Abstract: The ecological public welfare forests in Vietnam is often called special-use forests. As Chinese ecological public welfare forest systems, Vietnamese government has established a system of special-use forests with the aim of covering entire national land area and conserving the main forest ecosystems. Currently, Vietnam is facing many difficulties in the special-use forest protection and management that how to harmonize the conflicts between special-use forests protection and local livelihood. In order to solve these conflicts and promote the protection of ecological public welfare forests and local communities’ harmonious development in Vietnam, this paper evaluates and analyzes the conflict factors influences harmonious development through application the method of expert system and based on the preliminary studies, additional investigation, policy analysis, system analysis of the current situation of ecological public welfare forest protection and local communities’ harmonious development. This paper also analyzes the conflict causes between the special-use forests and local communities, combined with the experiences from Chinese ecological public welfare forests, to propose strategies and recommendations for special-use forests’ harmonious development in Vietnam.