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Anti-Vietnamese sentiment (Vietnamese:chủ nghĩa bài Việt Nam) involves hostility or hatred that is directed towardsVietnamese people, or thegovernment of Vietnam. This may be due to negative perceptions created by historical tensions, ethnic negative perceptions, wars, orxenophobic sentiments that emerged fromVietnamese diasporic communities. National or regional discrimination can also occur.
Additionally, xenophobia towards the Vietnamese may extend from cultural, political, or economic divisions, such as Vietnam being situated within the affectedGlobal South (mostly developing countries) oranti-communists being hostile againstVietnamese communist rule.
Vietnam is mostlyKinh majority, but is also amultiethnic country.
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment, also known under the termsVietnamophobia andanti-Vietnamism, has a strong and deep historical root for more than a thousand years.[citation needed] There are several features behind this anti-Vietnamese hatred below:
Anti-Vietnamese acts had long been organized by various countries and ethnicities opposing the existence of Vietnam as a country and the irrational fear of a supposed Vietnamese takeover, in both direct and indirect forms.Chinesedynasties used to extend their level of anti-Vietnamese persecutions from imprisoning, hanging to even massacres in large scales, notably under theMing dynasty which the Chinese organized massacring methods from burning to beheading with no mercy;[1] or thefamine of 1944–1945 in which theEmpire of Japan was believed to have attempted a brutal extermination of possible Vietnamese resistance against Japanese rule.[2] Smaller states like Cambodia also organized massacres of Vietnamese people, notably underLon Nol and theKhmer Rouge, justifying that Vietnam wanted to take over Cambodia and make it a province.[3][4] Historic actions inspired by anti-Vietnamism ranged from felonious acts motivated by hatred to the physical extermination of the Vietnamese nation, the goal of which was to eradicate the Vietnamese state.
Vietnam'ssouthward coastal expansion caused significant friction with its Southeast Asian neighbors as early as the15th Century. The absorption of the lands ofChampa and the settlement of theMekong Delta created a real and perceived threat in the minds of their neighbors, particularly inCambodia.[5] Likewise,Vietnamese expansion into Laos during this period negatively definedTai identities against the "civilized" cultural elements that EmperorLê Thánh Tông had attempted to forcefully impose.[6] In contrast, historical anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Siam reflected the two states' competition for regional hegemony, rivalries reached their height during theSiamese-Vietnamese wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.[7]
A majority of these wars were fought in Cambodia, and folk tales about this period often feature Vietnamese antagonists.[8] Misunderstandings were compounded by cultural differences, as the Vietnamese culture, etiquette, and manner of diplomacy were heavily influenced by that ofChina, whereas the Indochinese kingdoms had historically been part of theIndosphere.[9]
With the subsequentFrench occupation of Vietnam in the late 19th century, French colonial rulers considered the Vietnamese an inferior race. Originally a neutral term, "Annamites" became more pejorative.[10] Mass uprisings against French colonial overlords increased, and the French tightened their grip on the Vietnamese with more brutal and infamous punishments, including deportations toNew Caledonia.[11] French colonial rule would soon be disrupted by the Japanese, but the attitude remained the same, even afterWorld War II, until theBattle of Điện Biên Phủ.
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TheJapanese occupation of Vietnam in 1940 placed it under the control of two empires.[12] Japanese and French mismanagement caused thefamine of 1945, in which Japanese soldiers refused to give rice to the Vietnamese peasantry to help their war effort, that killed between 1 and 2 million Vietnamese, an act that contributed to the distrust of the Japanese administration in Vietnamese.[13]
Following theFrench Indochina War was theVietnam War and American involvement therein. Although the American intervention on behalf of theirSouth Vietnamese ally received a mixed reception. American soldiers committed massacres during the war, with the most infamous being theMy Lai massacre, and also controversially usedAgent Orange.
The end of the Vietnam War, as an unwanted consequence, made Vietnamophobia grow rapidly among both Asian communists and non-communists alike, such as in China, Thailand, Singapore, North Korea, Malaysia and Cambodia, as the fear of a VietnameseIntermarium, based on the idea of Poland'sJózef Piłsudski, that sought to turn Southeast Asia into a communist/anti-Chinese base increased. The previousLon Nol government and even theKhmer Rouge encouraged anti-Vietnamese massacres, blaming them for trying to colonize Cambodia, such as theBa Chúc massacre.[14] In Thailand, the possibility of Vietnamese invasions prompted hostility against anything Vietnamese in Thailand, leading to wide range support for the Khmer Rouge.[15] Singapore and Malaysia also called for sanctions against Vietnam with the accusation of Vietnamese imperialism in Cambodia.[16] North Korea, meanwhile, accused Vietnam for the same reason and supported the anti-Vietnamese movement, hostingNorodom Sihanouk and broadcast anti-Vietnamese propaganda in North Korea.[17] Pirates also attacked and raidedVietnamese boat people fleeing from Vietnam, although whether this was inspired by anti-Vietnamese sentiment is not known to be true.[18]
This trend of anti-Vietnamese sentiment only started to dwindle down afterĐổi mới, when Vietnam started economic liberalization and reforms, opening Vietnam to the world which gave them a rising profile of political and economic successes with the normalization of the U.S. and China's relations;[19] however due to historical conflicts, there remains historical animosities towards Vietnam amongst some of its neighbours, particularly Cambodia.[20]
Western media regarding the Vietnam War can be a negative for Vietnam's image. The most notable is the use of the termViet Cong, which has different interpretations depending on the context. It may be used to insult Vietnamese people in Vietnam, and Vietnamese in Western Europe and theUS.[21] On the other hand, the use of termViệt Cộng can also provoke anger among Vietnamese as it can evoke memories of American war crimes during the war.[22] Additionally, decades of Vietnam War movies or fictional narratives of the events of the Vietnam War often dehumanise the Vietnamese and centre the story around the Americans or around Western perspectives.[23]
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Thailand has been the direct result of historical conflicts with the Vietnamese.[24] Since the series of conflict between the two nations, which began in 18th century, Siam had only won one conflict, with the others being indecisive or Siamese defeats against Vietnam. Thailand also later participated in theVietnam War, and took pride in its participation.[25]
When theKhmer Rouge was overthrown in Cambodia, Thailand was one of the main countries that harbored Khmer Rouge's leader and provided them ammunition against Vietnamese forces, owned by the old historical fear of Vietnamese invasion,[26] and accusation over Vietnamese plan to invade Thailand inflamed anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Thailand.[27]
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Cambodia dates back to theKhmer Empire, because the Khmer Empire, as a Chinese vassal, was constantly raiding and conspiring with China's dynasties to attack the Vietnamese in pincer attacks. The Khmers who sparsely inhabited theMekong Delta started to become inundated by Vietnamese settlers that were allowed to settle by the Cambodian king at the time and in response the Vietnamese were subjected to Cambodian retaliation.[28] After the Vietnamese successfully annexedChampa, they then moved to conquer the Khmers on the Mekong Delta. Following the beginning ofFrench Cochinchina with the arrival of European troops and missionaries, the Cambodians told Catholic European envoys that the Vietnamese government's persecution of Catholics justified the launching of retaliatory attacks against the Vietnamese colonists in Cambodia.[28]
Antipathy against the Vietnamese peaked under theKhmer rouge.[29] In 1978, under the administration ofDemocratic Kampuchea, especially when Cambodian socialists began to rebel in the eastern zone of Cambodia,Pol Pot ordered his armies to exterminate 1.5 million eastern Cambodians which he branded as "Cambodian with Vietnamese minds" along with the 50 million Vietnamese in the area.[30] This led to a war with the Vietnamese when they began to retaliate for the inhumane genocide and subsequently overthrew theKhmer Rouge.[31]
Thais and Cambodians commonly refer to the Vietnamese as "Youn" (Thai: ญวน, Khmer: យួន). This term probably derives from the Chinese exonym "Yue", which referred to the people of its historic southern coastal regions includingGuangdong and Vietnam, and which is a distant cognate of the wordViet.[32] While not historically used as a pejorative, the term is debated to have taken on some derogatory undertones following theCambodian Civil War andVietnamese occupation of Cambodia during the 1980s.[33]Michael Vickery suggests that theKhmer Republic and Khmer Rouge may have been deliberately weaponizing colonial orientalists' erroneous attribution of the words etymology to the Pali term "Yona", an ethnonym for the Indo-Greeks that seems to have been applied generically towards other northwesternbarbarian groups.[34]
In the 21st Century Cambodian politicians, particularly those in theCambodia National Rescue Party and its successors, have been accused of favoring the term because of its connotations withKhmer Rouge propaganda that stoked anti-Vietnamese nationalist feeling.[35] Anti-Vietnamese sentiment in contemporary Cambodia is often politically charged both to appeal to nationalism and also to express opposition toHun Sen, who collaborated with the Vietnamese during theirinvasion and the subsequentsatellite era.[36]
Vietnamese Cambodians are probably one of the nation's largest ethnic minorities but many are undocumented as they are oftenexcluded from citizenship, carrying with them the stigma of beingperpetual foreigners.[37] Vietnamese people in Cambodia are known to have experienced discrimination, occasionally manifesting in violence.[38]
Negative public perceptions of government cooperation with Vietnamese businesses accessing Cambodian land and resources pressuredHun Manet to withdraw from theCambodia–Laos–Vietnam Development Triangle Area in 2024.[39]
As China had occupied the Vietnamese people for 1000 years, there has been a long uneasy sentiment towards China by the Vietnamese and vice versa.[40] Nonetheless, anti-Vietnamese expressions have been dated back longer in Chinese history, especially following theLý–Song War, during which the Vietnamese army underLý Thường Kiệt attacks southernGuangxi and parts of southwestern Guangdong in response to invade from theSong dynasty.[41] More than 250,000–400,000 troops and civilians died (including massacre of Yongzhou) and more than half of Song troops died during the counteroffensive against Đại Việt.[42] Chinese historical sources exaggeratedly stated seven million Vietnamese casualties inflicted by Chinese forces during the retaliatory campaign.[43] Brutality against the Vietnamese continued during theFourth Chinese domination of Vietnam.[citation needed] After its independence, the newly foundedLê dynasty waged several wars againstChampa, a Chinese-alignedpolity to the east of theKhmer Empire.[44]
During theSino-Vietnamese War, when China had invaded Vietnam, the Chinese claimed that Vietnamese had invaded them instead and saw the war as self-defense despite being the one who launched the attack. The war is still taught in China as a "war of resistance against Vietnamese invasion".[45]
Recent tensions in theSouth China Sea have caused more disdain towards the Vietnamese by the Chinese community. In retaliation to territorial disputes, a Chinese restaurant in Beijing refused to serve food to Vietnamese tourists, alongside Filipinos and Japanese.[46][47] The feelings are also reciprocated from the latter, not just from disputes but also because ofCOVID-19.[48][49][50][51]
Vietnamese people in Japan, among one of Japan's largest foreign communities, have expressed concerns about stereotyping and discrimination due to the operation of Vietnamese organised crime groups. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry stated that Vietnamese representative agencies are cooperating with Japanese authorities in combating crime.[52]
The people of Myanmar began to express hatred towards Vietnam as well as China andASEAN countries after theprotests, because of suspicions of expressing support forthe military government.Mytel, aViettel's subsidiary, along with Vietnamese companies have been targeted by protesters.
Anti-Vietnamese sentiments occurred during the Vietnam War refugee crisis where handling Vietnamese refugees were an issue and were discriminated against in Hong Kong. Hong Kong may also express some anti-Southeast Asian sentiments, look down on countries seen as poor, or having anti-communist sentiments may also target the Vietnamese.
In a similar vein as to how the South Koreans have not be satisfied with Japan's apologies of 'comfort women', the Vietnamese have not found South Korean apologies for actions committed in the Vietnam War acceptable either.[53] South Korean military were in disagreement towards the compensation of Vietnamese victims of the Vietnam War.[54]
Hatred towards foreigners especially to non-white people began to rise in Russia as they were blamed for the country's 10 years of failed reforms in which living standards plummeted.[55] Prior to theChechen–Russian conflict, especially when Russian authorities blamed the Chechen Muslims Jihadist as responsible in theRussian apartment bombings, this has fuelled more hatred towards immigrants in the country.[55] Prior to this, Russian skinheads began to be formed with some of the group members joining to take revenge for their family members that had been killed during the bomb attacks, though some other Russians joined the group because they are just "bored" and want to bully people.[56] Following the attack against Vietnamese in Russia, protests were held by the Vietnamese community in the country, especially after the murder of 20-year-old Vietnamese student, Vu Anh Tuan on 13 October 2004. The protesters state:
We came to study in this country, which we thought was a friend of Vietnam. We do not have drunken fights, we do not steal, we do not sell drugs and we have the right to protection from bandits.[57]
Despite the protest for protection from Russian authorities, Vietnamese people continue to be attacked. On 25 December 2004, two Vietnamese students at theMoscow Energy Institute, Nguyễn Tuấn Anh and Nguyen Hoàng Anh suffered severe injuries and were subsequently hospitalised after they had been assaulted by a group of strangers with knives and clubs on the way back to their dormitory.[58] On 13 March 2005, three Russians stabbed a 45-year-old Vietnamese man named Quân to death in front of his home in Moscow.[59] On 22 March 2008, a 35-year-old Vietnamese woman who worked at a Moscow market stabbed to death in an apparent race-hate killing.[citation needed] On 9 January 2009, a group of strangers in Moscow stabbed a 21-year-old Vietnamese student named Tăng Quốc Bình resulting in his death the next day.[60]
Amid continuous attacks against Vietnamese students and workers, around 600 Vietnamese were rounded up in August 2013 in the city of Moscow and placed in poor condition tents while waiting to be deported from Russia.[61]
Reports about the growing Vietnamese population inNorth Caucasus have resulted in several ethnic violence between ethnic Vietnamese and North Caucasian peoples, notably occurring inChechnya andIngushetia. Following a rumor about Chechens being killed by Vietnamese employers, it had sparked uproar and anti-Vietnamese sentiment in social media.[62] In 2013, violence broke out inMalgobek between Vietnamese and Ingush workers, with the Chechens supporting the Ingush, resulting with deaths of several Vietnamese.[63] A year before, ethnic violence between Vietnamese and Ingush also broke out, with the Ingush accused the authorities of Vietnamization of Ingushetia.[64]
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Tension and hatred between Vietnamese immigrants and white fishermen rose up inGalveston Bay, Texas in 1981, and was intensified by theKu Klux Klan following an invitation from the American fishermen to threatening and intimidating the Vietnamese to leave, which resulted in attacks on Vietnamese boats.[65]
In April 1988,Mark Wahlberg attacked a Vietnamese-American veteran from the Vietnam war with a wooden stick and blinded his eye, calling him "Vietnam fucking shits".[66] Wahlberg attacked a second Vietnamese-American man later the same day, punching him in the eye. When Wahlberg was arrested and returned to the scene of the first assault, he told police officers: "I'll tell you now that's the mother-fucker whose head I split open."[67]
Vietnamese business owners, along withKorean Americans were disproportionately targeted during theRodney King riots, a result of misdirected anger and hatred.[citation needed]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)In the colonial lexicon, an Annamite was a Vietnamese.
In Annamite circles, the police added, using the derogatory term for native inhabitants.
