History of Chinese in Vietnam
The Chinese did well in the French colonial period in the 19th and early 20th century. French laws discouraged participation in commerce by the native population but encouraged Chinese participation. There was a substantial increase in the Hoa population. The country’s limited foreign and domestic trade were already in the hands of Chinese when the French arrived. The French chose to promote the Chinese role in commerce and to import Chinese labor to develop road and railroad systems, mining, and industry. French colonial policy that lifted the traditional ban on rice exports at the end of the nineteenth century also attracted new waves of Chinese merchants and shopkeepers seeking to take advantage of the new export market. Vietnam’s growing economy attracted even more Chinese thereafter, especially to the South. Already deeply involved in the rice trade, the Chinese expanded their interests to include ricemilling and established a virtual monopoly. [Source: Library of Congress]
In 1970, Chinese Vietnamese made up 5.3 percent of the population of South Vietnam and controlled 70 to 80 percent of the commerce. 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.
Restrictions on economic activity following reunification of the north and south in 1975 and the subsequent but unrelated general deterioration in Vietnamese-Chinese relations, which led to war in 1979, negatively impacted the Chinese-Vietnamese community. After the Vietnam War, the Chinese were targets and many fled or were driven out. 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. 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. Many “boat people” left when the government closed down private businesses in 1978. An estimated 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam. Many were officially encouraged and assisted and some were expelled across the land border with China. The 1989 census counted 962,000 Chinese, barely changed from the 949,000 recorded in the 1979 census.