Twice Exiled: The Ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of China (1955-Present)

Abstract

This dissertation historicizes the ethnic Chinese from Vietnam or “Hoa” in the context of relations between the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) and the Republic of China (ROC)/Taiwan. The Hoa formed a notable minority in the RVN and became a substantial demographic of the IndoChinese (“boat people”) refugee crisis. The first part is devoted to Hoa and ROC reactions to the RVN’s attempts to assimilate them through “Vietnamization” in four policy areas. Part two looks at two case studies of Hoa involvement in Cold War-era transnational anti-communist networks in the late 1960s. In the final part, I trace the journeys of some 15,000 Hoa and non-Hoa asylum seekers from Indochina who passed to or through Taiwan and the various ways that the term “refugee” was deployed and used by the ROC government, the United States government and the asylum seekers themselves.