l5l3lm
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.
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
Once...And 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
Society (1986); Trung, T. Q., Vietnam Today (1990);
Wiegersma, N., Vietnam: Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution
(1988).
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.
