Anti-Vietnamese sentiment () involves hostility or hatred that is directed towards Vietnam, Viet people, or the government of Vietnam. This may be due to negative perceptions created by historical tensions, ethnic negative perceptions, wars, or xenophobic sentiments against Vietnamese 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 affected Global South (mostly developing countries) or anti-communists being hostile against Vietnamese communist rule.
Vietnam has a Kinh majority, but is also a multiethnic country.
Background Anti-Vietnamese sentiment has a strong and deep historical root for hundred years. There are several features behind this anti-Vietnamese hatred below: Organized persecution of the Vietnamese as a nation or as an ethnic group, often based on the belief that Vietnamese interests are a threat to one's own national aspirations; Racist anti-Vietnamese sentiment, a variety of xenophobia; Cultural anti-Vietnamese sentiment: a prejudice against the Vietnamese and Vietnamese-speaking persons – their customs, language, and education; and Stereotypes about Vietnam and Vietnamese people in the media and popular culture, including distortions and illusions. Examples include: Being seen as poor boat people, refugees, or illegal migrants doing illegal activity abroad. Western perspectives often frame Vietnam as a wild, "jungle" place lacking a formalized civilization, ignoring that Vietnamese civilization has a long, documented history.
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. Chinese dynasties used to extend their level of anti-Vietnamese persecutions from imprisoning, hanging to even massacres in large scales, notably under the Ming dynasty which the Chinese organized massacring methods from burning to beheading with no mercy; or the famine of 1944–1945 in which the Empire of Japan was believed to have attempted a brutal extermination of possible Vietnamese resistance against Japanese rule. Smaller states like Cambodia also organized massacres of Vietnamese people, notably under Lon Nol and the Khmer Rouge, justifying that Vietnam wanted to take over Cambodia and make it a province. 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.
Viet Thanh Nguyen argues that Western depictions of Vietnam, particularly through Hollywood and literature, suffer from a "jungle" bias, reducing the Vietnamese to victims or savages in a primitive setting while ignoring their actual civilization, history, and agency. Nguyen argues that American media distorts history by focusing on American trauma rather than Vietnamese experiences, reducing a complex, ancient civilization to a mere backdrop for American self-reflection. However, historian Peter Zinoman criticizes the depiction in Nguyen's novel The Sympathizer for portraying Vietnamese women in demeaning ways, featuring sexual violence, and offering other unduly negative portrayals of South Vietnam, similar to those found in Hollywood films about Vietnam.
Historical context Vietnam's southward coastal expansion caused significant friction with its Southeast Asian neighbors as early as the 15th Century. The absorption of the lands of Champa and the settlement of the Mekong Delta created a real and perceived threat in the minds of their neighbors, particularly in Cambodia.Ben Kiernan (2001). "Myth, nationalism and genocide" (PDF). Yale University Genocide Studies Program. Likewise, Vietnamese expansion into Laos during this period negatively defined Tai identities against the "civilized" cultural elements that Emperor Lê Thánh Tông had attempted to forcefully impose.Whitmore, John K. (2004). "The Two Great Campaigns of the Hong-Duc Era (1470–97) in Dai Viet". South East Asia Research. 12: 119–136. In contrast, historical anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Siam reflected the two states' competition for regional hegemony, rivalries reached their height during the Siamese-Vietnamese wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
A majority of these wars were fought in Cambodia, and folk tales about this period often feature Vietnamese antagonists.Ben Kiernan (2001). "Myth, nationalism and genocide" (PDF). Yale University Genocide Studies Program. Misunderstandings were compounded by cultural differences, as the Vietnamese culture, etiquette, and manner of diplomacy were heavily influenced by that of China, whereas the Indochinese kingdoms had historically been part of the Indosphere.Ben Kiernan (2001). "Myth, nationalism and genocide" (PDF). Yale University Genocide Studies Program.
With the subsequent French 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. Mass uprisings against French colonial overlords increased, and the French tightened their grip on the Vietnamese with more brutal and infamous punishments, including deportations to New Caledonia. French colonial rule would soon be disrupted by the Japanese, but the attitude remained the same, even after World War II, until the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ.
The Japanese occupation of Vietnam in 1940 placed it under the control of two empires. Japanese and French mismanagement caused the famine 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.
Following the French Indochina War was the Vietnam War and American involvement therein. Although the American intervention on behalf of their South Vietnamese ally received a mixed reception. American soldiers committed massacres during the war, with the most infamous being the My Lai massacre, and also controversially used Agent 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 Vietnamese Intermarium, based on the idea of Poland's Józef Piłsudski, that sought to turn Southeast Asia into a communist/anti-Chinese base increased. The previous Lon Nol government and even the Khmer Rouge encouraged anti-Vietnamese massacres, blaming them for trying to colonize Cambodia, such as the Ba Chúc massacre. In Thailand, the possibility of Vietnamese invasions prompted hostility against anything Vietnamese in Thailand, leading to wide range support for the Khmer Rouge. Singapore and Malaysia also called for sanctions against Vietnam with the accusation of Vietnamese imperialism in Cambodia. North Korea, meanwhile, accused Vietnam for the same reason and supported the anti-Vietnamese movement, hosting Norodom Sihanouk and broadcast anti-Vietnamese propaganda in North Korea. Pirates also attacked and raided Vietnamese boat people fleeing from Vietnam, although whether this was inspired by anti-Vietnamese sentiment is not known to be true.
This trend of anti-Vietnamese sentiment only started to dwindle down after Đổi 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; however due to historical conflicts, there remains historical animosities towards Vietnam amongst some of its neighbours, particularly Cambodia.
Use of the term Viet Cong
Western media regarding the Vietnam War can be a negative for Vietnam's image. The term Viet Cong has acquired different connotations depending on the context. The term may be used in reference to communist war crimes against South Vietnamese civilians. It may also be used to insult Vietnamese people both in Vietnam and overseas. On the other hand, the label Viet Cong may also be used to justify American war crimes. Additionally, Vietnam War films often center their stories on Americans or are presented from Western perspectives.
Incidents by country Thailand
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Thailand has been the direct result of historical conflicts with the Vietnamese. 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 the Vietnam War, and took pride in its participation.
When the Khmer 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, and accusation over Vietnamese plan to invade Thailand inflamed anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Thailand.
Cambodia
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Cambodia dates back to the Khmer 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 the Mekong 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. After the Vietnamese successfully annexed Champa, they then moved to conquer the Khmers on the Mekong Delta. Following the beginning of French 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.
Antipathy against the Vietnamese peaked under the Khmer rouge. In 1978, under the administration of Democratic 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. This led to a war with the Vietnamese when they began to retaliate for the inhumane genocide and subsequently overthrew the Khmer Rouge.
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 including Guangdong and Vietnam, and which is a distant cognate of the word Viet.Ben Kiernan (2001). "Myth, nationalism and genocide" (PDF). Yale University Genocide Studies Program. While not historically used as a pejorative, the term is debated to have taken on some derogatory undertones following the Cambodian Civil War and Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia during the 1980s. Michael Vickery suggests that the Khmer 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 northwestern barbarian groups.Staff, Post. "From Ionia to Vietnam". The Phnom Penh Post. Archived from the original on 29 November 2020. Retrieved 19 November 2020.