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Glossary Vietnam
- Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)
- The military ground forces of the South Vietnamese government (Republic of
Vietnam) until its collapse in April 1975. ARVN originated in the Vietnamese
military units raised by French authorities to defend the Associated State
of Vietnam in the early 1950s. During the Second Indochina War (q.v.),
it grew to over 1 million men and women organized into eleven army divisions
(plus specialized units, such as Rangers and Special Forces) deployed in
four Corps Tactical Zones (redesignated as Military Regions in 1971).
- Asian Development Bank (ADB)
- Established in 1966, the ADB assists in economic development and promotes
growth and cooperation in developing member countries. Membership includes
both developed and developing countries in Asia and developed countries in
the West.
- Black Flag forces
- A band of mostly Chinese adventurers who fled to northern Vietnam after
the collapse of the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) in China. They eventually
placed themselves at the service of the imperial court in Hue and fought the
French forces in the 1883-84 Tonkin campaign.
- boat people
- Refugees who fled Vietnam by sea after 1975. Many fell victim to pirate
attacks in the Gulf of Thailand, drowned, or endured starvation and
dehydration as a result of their escape in ill- equipped and undersized
vessels. Those who reached safety in neighboring Southeast Asian countries
were accorded temporary asylum in refugee camps while awaiting permanent
resettlement in industrialized Western nations willing to accept them.
- bonze
- A general term for a Buddhist monk (as opposed to the more specific bhikku,
meaning an ordained monk).
- Cao Dai
- Indigenous Vietnamese religion centered in Tay Ninh Province, southern
Vietnam. It was founded and initially propagated by Ngo Van Chieu, a minor
official who, in 1919, claimed to have had a series of revelations. The
faith grew under the leadership of Le Van Trung, its first "pope"
or Supreme Chief, chosen in 1925. Doctrinally, the religion is a syncretic
blend of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Confuciancism and Western
nineteenth-century romanticism. Before the fall of Saigon, the Cao Dai had
about 1 to 2 million adherents.
- chi-bo
- A party chapter composed of a collection of party cells (to dang),
the lowest organizational echelon of the Indochinese and later the
Vietnamese Communist Party.
- chua
- A lord or prince. The hereditary title used by the Trinh and Nguyen
families, who ruled Vietnam in the name of the emperor during the later Le
Dynasty in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
- Colombo Plan
- Founded in 1951 and known as the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic
Development in South and Southeast Asia until it was expanded in 1977 and
called the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in Asia and the
Pacific. It is an arrangement that permits a developing member country to
approach a developed member country for assistance on a one-to- one basis.
Assistance may be technical or in the form of capital or commodity aid.
- Co Mat Vien
- An advisory council set up by Emperor Minh Mang following the rebellion of
Le Van Khoi in the 1830s.
- Committee for Coordination of Investigations of
the Lower Mekong Basin
- Established in 1957 under the sponsorship of the United Nations Economic
and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Committee aims to
develop water resources in the lower Mekong basin through improvements in
hydroelectric power, irrigation, flood control, watershed management, and
navigation. Its membership is limited to Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
- Communist International
- Also called the Comintern or Third International, it was founded in Moscow
in 1919 to coordinate the world communist movement. Officially disbanded in
1943, the Comintern was replaced from 1947 to 1954 by the Cominform
(Communist Information Bureau), in which only the Soviet and the ruling East
European communist parties (except for Yugoslavia, which was expelled in
1948) and the French and the Italian communist parties were represented. The
Cominform was dissolved in 1956.
- comprador
- Vietnamese communist term (used originally in China to mean purchasing
agent) applied disparagingly to the middleman who extracts a profit without
engaging in economic production, that is, a "comprador
capitalist." The term is also applied to an entrepreneur in Cholon, Ho
Chi Minh City's predominantly Chinese sister city.
- Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon)
- Also abbreviated CEMA and CMEA, the organization was established in 1949
to promote economic cooperation among socialist bloc countries and is
headquartered in Moscow. Its members in the 1980s included the Soviet Union,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Cuba,
Mongolia, and Vietnam.
- democratic centralism
- A basic Marxist-Leninist organizational principle accepted by all
communist parties, including the Vietnamese (most recently at the Fourth
National Party Congress in December 1976). It prescribes a hierarchical
framework of party structures purportedly established through democratic
elections.
- dong (D)
- Vietnam's monetary unit, which in mid-1989 had an exchange rate of US$1 to
D4,500.
- First Indochina War (1946-54)
- The anticolonial conflict, also known as the Viet Minh War, between France
and the Viet Minh, a Vietnamese communist-dominated coalition of Indochinese
nationalist elements led by veteran revolutionary Ho Chi Minh. The French
defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 marked the final episode of the war. The
conflict was brought to an end officially by the Geneva Conference of July
1954 and its resulting agreements.
- fiscal year (FY)
- January 1 to December 31.
- gross domestic product (GDP)
- The value of domestic goods and services produced by an economy over a
certain period, usually one year. Only output of goods for final consumption
and investment are included because the values of primary and intermediate
production are assumed to be included in final prices. Reductions for
depreciation of physical assets are normally not included. See gross
national product.
- Group of 77
- Founded in 1964 as a forum for developing countries to negotiate with
developed countries for development aid, the original 77 developing nations
had expanded by the 1980s to include the 127 members of the Nonaligned
Movement (q.v.).
- Hoa
- Term applied by the Vietnamese to the ethnic Chinese residents of Vietnam.
- Hoa Hao
- Indigenous Vietnamese religion centered in An Giang Province, southern
Vietnam. It was founded in the 1930s by Huynh Phu So, the son of a village
elder in Chau Doc Province. Doctrinally, the faith is a variant of Mahayana
Buddhism, but allows no intermediary between man and the Supreme Being.
Before the fall of Saigon in 1975, the Hoa Hao had more than 1 million
adherents.
- Ho Chi Minh Trail
- An intricate network of jungle trails, paths, and roads leading from the
panhandle of northern Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into the border
provinces of southern Vietnam. At the height of the Second Indochina War (q.v.),
it was a major resupply artery for Hanoi's armed forces operating in South
Vietnam.
- Indochina Federation
- A political concept, never fully realized, joining the three Indochinese
states into a confederation, first proposed at the Indochinese Communist
Party Central Committee meeting in October 1930. The government of France
resurrected the term in 1946 to describe a limited internal self-government
granted to the states of Vietnam (including Cochinchina), Laos, and
Cambodia. In the 1980s, the term was used disparagingly by some observers
and analysts to categorize Vietnam's military presence in, and influence
over, Laos and Cambodia.
- International Monetary Fund (IMF)
- Established along with the World Bank in 1945, the IMF is a specialized
agency affiliated with the United Nations and is responsible for stabilizing
international exchange loans to its members (including industrialized and
developing countries) when they experience balance of payments difficulties.
These loans frequently carry conditions that require substantial internal
economic adjustments by the recipients, most of which are developing
countries.
- International Telecommunications Satellite
Organization (INTELSAT)
- Established by two international agreements concluded at Washington, D.C.
in August 1971, and effective in February 1973, INTELSAT was formed to carry
forward the development, construction, operation, and maintenance of the
global commercial telecommunications satellite system. In the 1980s, there
were 109 signatory member nations and 30 nonsignatory user nations.
- Khmer Rouge
- The name given to the Cambodian communists by Prince Norodom Sihanouk in
the 1960s. Later, the term (although a misnomer) was applied to the
insurgents of varying ideological backgrounds who opposed the Khmer Republic
regime of Lon Nol. Between 1975 and 1978, it denoted the Democratic
Kampuchea regime led by the radical Pol Pot faction of the Kampuchean (or
Khmer) Communist Party. After being driven from Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese
invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, the Khmer Rouge went back to
guerrilla warfare and joined forces with two noncommunist insurgent
movements to form the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea.
- missing-in-action (MIA)
- United States military term for servicemen who remained unaccounted for at
the end of the Second Indochina War (q.v.). In the 1980s, rumors
persisted that some MIAs were still alive and had been detained
involuntarily in Vietnam after the war.
- National Assembly
- The highest organ of government in Vietnam, according to the 1980
Constitution. The National Assembly is empowered with both constitutional
and legislative authority. It can, theoretically at least, elect and remove
members of upper-echelon government bodies, such as the Council of State and
Council of Ministers; it may also pass laws, raise taxes, approve the state
budget, and amend the constitution.
- new economic zones
- Population resettlement scheme undertaken in southern Vietnam after 1975
to increase food production and alleviate population pressure in congested
urban areas, especially Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The sites selected for
resettlement previously had been undeveloped or had been abandoned in the
turbulence of war.
- Nonaligned Movement (NAM)
- Formed as the result of a series of increasingly structured nonaligned
conferences, the first of which met at Belgrade, Yugoslavia in September
1961, the NAM's purpose is to insure the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of nonaligned nations. In the 1980s, there were 127 member
nations.
- Parrot's Beak
- The part of the Cambodian province of Svay Rieng that juts into the
southern Vietnamese provinces of Tay Ninh and Long An. During the South
Vietnamese and United States incursion into Cambodia in 1970, and again
during the Vietnamese invasion that drove the Khmer Rouge from power in
1978, the area was the scene of heavy fighting.
- People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN)
- The military forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (until 1976)
and, after reunification, of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the
Second Indochina War (q.v.), PAVN bore the brunt of the fighting
against the United States military forces in Vietnam, but was consistently
able to recoup its losses and infiltrate units south by means of the Ho Chi
Minh Trail (q.v.). Failing to topple the Saigon government during
the Tet Offensive of 1968, PAVN undertook its first conventional invasion of
South Vietnam in the Easter Offensive of 1972. This attempt ended in defeat,
but PAVN's next effort, the Spring Offensive of 1975, quickly overran the
ineffectual ARVN resistance and toppled the Saigon government, thereby
bringing to a close the Second Indochina War.
- Produced Nation Income (PNI)
- A measure of an economy's material production that excludes income
generated by the service sector and depreciation on capital equipment. It is
used to measure controlled or communist economics where accounting
procedures may ignore the service sector as "unproductive."
- Ruble
- Monetary unit of the Soviet Union, which in mid-1989 had an exchange rate
of US$1 to Ruble 0.63.
- search and destroy missions
- Offensive military operations undertaken by United States combat units in
Vietnam to find and neutralize the enemy, especially when the enemy's
strength and disposition had not been fixed precisely. The capture and
holding of territory during such operations was not a priority.
- Second Indochina War (1954-75)
- Armed conflict that pitted Viet Cong insurgents native to southern Vietnam
and regular PAVN (q.v.) units with Chinese and Soviet logistical
and materiel support on one side against ARVN (q.v.), United
States, and smaller forces from the Republic of Korea (South Korea),
Australia, Thailand and New Zealand on the other. Most of the ground
fighting occurred in southern Vietnam. However, part of the conflict also
involved an intensive air war over North Vietnam and Laos from 1965-73 and
combat between competing indigenous forces in Laos and Cambodia.
- to dang
- A party cell, the lowest organizational echelon of the Indochinese and
later the Vietnamese Communist Party.
- Viet Cong
- Contraction of the term Viet Nam Cong San (Vietnamese communists), the
name applied by the governments of the United States and South Vietnam to
the communist insurgents in rebellion against the latter government,
beginning around 1957. The Vietnamese communists never used the term
themselves, but referred to their movement as the National Front for the
Liberation of South Vietnam (also known as the National Liberation Front),
formally inaugurated in December 1960.
- Viet Minh
- Contraction of the term Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (Vietnam
Independence League), a coalition of nationalist elements dominated by the
communists and led by veteran revolutionary Ho Chi Minh. The movement first
identified itself in May 1941, when it called for an uprising against the
French colonial government. It proclaimed the independence of Vietnam on
September 2, 1945, and led the anti-French guerrilla war that followed,
until the victory at Dien Bien Phu brought the conflict to an end.
- World Bank
- The informal name used to designate a group of three affiliated
international institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), and the
International Finance Corporation (IFC). The IBRD, established in 1945, has
the primary purpose of providing loans to developing countries for
productive projects. The IDA, a legally separate loan fund administered by
the staff of the IBRD, was set up in 1960 to furnish credits to the poorest
developing countries on much easier terms than those of conventional IBRD
loans. The IFC, founded in 1956, supplements the activities of the IBRD
through loans and assistance designed specifically to encourage the growth
of productive private enterprises in less developed countries. The president
and certain senior officers of the IBRD hold the same positions in the ICF.
The three institutions are owned by the governments of the countries that
subscribe their capital. To participate in the World Bank group, member
states must first belong to the International Monetary Fund (q.v.).
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