Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc ("Independence - Freedom - Happiness") | |||||
| Anthem | "Tiến Quân Ca
(Army March)" | ||||
| Capital (and largest city) |
Saigon | ||||
| Other cities | Hanoi, Da Nang, Hue, Haiphong | ||||
| Language official |
Vietnamese | ||||
| others | Lao | ||||
| Ethnic Groups main |
Vietnamese | ||||
| others | Hmong, Chinese, Siamese, Burmese, Malayan, Filipino | ||||
| Demonym | Vietnamese | ||||
| Government | Constitutional government | ||||
| President | Trinh Nguyen Son | ||||
| Independence | from France | ||||
| declared | 1930 | ||||
| Currency | Vietnamese đồng | ||||
| Calling Code | 84 | ||||
| Internet TLD | .vn | ||||
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam is a country in Southeast Asia (Indochina), currently ruled by a military junta since the 2012 coup against the Nationalist Party of Vietnam. Vietnam is bordered to the north by China, to the west by Burma and Siam, and to the southwest by Cambodia. It is bordered to the south and east by the South China Sea, primarily the Gulf of Tonkin. Vietnam's most prominent geographic features are the Mekong and Red rivers. The capital and largest city in Vietnam is Saigon. The official language of Vietnam is Vietnamese, although there is a sizeable Hmong minority in the northwest, and there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Siamese, Burmese, Malayan and Filipino expatriates in Vietnam, most prominently in southern cities such as Saigon, Da Nang and Hue.
History[]
The Kingdom of Vietnam existed for centuries and experienced great modernization as a protectorate of the French Foreign Legion, which based itself out of Saigon in a treaty with the monarchy in Hue as a bulwark against China. During the Pacific War, in which the Hue government sided with China, the French withdrew to Singapore to avoid becoming involved in the conflict. The Pacific War ended with Vietnam being overrun by Allied forces (in particular the Royal Army of Siam) and being partitioned into three semi-autonomous zones by the terms of the Treaty of Hue in January of 1930: the American occupation zone surrounding Saigon, the independent Vietnamese zone of influence in Hue and the central highlands, and a Chinese zone of influence based out of Hanoi and the north.
The Americans agreed to a full withdrawal of troops with the Hue government in 1946, giving the monarchy complete control over the Mekong delta again, but conflicts arose with the Chinese over the next several decades, the Chinese viewing northern Vietnam as an unofficial province of China they had earned through conquest in the Pacific War. This conflict eventually bubbled into the Vietnamese Civil War, which was fought multilaterally over the next three decades (1967-1997), in which the attempted breakaway state of Tonkin came to be dominated by the Chinese military and the VQDD. Vietnam was deeply affected by the Burmese War, with Burmese attacks being launched against Chinese bases on Vietnamese soil, and the Chinese eventually withdrew from Tonkin in 1979, though materiel support for the VQDD continued. The ensuing battle against French Foreign Legion soldiers in Vietnam over the next decade and a half eventually resulted in the brief recognition of Tonkin as Vietnam's legitimate government, which received covert support from China and the United States, until the reunification of Vietnam in 1997 following the death of Emperor Bao Dai, the evacuation of French troops from the country after the Hue Riots and the victory of the VQDD in elections in the south, creating a single state. Though Vietnam's economy would continue to grow as it had under the VQDD-led Tonkin era after reunification, the 2002 Asian financial crisis struck it hard and the country saw a nearly 35% reduction in GDP and a collapse in foreign investment, which the country had still not recovered from by the early 2010s economic slowdown in the industrialized world. That recession hit Vietnam particularly hard, leading to public anger towards the Nationalist Party. In April 2012, following destabilization in Siam and a continuation of 2011 Asian Spring protests, the Vietnamese military staged a bloodless coup in Saigon. The junta led by General Trinh Nguyen Son dissolved the National Assembly a month later and presented a civilian constitution to be written and voted on in 2013. Following the vote, Trinh Nguyen Son was appointed President for the 2014-2020 term and he resigned from the military.