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.
Chinese diaspora in France
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, ethnic Chinese from Vietnam were heavily persecuted by the new communist government and faced expulsion from the newly reunified country. This led to a wave of emigration to France, as Vietnamese Chinese joined other ethnic Vietnamese refugees from South Vietnam and largely resettled in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France region. Ethnic Chinese from Laos and Cambodia, the other two former French Indochina colonies, also arrived in France after this period of conflict for similar reasons.