Economy of Vietnam
Until the French colonization in the mid-19th century, Vietnam's economy had been mostly agrarian, subsistence-based and village-oriented. French colonizers, however, deliberately developed the regions differently as the French needed raw materials and a market for French manufactured goods, designating the South for agricultural production as it was better suited for agriculture, and the North for manufacturing as it was naturally wealthy in mineral resources. Though the plan exaggerated regional divisions, the development of exports—coal from the North, rice from the South—and the importation of French manufactured goods stimulated domestic commerce.
Immigration to Vietnam
During the French rule of Vietnam between 1925 and 1933, nearly 600,000 Chinese emigrated to North Vietnam, and in the Second Sino-Japanese war that took place from 1937-1941, many Chinese left for South Vietnam. Tensions between newly reunified Vietnam and China led to a mass exodus in 1978, when 150,000 ethnic Chinese fled Northern Vietnam for China due to fears of imminent war and Vietnamese persecution. In the aftermath of the subsequent 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, the Vietnamese government made considerable efforts to drive out remaining ethnic Chinese residents, but many remained in the country; resulting in large Chinese communities in Vietnam that persists today.