mainland
Emerging as a distinct civilization during the first
millennium
BC,
early Han dynasty and subjected to 1,000 years of foreign
rule. In AD 939 the Vietnamese restored their
independence and gradually expanded southward along the
coast from their historic homeland in the YUAN (Red) River
valley. In the 19th century
again
and absorbed, along with neighboring
elements soon began to organize national resistance to
colonial rule, however, and after World War II,
Communist-led Viet Minh guerrillas battled for several
years to free the country from foreign subjugation.
In 1954, at the GENEVA CONFERENCE, the country was divided
into
Communist-led
came to an end when Communist forces from the north
occupied
Today, the Vietnamese government is attempting to lead the
entire nation to socialism. But domestic unrest and
foreign-policy problems, compounded by renewed tensions
with
keep
LAND AND RESOURCES
1,600 km (1,000 mi) from the Chinese border to Point Ca
Mau
(Baibung) on the
reaches a width of about 560 km (350 mi). In the narrow
center, it it less than 50 km (30 mi) wide.
Much
of
of mountains called the Truong Son (Annamese Cordillera)
extends
more than 1,287 km (800 mi) from the
delta
east of
border
between
point in the country, Fan Si Pan, rises to 3,143 m (10,312
ft) in the mountainous northwest, near the Chinese
border. Poor soils and heavy rains make the mountainous
areas relatively unsuitable for agriculture.
The
large deltas of the
soil
brought down from
climate that make them highly suitable for settled
agriculture, particularly the cultivation of wet rice. In
the Yuan delta, the climate is subtropical, ranging from 5
deg C (41 deg F) in winter to more than 38 deg C (100 deg
F)
in summer. The
varying from 26 deg to 30 deg C (79 deg to 85 deg F)
throughout the year. The monsoon season extends from
early May to October, and typhoons often cause flooding in
northern coastal areas.
Most
of
buffalo, elephants, and rhinoceroses) are found in the
mountains. In the north are deposits of iron ore, tin,
copper, apatite (phosphate rock), and chromite. Coal,
mined along the coast near the Chinese border, is an
important export and the main source of energy, although
rivers are being harnessed for hydroelectric power and the
government is attempting to exploit modest oil reserves in
the
PEOPLE
groups live in the country, ethnic Vietnamese constitute
nearly 90% of the total population and are in the majority
throughout the country except in the mountains. The
Vietnamese are descended from peoples who settled in the
Yuan delta area more than 3,000 years ago and later moved
southward
along the coast into the
speak Vietnamese, which exhibits many similarities to
other tongues spoken in the region but is sometimes
considered a separate language group (see SOUTHEAST ASIAN
LANGUAGES).
The so-called overseas Chinese, descended from ethnic
Chinese who migrated into the country during the 17th and
18th centuries, settled for the most part in large cities
and became involved in commerce, manufacturing, fishing,
and coal mining. During the traditional and colonial
periods, the Chinese were placed under separate
administration. Recent governments, however, have
attempted to assimilate them. Thousands of ethnic Chinese
fled abroad in 1978 in the wake of a government decision
to nationalize commerce and industry in the south; about 2
million reportedly remain in the country.
Tribal peoples, including the MEO (Hmong) and the
MONTAGNARDS, number about 3 million. Descended from a
wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, they live primarily in
the Central Highlands and in the mountains of the north,
where they practice SLASH-AND-BURN AGRICULTURE. Other
smaller groups are the KHMER (about 500,000) and the Cham
(about 50,000), remnants of ancient states absorbed by the
Vietnamese during their southward expansion.
Although the majority of ethnic Vietnamese traditionally
considered themselves Buddhist or Confucianist, there are
about 3 million Roman Catholics, most of whom now live in
the south. Members of two religious sects, the Cao Dai (an
amalgam of eastern and western traditions) and the Hoa Hao
(a
radical form of Buddhism), live mainly in the
delta area and number about 1 million each. Like the
ethnic minorities, these religious groups have resisted
assimilation into the majority culture and today are under
considerable pressure to conform to the government's
socialist program.
The vast majority of the population live in overcrowded
cities or in the densely populated delta areas and along
the central coast. Large southern cities include Ho Chi
OF), are the chief cities in the north.
Rapid population growth has placed considerable strain on
limited health services, educational facilities, and food
supplies. The government has instituted a family planning
program and attempted to relieve the problem of
overcrowding by resettling several million people into
'new economic areas' in the sparsely populated mountains
and upland plateaus.
Education is under state control and is free at all
levels. The leading institution of higher learning is
limited, there has been significant progress in health
care since the reunification of the country in 1976.
For centuries, Vietnamese art and architecture were
heavily influenced by Chinese and Indian forms (see
SOUTHEAST ASIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE). More recently,
Vietnamese painting borrowed from French styles and
techniques. Traditional handicrafts are still practiced,
and
poetry remains the favorite literary genre.
greatest poet was Nguyen Du (1765-1820).
ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
According to the evidence of contemporary archaeology, the
Vietnamese
were one of the first peoples of
the art of irrigation. Ever since, they have lived off
the land, and their primary economic activity has been the
cultivation of wet rice. During the period of French
rule,
the marshes of the
leading to a significant increase in rice production. The
French also developed coal mining, introduced a number of
cash crops, and built a modern rail and road network, but
they were determined to maintain their colonies as a
market for French manufactured goods and a source of cheap
raw materials and did not seriously encourage the
development of a modern commercial and industrial sector.
After the French departed, economic development in both
North
and
and the country remained basically preindustrial,
dependent on outside assistance for essential goods and
services.
The ultimate goal of the Communist regime that took power
in
1975 was to transform all of
industrial society based on socialist forms of ownership.
Industry had been nationalized and agriculture
collectivized in the north by the late 1950s, but
Communist leaders delayed a similar socialist
transformation in the south to avoid alienating the local
population and to encourage economic recovery from the
long years of war. In 1978, due to the slow pace of
postwar economic development and fears of the growth of an
unmanageable private sector in the south, governments
planners announced the nationalization of all industrial
and commercial enterprises above the family level and
began to create low-level collective organizations in the
countryside. The results were disastrous. With much of
the population opposed to the new policies, the economy
went into a rapid decline.
In September 1979 the regime reversed course, permitting
the revival of private commerce and postponing the process
of collectivization in the south. During the next few
years, economic production gradually recovered as emphasis
shifted from heavy industry to consumer goods and farmers
were allowed to sell surplus crops on the free market.
But the restoration of the small private sector concerned
ideological purists within the party leadership, who
argued for a rapid socialist transformation. In 1985 the
regime reached a compromise. Profit incentives would be
temporarily retained to spur production, but the ultimate
objective of eliminating the private sector on a gradual
basis was reaffirmed.
All land is still owned by the state, but an economic
crisis aggravated by recurrent poor weather and rapid
population growth led the government in 1990 to release
farmers from their obligation to work on collective farms
and to grant them long-term rights to till private plots.
This reform led to a dramatic increase in harvests and the
resumption of rice exports. Some hilly areas have
recently been planted with cash crops such as coffee, tea,
and rubber, and fishing, livestock raising, and forestry
are also being encouraged. The industrial sector is
showing signs of improvement, particularly in light
industry and handicrafts, but consumer goods are in short
supply and growth rates continue to be hampered by
primitive technology, low export capacity, managerial
inexperience, a lack of foreign investment, and shortages
of energy, raw materials, and spare parts.
aggravated in the early 1990s by a decline in remittances
from
Vietnamese workers in
East and the halting (1991) of Soviet economic subsidies.
Military expenditures, which had consumed about half of
the
national budget, were reduced when
its
forces from
and
government
has sought aid from
its policies in a largely unsuccessful effort to attract
foreign investors.
GOVERNMENT
1980 replaced the North Vietnamese constitution of 1959,
which was extended throughout the country after the formal
reunification
of
supreme power vested in the unicameral National Assembly
elected every five years by universal suffrage. The
Assembly elects the Council of State, the collective
presidency. Governmental functions are carried out by a
Council of Ministers responsible to the National
Assembly. In practice, real power resides in the hands of
the Vietnamese Communist party.
HISTORY
The Vietnamese people first appear in history as one of
several peoples living along the southern coast of China
as far south as the Yuan delta. By the middle of the
first millennium BC, a small state based on irrigated
agriculture and calling itself Van Lang had emerged in the
delta. In 101 BC, Van Lang was overrun by forces from the
north and gradually absorbed into the expanding Chinese
empire. Despite intensive Chinese culture and political
influence, however, the sense of cultural uniqueness did
not entirely disappear, and in the 10th century rebel
groups drove out the Chinese and restored national
independence.
The new state,, which styled itself Dai Viet (Greater
Viet), accepted a tributary status with China and adopted
many political and cultural institutions and values from
its northern neighbor. It resisted periodic efforts to
restore Chinese rule, however, and began to expand its
territory, conquering the state of CHAMPA to the south and
eventually seizing the Mekong delta from the declining
KHMER EMPIRE.
Expansion brought problems, however. The difficulties of
administering a long and narrow empire, and the cultural
differences between the traditionalist and densely
populated north and the sparsely settled 'frontier' region
in the Mekong delta, led to political tensions and, in the
17th century, to civil war. Two major aristocratic
families, the Trinh and the Nguyen, squabbled for
domination over the decrepit Vietnamese monarchy. This
internal strife was exacerbated by the arrival of European
adventurers who, in order to facilitate their commercial
and missionary penetration of Southeast Asia, frequently
intervened in local politics.
During the last quarter of the 18th century, a peasant
rebellion led by the so-called Tay Son brothers in the
south spread to the north, where the leading brother,
Nguyen Hue, united the country, and declared himself
emperor. After his death in 1792, this dynasty rapidly
declined and was overthrown by a scion of the princely
house of Nguyen, who in 1802 founded a new Nguyen dynasty
with its capital at Hue.
The Nguyen dynasty had come to power with French
assistance, and France hoped for commercial and economic
privileges. When these were not granted, the French
emperor Napoleon III, under pressure from imperialist and
religious groups in France, ordered an attack on Vietnam
in 1857. This resulted in a Vietnamese defeat and the
ceding of several provinces in the south, which the French
transformed into a new colony of COCHIN CHINA. Twenty
years later the French completed their conquest of Vietnam
, dividing the northern and central parts of the country
into protectorates with the historic names of TONKIN and
ANNAM. Between 1887 and 1893, all three regions were
joined with the protectorates of Laos and Cambodia into
the French-dominated Union of Indochina.
French rule had a significant effect on Vietnamese
society. Many traditional institutions were dismantled and
replaced with others imported from the West. Western
technology was introduced, and upper-class Vietnamese
increasingly adopted the French language and Roman
Catholicism. The economy was oriented toward the export
of raw materials, and the small manufacturing and
commercial sector was dominated by European and overseas
Chinese interests.
Deprived of a political and economic role by the colonial
administration, Vietnamese patriots turned to protest or
revolt. By the late 1930s the Communist party, led by a
Vietnamese revolutionary who took the name of HO CHI MINH,
had become the leading force in the nationalist movement.
Germany defeated France in 1940. Japan, a German ally,
then occupied Vietnam, but the French Vichy Government
continued to administer the country until March 1945, when
the Japanese established an autonomous state of Vietnam
under Annamese emperor BAO DAI. At the POTSDAM CONFERENCE
in July-August, the Allies instructed Nationalist Chinese
troops in the north and British troops in the south to
accept the Japanese surrender. When Japan surrendered in
August, however, the Viet Minh, an anti-Japanese and
anti-French front founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1941, revolted
and seized power. In early September, Viet Minh leaders
declared the formation of the independent Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (DRV). French forces returned by
1946, and in March of that year the new government reached
a preliminary agreement on the formation of a Vietnamese
'free state' within the FRENCH UNION, but negotiations
collapsed. In December, the First Indochinese War broke
out between the Vietnamese and the French, who were
increasingly supported by the United States. In 1954,
after eight years of fighting, the Vietnamese defeated the
French at DIEN BIEN PHU. Shortly after, the major powers
met at Geneva and called for the departure of all foreign
forces and the de facto division of Vietnam at 17 degrees
north latitude into two separate states, the
Communist-dominated DRV in the North and a non-Communist
state in the south, with provision for eventual
reunification and elections.
The division of Vietnam lasted only two decades. In South
Vietnam, the weak Bao Dai, reinstalled by the French in
1949, was replaced by NGO DINH DIEM. Despite support from
the United States, Diem was unable to suppress a
continuing guerrilla insurgency directed from Hanoi but
provoked in part by his own unpopularity. In November
1963, Diem was overthrown in a military coup, and North
Vietnam intensified its efforts to seek reunification
under Communist rule. In 1965, with the South Vietnamese
regime on the verge of collapse, the United States decided
to send combat troops to South Vietnam to defeat the
insurgency, whose various elements had by this time united
as the Communist-dominated National Liberation Front of
Vietnam (also known as the VIET CONG). But victory was
elusive, and U.S. public opinion began to turn against the
Vietnam War. After 1968, U.S. President Richard Nixon
gradually withdrew U.S. military forces. In January 1973,
over the objections of South Vietnam's NGUYEN VAN THIEU
(who served as president from 1967 to 1975), a peace
agreement was signed in Paris calling for a cease-fire and
the total withdrawal of U.S. troops. Vague provisions for
a political settlement were ignored, however, and in the
spring of 1975 the Communists launched a major offensive
in South Vietnam. Southern resistance rapidly collapsed,
and North Vietnamese troops occupied Saigon in late
April. In 1976, North and South Vietnam were formally
united as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with PHAM VAN
DONG as prime minister.
The government faced resistance to its socialist economic
policies at home and a variety of pressures from abroad.
Relations between North Vietnam and China, increasingly
tense during the final years of the Vietnam War, reached
the breaking point at war's end because of territorial
disagreements and a growing rivalry over Cambodia and
Laos. In November 1978, Vietnam signed a treaty of
friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. Less
than two months later, Vietnamese forces invaded
Kampuchea, overthrew the pro-Chinese KHMER ROUGE regime,
and installed a new government sympathetic to Hanoi. China
continued to support Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia
and cooperated with the ASEAN nations in demanding a
withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from the country. Vietnam
's dominant position in Cambodia and Laos, its close ties
to the Soviet Union, and the unresolved issue of U S.
soldiers missing in action during the Vietnam War hindered
its efforts to improve relations with the United States,
although a symbolic aid package was authorized in 1991.
In 1992, with Vietnam's economy near collapse due to the
cutoff of aid from the former USSR, the United States
agreed to provide humanitarian aid in exchange for
increased Vietnamese efforts to locate U.S. servicemen
listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.
In a major government reorganization, Truong Chinh was
replaced as party secretary general in 1986 (by Nguyen Van
Linh) and as president in 1987 (by Vo Chi Cong). Pham
Hung, who replaced Pham Van Dong as premier in 1987, died
in March 1988. Do Muoi, who was named premier in June,
became party leader in June 1991 and was succeeded as
premier in August by Vo Van Kiet, whose powers were
enhanced under a new constitution adopted in 1992. The
constitution also formalized the free-market reforms
implemented since the 1980s and replaced the collective
presidency with a single president elected from within the
legislature. Le Duc Anh was chosen president after the
1992 legislative elections. French president Francois
Mitterrand made a state visit to Vietnam in February 1993,
during which he announced increases in French economic aid
and the signing of cultural, legal, medical, and other
agreements.
Socialist Republic of Vietnam
LAND
Area: 329,556 sq km (127,242 sq mi).
Capital: Hanoi (1985 est. pop., 2,674,400).
Largest city; Ho Chi Minh City (1984 est. pop., 3,293,146).
Elevations: highest--Fan Si Pan, 3,143 m (10,312 ft);
lowest--sea level, along the coast.
PEOPLE
Population (1992 est.): 68,964,018; density: 209 persons
per sq km (542 per sq mi).
Distribution (1986): 19% urban, 81% rural.
Annual growth (1992): 2.0%.
Official language: Vietnamese.
Major religions: Buddhism, Caodaism, Hoa Hao, Roman
Catholicism.
EDUCATION AND HEALTH
Literacy (1990 est.): 88% age 15 and over.
Universities (1981): 3.
Hospital beds (1985): 205,700.
Physicians (1985): 16,000.
Life expectancy (1992): women--67; men--63.
Infant mortality (1992): 47 per 1,000 live births.
ECONOMY
GNP (1991 est.): $15 billion; $220 per capita.
Labor force (1984): agriculture and fishing--73%;
manufacturing-- 14%; commerce and services--5%.
Foreign trade (1991): imports--$1.9 billion; exports--$1.8
billion; principal trade partners--Japan, Singapore,
Thailand, Eastern Europe.
Currency: 1 dong = 100 xu.
GOVERNMENT
Type: Communist state.
Government leaders (1993): Le Duc Anh--president; Vo Van
Kiet--premier; Do Muoi--Communist party secretary general.
Legislature: National Assembly.
Political subdivisions: 50 provinces, 3 municipalities.
COMMUNICATIONS
Railroads (1983): 2,523 km (1,568 mi) total.
Roads (1983): 347,243 km (215,767 mi) total.
Major ports: 3.
Major airfields: 3.
Copyright - 1993 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.
Vietnam
Vietnam, a nation located along the eastern coast of
mainland Southeast Asia, has had a turbulent history.
Emerging as a distinct civilization during the first
millennium BC, Vietnam was conquered by China during the
early Han dynasty and subjected to 1,000 years of foreign
rule. In AD 939 the Vietnamese restored their
independence and gradually expanded southward along the
coast from their historic homeland in the YUAN (Red) River
valley. In the 19th century Vietnam was conquered once
again and absorbed, along with neighboring Cambodia (now
Kampuchea) and Laos, into French INDOCHINA. Patriotic
elements soon began to organize national resistance to
colonial rule, however, and after World War II,
Communist-led Viet Minh guerrillas battled for several
years to free the country from foreign subjugation.
In 1954, at the GENEVA CONFERENCE, the country was divided
into Communist-led North Vietnam and non-Communist South
Vietnam. For the next 20 years, both North and South
Vietnam were involved in the VIETNAM WAR. That conflict
came to an end when Communist forces from the north
occupied Saigon (now HO CHI MINH CITY) in April 1975.
Today, the Vietnamese government is attempting to lead the
entire nation to socialism. But domestic unrest and
foreign-policy problems, compounded by renewed tensions
with China over the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea,
keep Vietnam a garrison state.
LAND AND RESOURCES
Vietnam, is shaped like a giant letter 'S', extending some
1,600 km (1,000 mi) from the Chinese border to Point Ca
Mau (Baibung) on the Gulf of Thailand. At its widest, it
reaches a width of about 560 km (350 mi). In the narrow
center, it it less than 50 km (30 mi) wide.
Much of Vietnam is rugged and densely forested. A chain
of mountains called the Truong Son (Annamese Cordillera)
extends more than 1,287 km (800 mi) from the Yuan River
delta east of HANOI to the Central Highlands south of
Laos. For much of that distance, these mountains form the
border between Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. The highest
point in the country, Fan Si Pan, rises to 3,143 m (10,312
ft) in the mountainous northwest, near the Chinese
border. Poor soils and heavy rains make the mountainous
areas relatively unsuitable for agriculture.
The large deltas of the Yuan River in the north and the
MEKONG RIVER in the south are rich in alluvial basaltic
soil brought down from South China and inner Southeast
Asia and have abundant water resources and favorable
climate that make them highly suitable for settled
agriculture, particularly the cultivation of wet rice. In
the Yuan delta, the climate is subtropical, ranging from 5
deg C (41 deg F) in winter to more than 38 deg C (100 deg
F) in summer. The Mekong delta is almost uniformly hot,
varying from 26 deg to 30 deg C (79 deg to 85 deg F)
throughout the year. The monsoon season extends from
early May to October, and typhoons often cause flooding in
northern coastal areas.
Most of Vietnam's hardwoods and wild animals (including
buffalo, elephants, and rhinoceroses) are found in the
mountains. In the north are deposits of iron ore, tin,
copper, apatite (phosphate rock), and chromite. Coal,
mined along the coast near the Chinese border, is an
important export and the main source of energy, although
rivers are being harnessed for hydroelectric power and the
government is attempting to exploit modest oil reserves in
the South China Sea.
PEOPLE
Vietnam is one of the most homogeneous societies in
Southeast Asia. Although more than 60 different ethnic
groups live in the country, ethnic Vietnamese constitute
nearly 90% of the total population and are in the majority
throughout the country except in the mountains. The
Vietnamese are descended from peoples who settled in the
Yuan delta area more than 3,000 years ago and later moved
southward along the coast into the Mekong delta. They
speak Vietnamese, which exhibits many similarities to
other tongues spoken in the region but is sometimes
considered a separate language group (see SOUTHEAST ASIAN
LANGUAGES).
The so-called overseas Chinese, descended from ethnic
Chinese who migrated into the country during the 17th and
18th centuries, settled for the most part in large cities
and became involved in commerce, manufacturing, fishing,
and coal mining. During the traditional and colonial
periods, the Chinese were placed under separate
administration. Recent governments, however, have
attempted to assimilate them. Thousands of ethnic Chinese
fled abroad in 1978 in the wake of a government decision
to nationalize commerce and industry in the south; about 2
million reportedly remain in the country.
Tribal peoples, including the MEO (Hmong) and the
MONTAGNARDS, number about 3 million. Descended from a
wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, they live primarily in
the Central Highlands and in the mountains of the north,
where they practice SLASH-AND-BURN AGRICULTURE. Other
smaller groups are the KHMER (about 500,000) and the Cham
(about 50,000), remnants of ancient states absorbed by the
Vietnamese during their southward expansion.
Although the majority of ethnic Vietnamese traditionally
considered themselves Buddhist or Confucianist, there are
about 3 million Roman Catholics, most of whom now live in
the south. Members of two religious sects, the Cao Dai (an
amalgam of eastern and western traditions) and the Hoa Hao
(a radical form of Buddhism), live mainly in the Mekong
delta area and number about 1 million each. Like the
ethnic minorities, these religious groups have resisted
assimilation into the majority culture and today are under
considerable pressure to conform to the government's
socialist program.
The vast majority of the population live in overcrowded
cities or in the densely populated delta areas and along
the central coast. Large southern cities include Ho Chi
Minh City, DA NANG, and HUE. Hanoi, the capital, and
HAIPHONG, a port on the Gulf of Tonkin (see TONKIN, GULF
OF), are the chief cities in the north.
Rapid population growth has placed considerable strain on
limited health services, educational facilities, and food
supplies. The government has instituted a family planning
program and attempted to relieve the problem of
overcrowding by resettling several million people into
'new economic areas' in the sparsely populated mountains
and upland plateaus.
Education is under state control and is free at all
levels. The leading institution of higher learning is
Hanoi University. Although health facilities remain
limited, there has been significant progress in health
care since the reunification of the country in 1976.
For centuries, Vietnamese art and architecture were
heavily influenced by Chinese and Indian forms (see
SOUTHEAST ASIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE). More recently,
Vietnamese painting borrowed from French styles and
techniques. Traditional handicrafts are still practiced,
and poetry remains the favorite literary genre. Vietnam's
greatest poet was Nguyen Du (1765-1820).
ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
According to the evidence of contemporary archaeology, the
Vietnamese were one of the first peoples of Asia to master
the art of irrigation. Ever since, they have lived off
the land, and their primary economic activity has been the
cultivation of wet rice. During the period of French
rule, the marshes of the Mekong delta were drained,
leading to a significant increase in rice production. The
French also developed coal mining, introduced a number of
cash crops, and built a modern rail and road network, but
they were determined to maintain their colonies as a
market for French manufactured goods and a source of cheap
raw materials and did not seriously encourage the
development of a modern commercial and industrial sector.
After the French departed, economic development in both
North and South Vietnam was hindered by the Vietnam War,
and the country remained basically preindustrial,
dependent on outside assistance for essential goods and
services.
The ultimate goal of the Communist regime that took power
in 1975 was to transform all of Vietnam into an advanced
industrial society based on socialist forms of ownership.
Industry had been nationalized and agriculture
collectivized in the north by the late 1950s, but
Communist leaders delayed a similar socialist
transformation in the south to avoid alienating the local
population and to encourage economic recovery from the
long years of war. In 1978, due to the slow pace of
postwar economic development and fears of the growth of an
unmanageable private sector in the south, governments
planners announced the nationalization of all industrial
and commercial enterprises above the family level and
began to create low-level collective organizations in the
countryside. The results were disastrous. With much of
the population opposed to the new policies, the economy
went into a rapid decline.
In September 1979 the regime reversed course, permitting
the revival of private commerce and postponing the process
of collectivization in the south. During the next few
years, economic production gradually recovered as emphasis
shifted from heavy industry to consumer goods and farmers
were allowed to sell surplus crops on the free market.
But the restoration of the small private sector concerned
ideological purists within the party leadership, who
argued for a rapid socialist transformation. In 1985 the
regime reached a compromise. Profit incentives would be
temporarily retained to spur production, but the ultimate
objective of eliminating the private sector on a gradual
basis was reaffirmed.
All land is still owned by the state, but an economic
crisis aggravated by recurrent poor weather and rapid
population growth led the government in 1990 to release
farmers from their obligation to work on collective farms
and to grant them long-term rights to till private plots.
This reform led to a dramatic increase in harvests and the
resumption of rice exports. Some hilly areas have
recently been planted with cash crops such as coffee, tea,
and rubber, and fishing, livestock raising, and forestry
are also being encouraged. The industrial sector is
showing signs of improvement, particularly in light
industry and handicrafts, but consumer goods are in short
supply and growth rates continue to be hampered by
primitive technology, low export capacity, managerial
inexperience, a lack of foreign investment, and shortages
of energy, raw materials, and spare parts.
Vietnam's serious balance-of-payments deficit was
aggravated in the early 1990s by a decline in remittances
from Vietnamese workers in Eastern Europe and the Middle
East and the halting (1991) of Soviet economic subsidies.
Military expenditures, which had consumed about half of
the national budget, were reduced when Vietnam withdrew
its forces from Kampuchea in 1989, although Vietnam, Laos,
and Kampuchea remain closely linked economically. The
government has sought aid from China and has liberalized
its policies in a largely unsuccessful effort to attract
foreign investors.
GOVERNMENT
Vietnam is a Communist republic. A new constitution in
1980 replaced the North Vietnamese constitution of 1959,
which was extended throughout the country after the formal
reunification of Vietnam on July 2, 1976. On paper,
Vietnam has a parliamentary form of government, with
supreme power vested in the unicameral National Assembly
elected every five years by universal suffrage. The
Assembly elects the Council of State, the collective
presidency. Governmental functions are carried out by a
Council of Ministers responsible to the National
Assembly. In practice, real power resides in the hands of
the Vietnamese Communist party.
HISTORY
The Vietnamese people first appear in history as one of
several peoples living along the southern coast of China
as far south as the Yuan delta. By the middle of the
first millennium BC, a small state based on irrigated
agriculture and calling itself Van Lang had emerged in the
delta. In 101 BC, Van Lang was overrun by forces from the
north and gradually absorbed into the expanding Chinese
empire. Despite intensive Chinese culture and political
influence, however, the sense of cultural uniqueness did
not entirely disappear, and in the 10th century rebel
groups drove out the Chinese and restored national
independence.
The new state,, which styled itself Dai Viet (Greater
Viet), accepted a tributary status with China and adopted
many political and cultural institutions and values from
its northern neighbor. It resisted periodic efforts to
restore Chinese rule, however, and began to expand its
territory, conquering the state of CHAMPA to the south and
eventually seizing the Mekong delta from the declining
KHMER EMPIRE.
Expansion brought problems, however. The difficulties of
administering a long and narrow empire, and the cultural
differences between the traditionalist and densely
populated north and the sparsely settled 'frontier' region
in the Mekong delta, led to political tensions and, in the
17th century, to civil war. Two major aristocratic
families, the Trinh and the Nguyen, squabbled for
domination over the decrepit Vietnamese monarchy. This
internal strife was exacerbated by the arrival of European
adventurers who, in order to facilitate their commercial
and missionary penetration of Southeast Asia, frequently
intervened in local politics.
During the last quarter of the 18th century, a peasant
rebellion led by the so-called Tay Son brothers in the
south spread to the north, where the leading brother,
Nguyen Hue, united the country, and declared himself
emperor. After his death in 1792, this dynasty rapidly
declined and was overthrown by a scion of the princely
house of Nguyen, who in 1802 founded a new Nguyen dynasty
with its capital at Hue.
The Nguyen dynasty had come to power with French
assistance, and France hoped for commercial and economic
privileges. When these were not granted, the French
emperor Napoleon III, under pressure from imperialist and
religious groups in France, ordered an attack on Vietnam
in 1857. This resulted in a Vietnamese defeat and the
ceding of several provinces in the south, which the French
transformed into a new colony of COCHIN CHINA. Twenty
years later the French completed their conquest of Vietnam
, dividing the northern and central parts of the country
into protectorates with the historic names of TONKIN and
ANNAM. Between 1887 and 1893, all three regions were
joined with the protectorates of Laos and Cambodia into
the French-dominated Union of Indochina.
French rule had a significant effect on Vietnamese
society. Many traditional institutions were dismantled and
replaced with others imported from the West. Western
technology was introduced, and upper-class Vietnamese
increasingly adopted the French language and Roman
Catholicism. The economy was oriented toward the export
of raw materials, and the small manufacturing and
commercial sector was dominated by European and overseas
Chinese interests.
Deprived of a political and economic role by the colonial
administration, Vietnamese patriots turned to protest or
revolt. By the late 1930s the Communist party, led by a
Vietnamese revolutionary who took the name of HO CHI MINH,
had become the leading force in the nationalist movement.
Germany defeated France in 1940. Japan, a German ally,
then occupied Vietnam, but the French Vichy Government
continued to administer the country until March 1945, when
the Japanese established an autonomous state of Vietnam
under Annamese emperor BAO DAI. At the POTSDAM CONFERENCE
in July-August, the Allies instructed Nationalist Chinese
troops in the north and British troops in the south to
accept the Japanese surrender. When Japan surrendered in
August, however, the Viet Minh, an anti-Japanese and
anti-French front founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1941, revolted
and seized power. In early September, Viet Minh leaders
declared the formation of the independent Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (DRV). French forces returned by
1946, and in March of that year the new government reached
a preliminary agreement on the formation of a Vietnamese
'free state' within the FRENCH UNION, but negotiations
collapsed. In December, the First Indochinese War broke
out between the Vietnamese and the French, who were
increasingly supported by the United States. In 1954,
after eight years of fighting, the Vietnamese defeated the
French at DIEN BIEN PHU. Shortly after, the major powers
met at Geneva and called for the departure of all foreign
forces and the de facto division of Vietnam at 17 degrees
north latitude into two separate states, the
Communist-dominated DRV in the North and a non-Communist
state in the south, with provision for eventual
reunification and elections.
The division of Vietnam lasted only two decades. In South
Vietnam, the weak Bao Dai, reinstalled by the French in
1949, was replaced by NGO DINH DIEM. Despite support from
the United States, Diem was unable to suppress a
continuing guerrilla insurgency directed from Hanoi but
provoked in part by his own unpopularity. In November
1963, Diem was overthrown in a military coup, and North
Vietnam intensified its efforts to seek reunification
under Communist rule. In 1965, with the South Vietnamese
regime on the verge of collapse, the United States decided
to send combat troops to South Vietnam to defeat the
insurgency, whose various elements had by this time united
as the Communist-dominated National Liberation Front of
Vietnam (also known as the VIET CONG). But victory was
elusive, and U.S. public opinion began to turn against the
Vietnam War. After 1968, U.S. President Richard Nixon
gradually withdrew U.S. military forces. In January 1973,
over the objections of South Vietnam's NGUYEN VAN THIEU
(who served as president from 1967 to 1975), a peace
agreement was signed in Paris calling for a cease-fire and
the total withdrawal of U.S. troops. Vague provisions for
a political settlement were ignored, however, and in the
spring of 1975 the Communists launched a major offensive
in South Vietnam. Southern resistance rapidly collapsed,
and North Vietnamese troops occupied Saigon in late
April. In 1976, North and South Vietnam were formally
united as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with PHAM VAN
DONG as prime minister.
The government faced resistance to its socialist economic
policies at home and a variety of pressures from abroad.
Relations between North Vietnam and China, increasingly
tense during the final years of the Vietnam War, reached
the breaking point at war's end because of territorial
disagreements and a growing rivalry over Cambodia and
Laos. In November 1978, Vietnam signed a treaty of
friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. Less
than two months later, Vietnamese forces invaded
Kampuchea, overthrew the pro-Chinese KHMER ROUGE regime,
and installed a new government sympathetic to Hanoi. China
continued to support Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia
and cooperated with the ASEAN nations in demanding a
withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from the country. Vietnam
's dominant position in Cambodia and Laos, its close ties
to the Soviet Union, and the unresolved issue of U S.
soldiers missing in action during the Vietnam War hindered
its efforts to improve relations with the United States,
although a symbolic aid package was authorized in 1991.
In 1992, with Vietnam's economy near collapse due to the
cutoff of aid from the former USSR, the United States
agreed to provide humanitarian aid in exchange for
increased Vietnamese efforts to locate U.S. servicemen
listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.
In a major government reorganization, Truong Chinh was
replaced as party secretary general in 1986 (by Nguyen Van
Linh) and as president in 1987 (by Vo Chi Cong). Pham
Hung, who replaced Pham Van Dong as premier in 1987, died
in March 1988. Do Muoi, who was named premier in June,
became party leader in June 1991 and was succeeded as
premier in August by Vo Van Kiet, whose powers were
enhanced under a new constitution adopted in 1992. The
constitution also formalized the free-market reforms
implemented since the 1980s and replaced the collective
presidency with a single president elected from within the
legislature. Le Duc Anh was chosen president after the
1992 legislative elections. French president Francois
Mitterrand made a state visit to Vietnam in February 1993,
during which he announced increases in French economic aid
and the signing of cultural, legal, medical, and other
agreements.
William J. Duiker
Bibliography: Beresford, M., Vietnam (1988); Buttinger,
J., Vietnam: A Political History (1968); Colby, William,
and McCargar, James, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of
America's Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (1989);
Duiker, W. J., China and Vietnam (1986), Vietnam Since the
Fall of Saigon, 3d rev. ed. (1989), and Vietnam: Nation in
Revolution (1983); Fitzgerald, F., Fire in the Lake
(1972); Gardner, L. C., Approaching Vietnam (1988);
Harrison, J. P., The Endless War (1982); Hickey, G. C.,
Village in Vietnam (1964); Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese
Communism, 1925-1945 (1982); Karnow, S., Vietnam: A
History (1983; repr. 1984); Marr, D. G., Vietnamese
Anticolonialism, 1885-1925 (1971) and Vietnamese Tradition
on Trial, 1920-1945 (1970; repr. 1983); McAlister, J. T.,
and Mus, P., The Vietnamese and Their Revolution (1970);
Moore, Harold G., and Galloway, Joseph, We Were Soldiers
OnceAnd Young (1992); Nguyen Khac Vien, Tradition and
Revolution in Vietnam (1974); Pike, D., Viet Cong
(1966); Shaplen, R., Bitter Victory (1986); Sheehan, N.,
After the War Was Over (1992); Sully, F., ed., We the
Vietnamese (1971); Taylor, K. W., The Birth of Vietnam
(1983); Thayer, C., Vietnam: Politics, Economics, and
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Wiegersma, N., Vietnam: Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution
Facts About Vietnam
OFFICIAL NAME
Socialist Republic of Vietnam
LAND
Area: 329,556 sq km (127,242 sq mi).
Capital: Hanoi (1985 est. pop., 2,674,400).
Largest city; Ho Chi Minh City (1984 est. pop., 3,293,146).
Elevations: highest--Fan Si Pan, 3,143 m (10,312 ft);
lowest--sea level, along the coast.
PEOPLE
Population (1992 est.): 68,964,018; density: 209 persons
per sq km (542 per sq mi).
Distribution (1986): 19% urban, 81% rural.
Annual growth (1992): 2.0%.
Official language: Vietnamese.
Major religions: Buddhism, Caodaism, Hoa Hao, Roman
Catholicism.
EDUCATION AND HEALTH
Literacy (1990 est.): 88% age 15 and over.
Universities (1981): 3.
Hospital beds (1985): 205,700.
Physicians (1985): 16,000.
Life expectancy (1992): women--67; men--63.
Infant mortality (1992): 47 per 1,000 live births.
ECONOMY
GNP (1991 est.): $15 billion; $220 per capita.
Labor force (1984): agriculture and fishing--73%;
manufacturing-- 14%; commerce and services--5%.
Foreign trade (1991): imports--$1.9 billion; exports--$1.8
billion; principal trade partners--Japan, Singapore,
Thailand, Eastern Europe.
Currency: 1 dong = 100 xu.
GOVERNMENT
Type: Communist state.
Government leaders (1993): Le Duc Anh--president; Vo Van
Kiet--premier; Do Muoi--Communist party secretary general.
Legislature: National Assembly.
Political subdivisions: 50 provinces, 3 municipalities.
COMMUNICATIONS
Railroads (1983): 2,523 km (1,568 mi) total.
Roads (1983): 347,243 km (215,767 mi) total.
Major ports: 3.
Major airfields: 3.
