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Vietnam Hoa
The Hoa, or ethnic Chinese, are predominantly urban dwellers.
A few Hoa live in small settlements in the northern highlands
near the Chinese frontier, where they are also known as
ngai. Traditionally, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the
Chinese have retained a distinctive cultural identity, but in
1955 North Vietnam and China agreed that the Hoa should be
integrated gradually into Vietnamese society and should have
Vietnamese citizenship conferred on them
(see Foreign Relations
, ch. 4).
Before 1975 the northern Hoa were mainly rice farmers,
fishermen, and coal miners, except for those residing in cities
and provincial towns. In the South they were dominant in commerce
and manufacturing. According to an official source, at the end of
1974 the Hoa controlled more than 80 percent of the food,
textile, chemical, metallurgy, engineering, and electrical
industries, 100 percent of wholesale trade, more than 50 percent
of retail trade, and 90 percent of export-import trade. Dominance
over the economy enabled the Hoa to "manipulate prices" of rice
and other scarce goods. This particular source further observed
that the Hoa community constituted "a state within a state,"
inasmuch as they had built "a closed world based on blood
relations, strict internal discipline, and a network of sects,
each with its own chief, to avoid the indigenous administration's
direct interference." It was noted by Hanoi in 1983 that as many
as 60 percent of "the former bourgeoisie" of the south were of
Chinese origin.
In mid-1975 the combined Hoa communities of the North and
South numbered approximately 1.3 million, and all but 200,000
resided in the South, most of them in the Saigon metropolitan
area. Beginning in 1975, the Hoa bore the brunt of socialist
transformation in the South, especially after the communist
government decided in early 1978 to abolish private trade
(see Economic Roles of the Party and the Government
, ch. 3). This,
combined with external tensions stemming from Vietnam's dispute
with Cambodia and China in 1978 and 1979 caused an exodus of
about 250,000 Hoa, of whom 170,000 fled overland into China from
the North and the remainder fled by boat from the South
(see Foreign Relations
, ch. 4;
The Armed Forces
, ch. 5).
Data as of December 1987
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