Ethnic groups
Vietnam has one of the most complex ethnolinguistic patterns in Asia. The Vietnamese majority was significantly Sinicized during a millennium of Chinese rule, which ended in 939 ce. Indian influence is most evident among the Cham and Khmer minorities. The Cham formed the majority population in the Indianized kingdom of Champa in what is now central Vietnam from the 2nd to the late 15th century ce. Small numbers of Cham remain in the south-central coastal plain and in the Mekong delta near the Cambodian border. The Khmer (Cambodians) are scattered throughout the Mekong delta.
Many other ethnic groups inhabit the highlands. While cultures vary considerably in the central region, shared characteristics include a way of life still largely oriented toward kin groups and small communities. Known collectively by the French as Montagnards (“highlanders” or, literally, “mountain people”), these central highlanders have affinities with other Southeast Asians and have exhibited an intense desire to preserve their own cultural identities. In the northern uplands, the various groups have ethnolinguistic affiliations with peoples in Thailand, Laos, and southern China.
Highland groups in general have experienced little Chinese or Indian influence, although they absorbed some Western (French and then American) cultural traits, primarily between the late 19th century and the early 1970s. By the early 21st century, however, the active promotion of tourism, as well as increased availability of products from foreign markets, brought new international influences into the highland communities.
Languages
Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam. Although one of the Mon-Khmer languages of the Austroasiatic family, Vietnamese exhibits strong influences from Chinese. The language of the Khmer minority also belongs to the Mon-Khmer group, whereas Cham belongs to the Austronesian family.
Many Montagnard peoples—such as the Rade (Rhade), Jarai, Chru, and Roglai—speak Austronesian languages, linking them to the Cham, Malay, and Indonesian peoples; others—including the Bru, Pacoh, Katu, Cua, Hre, Rengao, Sedang, Bahnar, Mnong, Mang (Maa), Muong, and Stieng—speak Mon-Khmer languages, connecting them with the Khmer. French missionaries and administrators provided Roman script for some of the Montagnard languages, and additional orthographies have since been devised.
The largest of the northern highland groups speak languages belonging to the Tai language family and generally live in upland valleys. Thai, the national language of Thailand, also belongs to this language family. Hmong (Miao) and Mien groups, who speak Sino-Tibetan languages, are scattered at higher elevations.
Religion
Confucianism, Daoism, and Mahayana Buddhism entered Vietnam over many centuries. Gradually they became intertwined, simplified, and Vietnamized to constitute, along with vestiges of earlier local beliefs, an indigenous religion that came to be shared to some considerable extent by all Vietnamese, regardless of region or social class. It is largely this religious amalgam that is practiced by the roughly half of the population that identifies itself as being Buddhist. The religion of Cao Dai, a synthesis of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism, appeared during the 1920s, and in the 1930s the Hoa Hao neo-Buddhist sect spread through parts of the Mekong delta. Cao Dai has about half as many adherents as Hoa Hao, but both congregations are growing. Together, the two new-religionist movements have embraced a significant minority of the population. Local religions involving numerous spirits predominate in many upland communities, and most Cham are adherents of Islam.
Roman Catholicism was introduced into Vietnam in the 16th century by Portuguese explorers and Dominican missionaries and spread rapidly following the French conquest in the mid-19th century. The heaviest concentrations of Roman Catholics in Vietnam were in the north until 1954, when, after the partition of the country, many of them to fled to the south. Protestantism came to Vietnam in 1911 and spread mainly among small segments of the urban population in the central and southern regions.
In 1954 all foreign Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy were expelled from North Vietnam, leaving only the native clergy. The North Vietnamese government tried to supplant the existing structures of organized religion with its own patriotic Buddhist, Cao Dai, Catholic, and Protestant religious organizations. Catholic clergy and believers were forced to renounce their allegiance to Rome. With the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam in 1975, northern institutions of control over churches and clergies were extended to the south as well. The country’s constitution, promulgated in 1992, guarantees freedom of religion, but in practice government controls have been relaxed only gradually. Performance of religious services by foreign missionaries without government approval continues to be illegal. Similarly, faith-based non-governmental organizations must register with the government, and may not proselytize.
Settlement patterns
There are several distinct rural settlement patterns in Vietnam. Especially in northern and central Vietnam, geomantic principles influence the orientation of houses and community buildings. In central Vietnam, many of these structures face the sea. In the densely populated Red River delta in the north, village buildings are often grouped closely together and are enclosed by a bamboo hedge or an earthen wall. Those along rivers, canals, or roads often abut each other, forming a single elongated settlement. Lowland Vietnamese villages on the central coastal plain are characteristically close-knit, small clusters of farmsteads near watercourses, and fishing villages are often situated in sheltered inlets. In the Mekong delta in the south many settlements are strung out along waterways and roads; most are loose-knit clusters of farmsteads, with some of them scattered among the rice fields. The settlements of the Cham and Khmer minorities closely resemble those of the Vietnamese. Most highland peoples build their houses on pilings.
Historically, Vietnam’s major cities have been Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). Throughout Vietnamese history the Hanoi area has been important and was the site of several early capitals. Hanoi also served as the capital of French Indochina from 1902 until 1954, and the city has retained the architecture of that era. The city’s port of Haiphong was developed by the French in the late 19th century as a trade and banking centre. Hue was the seat of the Nguyen family, which controlled central and southern Vietnam from the late 17th to the late 19th century. Located on the Huong (Perfume) River, it was laid out in the early 19th century as a political and religious centre, and its economic functions were ancillary. Saigon was built largely by the French in the second half of the 19th century as the administrative capital and principal port of Cochinchina. The city’s architecture recalls towns and cities in southern France. The adjoining city of Cholon has long been a major centre for ethnic Chinese.
Demographic trends
Vietnam’s population experienced rapid growth in the decade following reunification in 1975. Throughout the 1980s, roughly two-fifths of the population was under age 15. Toward the end of the decade, however, birth rates began to decline, dropping from well above to notably below the world average over the next 20 years. Life expectancy simultaneously increased by nearly 15 years over that period. Consequently, the median age of Vietnam’s population has been rising steadily.
Migrations have historically been predominantly from north to south; more recently there have also been migrations from the lowlands to higher elevations and from rural to urban areas. Following the partition of Vietnam in 1954, nearly one million people moved from the north to the south. In the late 1950s, the governments in both the north and the south sought to resettle ethnic Vietnamese from the lowlands to the uplands. While these efforts were abandoned in the south in 1963, they continued in the north. In the five years immediately following reunification, the government reinstituted resettlement programs in the south and intensified its activities in implementing them throughout the country, with a significant number of people moving from the southern lowlands to the central highlands. Since then, however, there has been an ongoing flow of migrants into Ho Chi Minh City and its environs and into the central highlands. The greatest migration outflow has been from parts of the northeast and the central coastal plain.
Emigration was substantial following reunification. Between 1975 and 1990 hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese left the country, both legally and illegally; these refugees became known as “boat people,” and an unknown number of them died at sea. Many remained in refugee camps in Thailand and other countries, but a large number emigrated, especially to the United States. By the late 1980s, several countries had begun to refuse Vietnamese refugees’ automatic resettlement. Throughout the subsequent decade, large-scale repatriation programs were implemented by the broader international community. The last refugee camp for Vietnamese boat people, in Hong Kong, closed in 2000.
Economy
Vietnam’s greatest economic resource is its literate and energetic population. Its long coastline provides excellent harbours, access to marine resources, and many attractive beaches and areas of scenic beauty that are well suited to the development of tourism. Since the late 1990s, the country’s economy has been on a vigorous upswing. Tourism has expanded, manufacturing and export earnings have increased, and the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has grown rapidly. Early in the 21st century, state markets were opened to foreign competition, and Vietnam became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This surge followed two decades of post-reunification economic instability, during which a slowly developing infrastructure, excessive population growth, environmental degradation, and a rising domestic demand (that was increasingly difficult to meet) impeded economic development.
During the period 1954–75, when the country was divided, there were three layers to the economies in both the north and the south: a bottom layer based on the cultivation of rice, a middle layer dominated by mining in the north and rubber plantations in the south, and a third wartime layer that relied on Soviet and Chinese aid in the north and American aid in the south. In the north, land reform in 1955–56 was followed by rapid collectivization of agriculture and handicrafts. Government investment favoured heavy industry at the expense of agriculture, handicrafts, and light industry, the traditional mainstays of the economy. Heavy industry grew, but efficiency was low, quality was poor, and further progress was hampered by deficiencies in agriculture and light industry. Economic aid from socialist countries masked many economic weaknesses. In the south, although a substantial proportion of manufacturing was conducted by state-owned enterprises, other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, trade, and transport, were characterized by private ownership and private enterprise. Agriculture flourished in the Mekong delta, and the standard of living was significantly higher in the south than it was in the north.
After reunification, the northern model of development was imposed on the entire country. Efforts to socialize the commercial sector and to collectivize agriculture met with resistance, especially in urban centres and in the rich Mekong delta, where the majority of farmers in the 1970s were self-sufficient, middle-income peasants. The south also underwent a severe drain of human resources. Many well-educated people fled Vietnam after 1975. Hundreds of thousands more, mainly those who had been associated with the former government or the Americans and had not been able to leave the country, were placed in jails or reeducation centres, while other skilled but politically suspect people were forced to resettle in remote areas. The government’s efforts to abolish private enterprise and private property in the south and its deteriorating political relations with China affected Vietnam’s ethnic Chinese more than any other group and precipitated their flight from the country. The Chinese exodus was most intense in 1978–79, but it continued at a slower pace with sponsorship from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees into the early 1990s. Large police and military expenditures further strained the budget and diverted resources from productive enterprises.
These factors, combined with poor management of state-run economic programs, led to a severe economic crisis. Food production and per capita income dropped, and consumer goods were shoddy, expensive, and in short supply. The government responded with minor changes in 1979, and initiated a program of more basic reforms known as doi moi (“renovation”) beginning in 1986. While maintaining state ownership in many sectors and overall government control of the economy, Vietnam moved away from a centrally planned, subsidized economy toward one that utilizes market forces and incentives and tolerates private enterprise in some areas. The quality and variety of food, consumer goods, and exports subsequently improved.
The pace of reform slowed during the 1990s, and the economy continued to be more cumbersome and bureaucratic than the dynamic market economies of Vietnam’s more successful Southeast Asian neighbours. Although manufacturing and especially services grew in importance after the reforms were introduced, agriculture remained a major component of the economy. After 1998, however, the economy began to rebound. Exports diversified, and per capita income started to climb, nearly doubling in less than a decade.