and it contains, in addition to literature and art, both the way of life, and the system of values, traditions and faiths” [4] . In addition to the traditional humanistic definitions, when approaching culture in an economic perspective, there is a concept of culture that is “culture as commodity” [5] . This means culture is now considered as a collection and storage of valuable goods and possession of things that mean wealth, high status and prestige. However, the formulation of culture as commodity does not reflect the attitude of the people in that culture. In other words, culture is what remains after undergoing a historical process by which races can be distinguished from one another through a cycle of development. The human race interacts with their own race and with others; the last one is called national identity or cultural identity.

Cultural interference in the context of Vietnam joining the ASEAN Economic Community can be understood as the culture of the domestics meeting and interacting with the cultures of other ASEAN countries. In other words, this coexistence between the modern tradition, which is the traditional and modern concept of the “old-new” category, and the two attributes of the same entity as the cultural system implies that the relationship between two opposing sides in culture, while fighting and staying united together, complementing each other to enrich and enhance the culture can transform into one another. Modernity can become a tradition and similarly a tradition can bring a modern, traditional face with modernity to always lives together peacefully. However, in terms of culture, the old is not necessarily a tradition, and the new is not necessarily a modern one. New elements in culture often arise to meet the emerging needs of people in modern and ever-changing lives, while the old cultural elements only meet previous needs. The new and the old in the culture interact with each other, and if the opposite sides are conflicting, repressive or even excluded, the non-contradictory faces find ways to adapt to each other and also combine to strengthen each other. This interaction is similar to the wave interference of physics, so it can be called cultural interference. In physics, two waves, usually from the same source, can be termed as interference. The new culture wave can interfere with the old culture wave because it has the same origin; the new ones are the inherited development of the old ones, and they cannot generate themselves. For example, mobile phones are an evolution of desk phones; the industrial urban lifestyle has many imprints of rural agricultural lifestyle because the citizens are from farmers. Each wave peak or wave bottom here is the value of a cultural element (positive or negative value). In the process of interfering, these values rub against one another, adjust with each other, acknowledge and strengthen each other or reject and replace each other. As a result of the cultural interference process, some of the old values become traditional, some old traditions continue to be preserved, while some new ones become modern, which means their values are recognized and improved (through interference to be more or less compatible to each other and a new life). At the same time, there may be some values, both new and old (including the former in the traditional form), being discarded or replaced.

The current process of economic integration promotes cultural interference, which will shape the advance of Vietnamese culture. However, a problem raised here is regarding the process of economic integration. How can the preservation of national cultural identity be implemented? Geographically, Vietnam is located on the “crossroads of civilizations”, so although it carries within itself the cultural background of Southeast Asia, the history of Vietnam is influenced by the culture winds from India, China, and France. Later Russia, Eastern Europe, Japan and the United States spill over to some external cultures as expansionist invasions. In the history of thousands of years and between the thousands of needs for survival of the race living on the land of Vietnam, there is a common, pressing need that requires all Vietnamese, together with the same unanimous consensus, to meet the need for independent-freedom protection for the nation and the country. Vietnam, a small country, has always had to deal with invasive forces or strong expansion with a far greater level of cultural development and is always seeking to assimilate. The only way to preserve it is identity preservation and lift high strength of national culture.

The Vietnamese have at least two flexible and wise behaviors.

The first is maintaining, from a long time, the organization of a relatively closed autonomous village—a form of rural communes, in which kinship and village ties are closely linked together to create a strong cohesive community. In the domestic context, maintaining the Vietnamese culture in foreign affairs, when being attached to foreign countries, it is still forced to be accepted by the ruling government because all tax policies that pay tribute and mobilize their soldiers still go to the village though they cannot have people apply the rule directly down to this base unit. Due to this, although the country sometimes lost, Vietnamese culture still exists for the village, and this is the basis for the Vietnamese people wanting to consciously regain independence for their country and freedom for their people.

The second is voluntary reception of foreign culture, trying to learn its achievements, but transforming the useful elements of this culture into exogenous Vietnamese elements appropriate to the need for local use, and for enriching Vietnamese culture. Due to the history of Vietnam, which is primarily the history of national liberation and the protection of independence, Vietnamese people must always attach importance to both preservation and development of national culture, from which Vietnamese culture has traditionally developed. In conservation and the more developed, the stronger the conservation capacity.

As noted above, cultural interference is the interaction between the two cultures and is the contact between cultures, whereby a source culture is capable of becoming a source of direct or indirect transmission to the target culture. When this possibility is real, the interference will take place. Interference is the process that occurs in the environment of contact, where the transfer occurs [6] . One of the manifestations of contact is the daily exchange of goods, which are imported from one source or many sources, and are becoming important elements in the culture of importing society (importing society). However, only when they constitute the mode of generation, which also means dynamic elements in the indigenous category, they will become the true interference case. Therefore, human societies may depend on each other’s human resources due to many demands and purposes, but only when these resources are turned into a native product by a culture, we can talk about interference (in this case, the purpose of the AEC when freedom moves of goods, services, investment and skilled labor resources—this time the cultural interference will take place most strongly). But there is a fundamental principle that is needed to understand the very separatism of elements that are transmitted from the source of export and their subsequent independence. Once the export source ceases to be necessary for the establishment of the components of the speaking item, it is proved that this is the case of interference, and that the interference occurs when the source problem is no longer needed. For most members of a community, once transferred into their category, success or failure will become local issues as in the case of direct contact with a source culture that is accessible and used by members of the target culture without going through an institutionalized agency. For example, in the case of ethnic minority groups, who live and interact directly with the majority group, the interference will be stronger at this time. Another case would be of organizations that act as intermediaries for contacts such as different types of import organizations. The important thing here is that we are living with a traditional and modern culture, which makes us tend to think about societies that are related through direct contact and interference as well as distinct national, ethnic groups. Interference operates at all scales and levels of social organization (family, clan, stray, class, ethnic group, geographically organized communities as well as national groups) [6] . Because of being constrained between tradition and modernity, once the existence of interference is accepted, one thing that must be obeyed is the principle set by it. According to Itamar Even-Zohar’s article “Nine Hypotheses on Cultural Interference” it is made clear that the thesis is also to refer to the general Principles for further clarification for this article.

Principle 1: Interference is always potential. If we look at the official view of culture, interference is not always clear; the problem is that we often face localized results later and not when the interference is in its early stages. However, scientists have also demonstrated that all systems that we know of appear to be developing due to the floating role of interference. There is no single culture that does not appear by interfering with a more famous culture and no culture that can operate without the need to interfere at any particular time throughout its history. Typical here is the cultural interference of Vietnamese culture with Chinese culture, as in the 1000 years of replying on the North, there are strong cultural exchanges with China in outstanding areas such as religion (Confucianism), letter...

Principle 2: Interference is one-way. There is no symmetry in cultural contact. A target culture often interferes with a capital culture that may not be interested in it. For example, most Vietnamese youths are now influenced by Korean-style lifestyles through movie...

Principle 3: Interference does not have to take place at all levels of culture. In this principle, for two adjacent or mixed communities related by geography (trade routes…), interference occurs at many levels but not necessarily at all levels of culture. It is because of the complex structure of culture that a target culture can communicate and impart only certain parts of the source culture. It never comes into contact with the entire source culture even when these source cultures are geographically close and mixed in it. The highlight for this problem is the cultural product symbiosis between foreign bodies (or physical factors) with native souls (social and spiritual factors) like the Vietnamese on the way broadened to the South, accepting the gods of the Cham people and transforming them into Vietnamese gods, as the goddess Po Ino Nagar was Vietnam seized into the goddess Thien Y A Na [7] .

3. Practice

In relations between ethnic nations, through the interaction with cultures outside of the native people, the nations promote their own unique characteristics in their culture, or promote the available advantages in international economic cooperation. They also become familiar with foreign cultural factors and recognize the useful nations in addition to those that are not fully developed or do not yet exist in local cultures, and determine the factors that can be used as well as those that cannot be used. The integration of ASEAN countries in general and the construction of the AEC today is a strong form of “symbiosis” among some cultures, because it creates special incentives and advantages in cultural exchanges between countries in the same block, making the culture of each country develop more smoothly. The great obvious benefit of cultural interference is that each country, through the import and export of materials, energy and information with the outside can quickly respond to many of their pressing needs and smoothly solve difficulties that many countries are facing. Vietnam’s agriculture too has been booming since the opening of integration thanks to promoting the export of its many agricultural products such as rice, shrimp, catfish, coffee, rubber, cashew nuts, pepper, flowers, fresh fruits and vegetables and import of many agricultural materials, which are not self-sufficient, such as seeds, fertilizers, plant and animal protection drugs. This has not only helped to create many job positions and significantly increase the incomes of farmers, but has also contributed towards creating stability and social progress.

The fundamental and long-term benefit of cultural interference is to promote the development of each culture. History shows that no culture can grow fast or exceedingly without interference with other cultures. Cultural interactions make closed communities and nations become open, and open systems become more open. According to system theory, a closed system will quickly progress to chaos due to its inability to exchange material, energy and information needed with the outside to maintain the structure or normal functional activities. Therefore, it is difficult to carry out necessary response activities against adverse impacts either from nature or from outside; the openness of the physical system is a necessary condition for the system to remain stable and develop.

In the history of Vietnam, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the opening of the South trade with Japan, China and Southeast Asia helped them to survive the war with Trinh in the North that was more than twice as strong in all aspects: “... The weak agricultural base in the South is almost impossible to help the desperate struggle against the stronger Trinh force in the North... obliging Nguyen... to become passionate about foreign trade and foreigners... As a result, the South of the 17th century became Japan’s number one trading partner and a major factor in Asia’s vast trade relations..., found resources and energy to carry out a major development phase despite fighting the North for a hundred years...; The Nguyen family were able to equip themselves with advanced weapons to help them resist the North” [7] . And now, since the time that Vietnam has officially joined the AEC, the door of integration has been widening and will bring many benefits to businesses in the region, in general, and Vietnamese businesses in particular. This is a stable and prosperous economic environment with high competitiveness, businesses being equal, having the opportunity to expand trade exchanges in large markets and much potential to attract investors based on the space advantage of a large market. First of all, it is an opportunity to expand the market with an economic area of more than 630 million people and an annual GDP of nearly $2700 billion. Tariff and non-tariff barriers are removed due to the fact that almost all intra-ASEAN imports will enjoy preferential tariffs and favorable investment environment that will help Vietnamese enterprises boost export, cut down on import costs, and lower product costs. In addition, businesses will have the opportunity to interact with the broader market with partners such as China, Japan, Korea, and India through their own free trade agreements between ASEAN and major economic partners. Along with this is the effort made to build a regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement by which Vietnamese enterprises will participate more deeply in the chain of production and service provision. Typically, from December 31, 2015, most intra-ASEAN imports enjoy 0% tariffs through ASEAN FTAs + 1 for partners. With two-way import and export turnover of over USD 40 billion, ASEAN is currently the third largest export market of Vietnam (after the United States and the European Union), and is the second largest supplier of goods for Vietnamese businesses. Specially, the participation in AEC will also be a great opportunity for Vietnam to step up institutional reform, modernize the economy, improve the level of development; this especially will bring important benefits to employment for construction, trade and transport sectors (Vietnam is currently a country focusing on 1/6 of ASEAN labor force). There will be millions of new jobs thanks to the impact of the AEC.

In Figure 1, the trade turnover between Vietnam and ASEAN partners in the period of 2004-2015 can be seen through the years of growth, but due to the impact of the global economic crisis from the end of 2008 to 2010, the growth rate has not been stable over the years 2010, and 2011. By 2012, Vietnam’s major export markets are Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore and Indonesia. At this time, the export structure of Vietnam is increasing in terms of positive, quality and value. Starting with raw agricultural products such as rice, crude oil, coffee and rubber with low processing content, Vietnam has exported many consumer goods and industrial products such as computer electronic components, textiles, processed agricultural products, and cosmetics of high quality. Vietnam and ASEAN countries join the world’s largest import-export clubs for rice, coffee, rubber, cashew nuts, and textiles, to name some. Some of the above data show that Vietnam’s open market to international integration is an indispensable trend, it points out that the development path cannot be different for countries in the region and the world is participating in integration. The integration process thus helps to expand the market to promote trade in other international economic relations, thereby promoting economic growth and socio-economic development. This aids in raising the level of human resources and public science, technology, thanks to cooperation in education and training of scientific research with countries and the acquisition of new technologies through foreign direct investment and technology transfer from advanced

countries. Participation and integration into AEC also create opportunities for individuals to enjoy products and services of diversified types of quality models with competitive prices. It leads to being approached and interacting more with the outside world, thereby, creating opportunities for developing and finding jobs both inside and outside the country, and also helping to supplement the progressive values of culture and civilization that enrich the national culture and promote social progress.

Besides the great opportunities and benefits when Vietnam joins AEC integration, it will face many disadvantages and challenges. The first mentioned issue here is the reality of the Vietnamese economy. Vietnamese enterprises, when faced with competitive pressures from imported goods and investment products of ASEAN countries, will eliminate non-tariff barriers, some sectors may narrow down or may be closed. Amidst the fierce competition among enterprises, Vietnamese export products will face competition from goods from other countries in the ASEAN market as AEC forms a common market with no barriers for services, and capital. Quality and productivity of Vietnamese labor are lower than in other countries. In fact, according to the ILO (International Labor Organization) report, Vietnam’s is the lowest in the Asia-Pacific (APEC) region. For example, Philippines’ labor productivity is one and a half time, Thailand’s is twice and Singapore’s is 15 times higher than the Vietnamese labor productivity. These factors will make Vietnam not an attractive destination for pioneering investment projects in technology and this will also be the reason for the separation of Vietnam (the latter) from better regional countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

Along with the process of participating in economic integration, another process that always exists and moves beside or even before is cultural interference. Culture is not constant, it always moves with the development of the country and the people. However, cultural interference can arise, leading to conflicts between cultures. And this conflict occurs at the global level as well as within the regional countries. Vietnam, in the process of mobilization and development, has periods of disapproving culture, and lifestyles of Western countries or regional countries. This collision comes from the difference of the value system, spiritual depth, religion or not as ideologies. Further, the behavior expressed in the customs and habits or in lifestyle also leads to conflicts, even sometimes to a problem of cultural shock if there is a lack of a certain understanding of the culture of each ethnic group and country.

Levine and Adelman [8] assert that cultural conflict occurs as a result of misinterpretations, of centralism or of modeling and prejudice. Each individual has his cultural schema and that helps one to interpret the right - wrong, good - bad of behavior and things. This schema is the product of the process of interacting with people of the same cultural background and with our cultural environment comprising values, conceptions, faith, customs, practices, civilization, political and social institutions. It is formed by the common cultural hermits of the group, the community and society through education and interaction with other members. Cultural schemas of people belonging to the same social group, a subculture, or a culture of ethnicity are often similar at different levels [9] .

When interacting with one or more members of a social group, a subculture, an ethnic culture or another culture, the partners tend to interpret each other’s behavior, according to the standards established in one’s cultural schema,and follow the experiences and knowledge shared with people of the same cultural background. Their attitudes and behaviors are also influenced by a variety of factors, including the following key elements:

Stereotypes and Prejudices: These are negative reactions that occur in cultural interference. Sometimes these reactions are not caused by actual interaction, but by the influence of inherent beliefs, the money that one has about the social group, subculture, ethnic culture or culture of interference partner. Levine and Adelman [8] argue that “overly generalized beliefs” or “stereotypes” often shape people’s notions of each other. Prejudices can be implicit or explicit. In his research in 2004, William A. Cunningham and his team proved that both are linked with each other and with ideology [10] . Besides, stereotypes originate and evolve from various sources such as jokes, textbooks, movies and television. Templates create inaccurate views about religious, racial and cultural groups. Stereotypical beliefs make it impossible to see people as individuals with individual characteristics. “Stereotyping can lead to prejudice, or negative perceived judgements about a group of people” [11] if it is negative. The difference between generalization and a template is not always easy to understand. If the generalization is rigid - does not allow the acceptance of personal factors and often encourages critical and negative judgment - it will become a stereotype.”

Ethnocentrism: In cultural intercourse, communication partners tend to assume that what they and people with the same cultural background believe is right will certainly be right [12] . In very few cases of cultural interaction, partners are always in the sense that what is considered right/good in this culture may be wrong/bad in that culture, because, in general, people tend to believe that what they have is the best, the way they think is the most appropriate and what they do is the best fit. Therefore, they often value concepts, values, beliefs, behaviors, and communication styles in their culture and consider what is different from those “standards” to be “non-standard”. That is what Levine and Adelman [8] call “ethnocentric attitudes” for people from social groups, sub-cultures, ethnic cultures and other cultures.

In cultural intercourse, in many specific cases, it is the cultural schema of partners and the misleading, rigid remembrance of others that creates misinterpretations leading to culture shock. And due to cultural shock, they misbehave, which leads to misinteractions and creation of cultural conflicts. And the consequences are inevitably due to the breakdown of interaction and cooperation. It is particularly important for the main factors, involved in cultural intercourse, to be the quality of cultural intercourse that has been interfered by ethnologists and researchers. Cultural interference agrees that the following qualities are as necessary as recognizing that all cultures are equal but different: what we think is right, good, and positive in our culture is not always true, good, and positive for other cultures. What can lead to success in our culture will not necessarily lead to success in other cultures. Objectively, it is important to avoid judging members of the social, subculture, ethnic culture or target culture according to the cultural implications of the source culture. One needs to be patient to understand and judge the social, sub-cultural, ethnic culture or target culture in a correct and fair manner; tolerance, tolerance even for the impossible. There should be sensitivity to judge and behave appropriately in specific interactions with members of the social, sub-cultural, ethnic culture or target culture. The mind should be able to observe ways of behavior, the behavioral and emotional responses of the partner in the target culture in specific interactions in order to have appropriate behaviors. For example, having respect for partners, having no ethnocentric attitudes is important because it is easy to create disrespectfully, and a strict and harsh attitude for people of other cultural backgrounds. No stereotyping as a hard-line way of looking at people from other cultural backgrounds, being unprejudiced and not guilty makes it easy to lead to passive behaviors and cynical attitudes or aggression and disdain [13] .

Cultural intercourse has a great influence on economic development first because it is the spiritual, motivational and through-the-goal aim it sets for all development strategies and plans. All economic development plans are aimed at the highest goal of ensuring the most basic requirements of protecting people, serving people and improving the quality of human life. Any policy of economic measures that produces, circulates, distributes, prices and quality of goods is the highest goal, which is the benefit of people [14] . In each socio-economic policy, the cultural content and objectives are always included. Cultural interference has the ability to arouse the creative potential of human beings - the resources that determine the decision for social development. Cultural interference has a unified dialectical relationship with economy, politics, participation in economic development to achieve the ultimate goal of developing and building an advanced culture imbued with national identity.

4. Suggestion

Because cultural interference is intrusion, invasion, joining and mixing of cultures, it has to both cooperate and fight: cooperating with healthy cultures, protecting and promoting good values, while actively fighting with toxic products, and anti-cultural behaviors. Based on understanding culture and the priorities of the country, Vietnamese have to choose the right thing, first of all, to serve the cause of industrialization and modernization, serving the socio-economic development strategy, and in the long term to enrich the culture ethnicity, and improve people’s intellectual standards. In order to do so, it is necessary to proactively and positively introduce, participate in and improve the quality of cultural, art and sport activities in the region and the world, and at the same time enhance and improve the effectiveness of propaganda culture and communication ... to limit negative impacts culture interference.

People who work in cultural relations, especially those responsible for cultural exchange and integration, must deeply master, love and be proud of Vietnam - the country, culture and people. Therefore, equipping them with a full understanding of the culture is a basic and long-term job, but also very urgent, so that each person is a cultural subject in the process of interference. Another important job is to strengthen cultural engagement with foreign politics and economy. After all, whether it is political diplomacy, economic diplomacy or cultural diplomacy, human-to-human relations are still at the core. Therefore, it is necessary to promote people’s diplomacy, which is an important mode of cultural diplomacy. In economic integration, the business teams do not stop at economic activities; they need to become “cultural entrepreneurs”, a significant force in people’s diplomacy and in promoting socialization of funding sources to mobilize many resources, components and participants.

Besides, in order to well implement comprehensive integration, a complete legal framework for cultural and foreign cultural activities is a must. In foreign culture, the benefits and values create trust and mutual understanding, which needs time to show and contemplate, and is not weighed and measured immediately. Therefore, in specific activities, there should be clear regulations and law directions on what needs to be done and how. One important and practical thing is to link foreign cultural activities with the work of the Vietnamese community abroad. Over the past years, the Prime Minister has assigned the Ministry of Education and Training and the Committee for Overseas Vietnamese to promote the teaching of Vietnamese language to children of Vietnamese communities abroad. This has become important and urgent because once the national pride and self-respect for nearly five million living overseas Vietnamese of different generations living throughout the five continents is aroused, they will become the best ambassadors to show the Vietnamese culture to the world. They will become an important resource for contributing to the country’s long-term construction and development.