Ethnic minority development in vietnam

Using data from the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys and 1999 Census, we show that ‘majority’ Kinh and Hoa households have substantially higher livingstandards than ‘minority’ households

Ethnic Minority Development

in Vietnam

BOB BAULCH*, TRUONG THI KIM CHUYEN**,

DOMINIQUE HAUGHTON***, & JONATHAN HAUGHTON****

*University of Sussex, UK, **National University of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,

***Bentley College, Waltham, USA, ****Suffolk University, Boston, USA

Final version received May 2006

ABSTRACT This study examines the disparities in living standards between and among thedifferent ethnic groups in Vietnam Using data from the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys and

1999 Census, we show that ‘majority’ Kinh and Hoa households have substantially higher livingstandards than ‘minority’ households from Vietnam’s 52 other ethnic groups While the Kinh,Hoa, Khmer and Northern Highland Minorities benefited from economic growth in the 1990s, theposition of the Central Highland Minorities stagnated Decompositions show that even ifminority households had the same endowments as Kinh households, this would close no more than

a third of the gap in their per capita expenditures While some ethnic minorities seem to be doingwell out of a strategy of assimilating with the Kinh-Hoa majority, others groups are attempting tointegrate economically while retaining distinct cultural identities, and a third group is largelybeing left behind by the growth process

I Introduction

Vietnam is an ethnically diverse society The Kinh (‘lowland Vietnamese’) majority,which accounts for 84 per cent of the population, co-exists with 53 smaller ethnicminority groups, some of which have less than 1,000 members (Dang et al., 2000).Previous research using the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys, in which the Kinhare usually grouped together with the Hoa (Chinese), has shown that the remaining

52 ethnic minorities constitute the poorest, least educated sections of Vietnamesesociety (Vietnam Poverty Working Group, 1999).1 Furthermore, the gap in livingstandards between the Kinh and Hoa majority and the other ethnic minorities grewbetween 1993 and 1998 (the years when the closely comparable Vietnam LivingStandards Surveys were undertaken) Geography, in particular the fact that manyethnic minorities live in remote and mountainous areas, explains only a part of the

Correspondence Address: Bob Baulch, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK Email: b.baulch@ids.ac.uk

Vol 43, No 7, 1151–1176, October 2007

ISSN 0022-0388 Print/1743-9140 Online/07/071151-26 ª 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/02673030701526278

difference in living standards between these two groups There are systematicdifferences in endowments and the returns to those endowments for members of theKinh-Hoa majority and the ethnic minorities, most of which are in favour of themajority group (Van de Walle and Gunewardana, 2001) These and other moredetailed qualitative studies (see in particular, Winrock International, 1996; Jamieson

et al., 1998; Huy and Dai, 1999) have led to an emerging consensus among donorsand non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that a new, more differentiatedapproach to ethnic minority policy is required in Vietnam

This paper seeks to contribute to this debate by examining and decomposing thedisparities in living standards between and among the different ethnic groups inVietnam We first use a range of socio-economic variables to examine the differences

in living standards between the Kinh-Hoa majority and the other ethnic minorities,and how these changed between 1993 and 1998 This is followed by a more detailedexamination, employing data from both the Vietnam Living Standards Surveysand the 1999 Population and Housing Census, of socio-economic differencesamong minority groups A more nuanced picture starts to emerge, in which theethnic groups that have improved standards are shown to be those that haveassimilated most with Kinh society, while the less assimilated groups (particularlythose in the Central Highlands and the Hmong in the Northern Uplands) have beenleft behind.2

After an examination of the historical context and government policy towardethnic minorities, we turn to a more detailed explanation of why many ethnicminority households are so poor Distinguishing between endowments (comprisingboth physical and human capital) and returns to those endowments, we estimate anddecompose a set of expenditure regressions Our results show that even if ethnicminority households had the same endowments as the Kinh and Hoa, this wouldclose no more than a third of the gap in their living standards Such diversity in thesocio-economic development experiences of the different ethnic minority groupsindicates that the need for a similar diversity in the policy interventions designed toassist them

II The Majority-Minority Gap in Living Standards

The clearest evidence of the gap in living standards between the Kinh-Hoa majorityand the ethnic minorities comes from the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys of1992–93 (VLSS93) and 1997–98 (VLSS98) The VLSS93 and VLSS98 werenationally representative, multi-topic household surveys patterned after the WorldBank’s Living Standard Measurement Surveys Both surveys employed threequestionnaires – one for households, one for communities and one for communitylevel prices – and covered a wide variety of topics including education, health,employment, migration, housing, agricultural and non-agricultural activities,fertility and anthropometrics, in addition to standard modules on householdcomposition, expenditures and incomes Sampling for the VLSS93 was based on the

1989 Population and Housing Census, in which 81 per cent of the population wasrural, and resulted in a two-stage self-weighting sample of 4,800 households.Sampling for the VLSS98 was based on tracking the 1993 households within theiroriginal communes, with additional households added to ensure statistically

representative samples of seven rural and three urban strata This resulted in asample of 5,999 households of whom 4,304 had been surveyed in both 1993 and1998.

While the panel dimension of the VLSS is extremely useful for many purposes, itraises two implications for the understanding of ethnic minority development issues

in Vietnam Firstly, since the sampling frame and weights for the VLSS98 were based

on the 1989 Census, it is likely that migrants were under-sampled in the VLSS98.Urban areas grew rapidly in Vietnam during the 1990s, with the rural populationshare falling to 76.5 per cent by the time of the 1999 Census, despite the restrictionsplaced on rural-urban migration by the need for migrants to obtain registrationpermits (ho khau) The restrictions on migration may have affected the ethnicminorities more severely than the majority Kinh-Hoa group Second, becauseapproximately 72 per cent of the households in the VLSS98 were also surveyed in

1993, newly formed households may be under-sampled in the second VLSS Ethnicminority households are typically larger and more extended than those of the Kinh-Hoa, and this may have resulted in household size among the ethnic minorities beingover-estimated Despite these caveats, both the VLSS surveys were well designed andexecuted and are regarded as among the most reliable household surveys available inVietnam.3

Table 1 gathers together a number of socio-economic indicators based on the datafrom the VLSS For 1998, we present data both for the full sample of 5,999households living in all 194 communes surveyed in the VLSS98, and also for a sub-sample of 48 communes that are ethnically mixed.4This latter sub-sample, which ispredominantly rural, can be used to examine whether the living standards of ethnicminorities households are worse than those of their Kinh and Hoa neighbours, and

so provides a crude way to control for the otherwise pervasive effects of geography

To test whether the values of each of these variables are the same for majority andminority households, we have computed p-values based on t-tests (for continuousvariables) and chi-squared tests (for binary variables): these are displayed in the ‘test’columns The data for 1998 have been weighted to correct for the sampling design ofthe second VLSS (in which different households have different probabilities of beinginterviewed)

The expenditure level of minority households is much lower than that of Hoa households, whether measured in per capita (VND1537/capita/day forminorities versus VND2951/capita/day for the Kinh-Hoa) or per adult equivalentterms (VND2293 and VND4157/adult equivalent/day respectively).5While spend-ing for the majority groups rose by 38 per cent in real terms between 1993 and 1998,the increase for minority households was much smaller, at 18 per cent The lowerliving standards of minority households are partly due to demographic factors.Ethnic minority households tend to be larger than Kinh-Hoa households (5.4 vs 4.6household members in 1998), are more likely to include young children (15% vs.10%) and, are more likely to span three generations (27% vs 18%) Oncehousehold economies of scale are accounted for, however, the disparities betweenper capita and per adult equivalent expenditures for the two groups are verysimilar.6 Ethnic minority households are also less likely to be able to speakVietnamese, are less likely to be headed by a female, and are much less likely to live

Kinh-in urban areas

While 54 per cent of Kinh-Hoa had expenditures below the General StatisticalOffice (GSO)/World Bank poverty line in 1992–93, this proportion had dropped to

31 per cent by 1997–98 During the same period, the poverty headcount among theminorities only fell from 86 per cent to 75 per cent So despite constituting just 14 percent of the total population, ethnic minorities made up 29 per cent of all the poor inVietnam (Vietnam Poverty Working Group, 1999) Provincial level poverty mapsconstructed by merging data from the VLSS98 with the 1999 Census show that thereare 14 provinces with rural poverty headcounts of over 60 per cent (Minot andBaulch, 2004) Of these 14 provinces, 12 have populations in which ethnic minoritiesmake up more than half of the total, all of which are located in the NorthernUplands and Central Highlands

Ethnic minority households are less well-served by the health system (Desai,2000) The fertility rate for minority women is about 25 per cent higher than forKinh and Hoa women (Desai, 2000) However, just 47 per cent of ethnic minoritymothers in the 1998 VLSS sample sought prenatal care, compared with 70 per centfor Kinh mothers Furthermore, only 30 per cent of ethnic minority births wereassisted by a doctor/physician or nurse/midwife, compared to 81 per cent forthe Kinh Similarly, 75 per cent of ethnic minority parents consulted a health careprovider when a child (5–60 months) was sick, compared with 88 per cent for Kinhhouseholds And roughly 50 per cent of minority children of one year or older havereceived the four main vaccinations, compared with about 60 per cent for Kinhchildren.7

However, it is important not to overemphasise the contrasts, because an outsideobserver is more likely to be struck by the similarities between the socio-demographic characteristics of the two groups For instance, Desai (2000) showsthat contraceptive usage rates are broadly similar across ethnic groups: 55 per cent ofethnic minority married women aged 15 to 44 reported that they use a modernmethod of contraception, compared to 59 per cent among Kinh women and 35 percent among Chinese women Similarly, while the expenditure level of minorityhouseholds is much lower than that of Kinh-Hoa households, their meanconsumption of calories is only slightly lower (2,068/day/capita for minorities vs.2,115 for Kinh), and if adult equivalent calorie consumption is used, the difference(2,681 vs 2,695) is negligible (Desai, 2000: Table 3.6) This suggests that the non-food expenditures of the Kinh-Hoa are substantially higher than for the minorities

It also helps explain the otherwise surprising finding that the mean body mass index

of minority men is the same as that for Kinh men (19.9), and only slightly lower forminority women (19.6) than Kinh women (20.1) Indeed, Desai (2000: Table 6.2)finds that a smaller proportion of minority men are severely malnourished (3.6%)than Kinh men (6.3%), although the gap is less evident for women (8.0% forminorities vs 9.4% for Kinh) Nonetheless, it remains the case that the children ofethnic minorities are more likely to be stunted, a measure of long-term malnutrition(Haughton and Haughton, 1999)

In short, by Vietnamese standards, ethnic minority households look significantlydifferent from Kinh-Hoa households But both fit groups broadly within Vietnamesenorms, and both groups have experienced similar trends in living standards: risingexpenditures, falling fertility and household size, and comparable levels ofmalnutrition

III Differences among Minority Groups

Expenditures

Not all ethnic minority groups in Vietnam are equally disadvantaged nately, the VLSS surveys did not sample enough ethnic minority households to allowfor disaggregation at the level of individual ethnic groups Moreover, the VLSS93codes only allowed for 10 different ethnic groupings rather than the standard officiallist of 54 distinct groups The VLSS questionnaires also only collected information

Unfortu-on the ethnicity of the head of the household This does not allow Unfortu-one, for instance,

to analyse minority issues at the individual (as distinct from household) level, or toexplore the extent of inter-marriage between ethnic groups

It is, however, possible to use the VLSS data to separate households into a fewrelatively homogeneous categories based on the ethnicity of the head Followingdiscussion with local anthropologists, we have distinguished between three of themain language groups (the Kinh, Hoa and Khmer) together with a compositecategory for ethnic minorities with similar livelihood systems that traditionally live inthe Central Highlands, and another for those that originate in the NorthernUplands The relevant details are summarised in Table 2, along with a listing ofethnic groups by composite category

This disaggregation, crude as it may be, is helpful The data in Table 2 show clearlythat the poorest group consists of the Central Highland minorities, followed by the

Povertyheadcount(% ofpeople)

Expenditure/

capita(‘000 dong,

1998 prices)

Expenditure/adult equiv

% living inrural areas

% ofpopulation

Sources: Authors’ calculations based on the VLSS93 and VLSS98

Khmer: 89 and 95; Central Highland minorities: 103 and 193; Northern Upland minorities:

373 and 411

Northern Upland Minorities Ninety nine per cent of both these categories live inrural areas, with 91 per cent of the Central Highland Minorities head of the householdand 88 per cent of Northern Upland Minorities heads working in agriculture Percapita expenditures for the Central Highland Minorities was VND1.02 million in

1993, barely rising to VND1.09 million by 1998; this stagnation meant that theCentral Highland minorities saw their relative position fall, with an expenditure levelthat was half the national average in 1993 but little more than a third of the nationalaverage by 1998 The poverty headcount for this group barely changed, from 92 percent in 1993 to 91 per cent in 1998 Having missed the economic boom of the 1990s, it

is not surprising that dissatisfaction, which was also related to land and religiousconflicts, bubbled over into the significant demonstrations by ethnic people that tookplace in several places in the Central Highlands in February 2001 (EconomistIntelligence Unit, 2001) The Northern Upland Minorities have fared somewhatbetter, with their per capita expenditures rising by just over 20 per cent and theirpoverty heading falling by almost 14 percent between 1993 and 1998 Nonetheless, theNorthern Upland Minorities remain primarily rural and agricultural with, as shown

in the next sections, deep deprivation among some of its constituent groups

It is possible to get a more complete picture of the distribution of per capitaexpenditures by ethnic category from the kernel densities shown in Figure 1 These may

be thought of as histograms that have been smoothed in order to iron out minorirregularities in the data (Deaton, 1997; StataCorp, 1999), and so draw the eye to theessential features of the distributions In Figure 1a, the kernel densities for the Kinh,Hoa, and Khmer are shown The density for the Hoa stands out: its peak is far to theright of the other distributions, and there is a wider variation in per capita expendituresthan the other four categories The slightly bi-modal distribution is due to the heavy, ifpartial, concentration of Hoa households in large urban areas, particularly in the south-east In contrast, the distribution of expenditures for Khmer households, who liveprimarily in the Mekong Delta, has a peak just below the GSO/World Bank povertyline, and most of the observations are highly concentrated in that vicinity This indi-cates that as long as those regions continue to benefit from general economic growth, alarge proportion of the Khmer should move out of poverty in the next five years or so.Figure 1b shows the kernel densities for the Central Highland and NorthernUpland minorities, with that for the Kinh included for comparison purposes Thedistribution of expenditures for Northern Upland minorities, and especially forCentral Highland minorities, are even more highly concentrated than for the Khmer.The mode of the density for the Northern Upland minorities is, however, relativelyclose to the poverty line, indicating that they are also likely to benefit from equitableeconomic growth In contrast, the Central Highland minorities are considerablypoorer in expenditure terms than the other four categories, as both their density inFigure 1b and poverty headcounts in Table 2 confirm Exceptionally rapid growthand/or other special measures will therefore be needed if poverty is to be reducedsignificantly among the ethnic minorities indigenous to the Central Highlands

Schooling

Although a finer breakdown of living standards by ethnic group is not possible usingVLSS data, one can get greater precision using the 3 per cent enumeration sample of

the 1999 Population and Housing Census.8While the Census data do not provideinformation on incomes or expenditure, they do allow one to construct gross andnet school enrolment rates for the more important individual ethnic groups.

Figures 1 (a) Kernel densities of per capita expenditure for 1998 (for the Kinh, Hoa, andKhmer) (b) Kernel densities of per capita expenditure for 1998 (for the Central Highland and

Northern Upland minorities) Based on VLSS98 data

School enrolment rates are usually highly correlated with income, and may therefore

be used as a rough and ready indicator of the standard of living in a community.Table 3 shows primary school enrolment rates by sex for each of the twelve ethnicgroups with more than 1,000 children of primary school age included in the 3 percent Census sample By the standards of comparably poor countries, the primaryschool net enrolment rates (NER) in Vietnam are quite high (91%).9 However,primary NERs are below 70 per cent for five ethnic groups: the Ba-na, Gia-rai,Xo-dang in the Central Highlands and, the Dao and the Hmong in the NorthernUplands, as Table 3 shows In addition to poverty and remoteness, one of the factorsdiscouraging ethnic minority children in these groups from attending primary school

is the lack of instruction in ethnic minority languages (especially in the lowestgrades).10

On average, primary school enrolments are relatively balanced between the sexes,with an overall primary NER of 91.7 per cent for boys and 91.0 per cent for girls.For all groups except the Ba-na, primary net enrolments rates are slightly lower forgirls than for boys, although in most cases the difference in NER is small and notstatistically significant However, girls’ primary NERs substantially lag those forboys among three ethnic groups in the Northern Uplands: the Dao (74.9 per cent),the Thai (76.7 per cent) and, in particular, the Hmong (720.0 per cent)

Table 2 also shows that primary school gross enrolment rates (that is, the number

of pupils enrolled in primary school divided by the number of children eligible to

Table 3 Primary school enrolment rates by ethnic group and sex, 1999

Source: Authors’ calculations based on 3% enumeration sample of 1999 Census

Notes: To be consistent with Vietnamese school enrolment procedures, these enrolment rateshave been computed using calendar year of birth as stated in the Census files to determinewhether or not a child is of primary or lower secondary age The net enrolment rate can fall byseveral percentage points if the child’s actual age (for example, 6–10 years old for primaryschool) is used

of age eligible to attend level X

attend primary school) are in some case very high indeed The implication is that asubstantial proportion of Vietnamese children are starting primary school late, andare repeating grades frequently; this is especially true of most ethnic minoritychildren.

Table 4 summarises lower secondary school enrolment rates by ethnicity and sex.11

As expected, both gross and net lower secondary school enrolments rates are muchlower than for primary school enrolment rates For Vietnam, overall (in 1999), thenet enrolment rate falls from 91 per cent for primary school to 60 per cent for lowersecondary school At the lower secondary level, a clear gap opens up between theKinh (65 per cent) and all other groups (52 per cent or less) Five ethnic groups – theGia-rai, Ba-na and Xo-dang in the Central Highlands, and the Hmong and Dao inthe north – have net enrolment rates at the lower secondary level of less than 20 percent, with that for the Hmong just under 5 per cent Overall, the lower secondaryNER is essentially the same for boys and girls but, this again, hides some variation

by ethnic group: among the Hmong and Xo-dang girls’ lower secondary NERs are atleast 5 per cent lower than for boys; while for the Tay and Nung, female enrolmentrates are at least 5 per cent higher than for boys

These findings on enrolment rates allow us to start to explore the extent to whichdifferent ethnic minorities are assimilated with the Kinh majority If ethnic groupsare classified according to the extent to which their school enrolment rates are similar

to the Kinh, one might reasonably argue that the Hoa, Tay, Muong, Nung andperhaps Thai are assimilating relatively fast, while the other minorities (the Dao andHmong in the Northern Uplands, the Khmer in the South, and all the CentralHighland Minorities) are assimilating much less rapidly If this speculation is correct,then we might expect a relatively high degree of intermarriage among the first (‘moreassimilated’) group than among the second (‘less assimilated’) group We nowexamine this proposition

Table 4 Lower secondary school enrolment rates by ethnic group and sex, 1999

The 3 per cent Census enumeration sample, but not the VLSS surveys, allows us tomeasure the extent of intermarriage among the 12 main ethnic groups.12The resultsare summarised in Table 5 The most striking finding is that the Chinese are the mostlikely to marry partners of a different ethnic group: a third of Chinese heads ofhousehold are married to a member of another ethnic group, primarily Kinh TheNung and the Tay are also likely to intermarry, with one-in-four Nung and one-in-five Tay heads married to a partner from a different ethnic group

With the exception of the Thai, at least 10 per cent of household heads in the moreeducated ethnic groups are married to someone from another ethnic group, typicallyKinh This is an intermarriage rate comparable or higher than that of second-generation Italian-Americans and Jews in the United States in the middle of thetwentieth century (Economist, 2001: 36) This suggests that the cultural and perhapseconomic distance between these groups and the Kinh majority is relatively modest;

we might speculate that these groups have embarked on a path of economicdevelopment that will lead to ‘assimilation’ with the dominant group The Khmermay also fit into this mould, although less clearly

In contrast, the Thai appear to have chosen to keep their distance – a relativelylow rate of intermarriage, particularly with Kinh partners – while emphasisingeducation In this respect they are following a similar path to the (ethnically similar)Tai in Xishuangbanna, a region of southern China that borders Vietnam The Tai’sunwillingness to assimilate mainstream Han culture has led to an increasing degree

of economic marginalisation (Hansen, 1999)

Table 5 Intermarriage of household heads, 1999

Ethnic group

Married to:

Member of anotherethnic group (%)

Kinh partner(%)

Sample size(unweighted)

Source: Authors’ calculations based on 3% enumeration sample of 1999 Census

Note: 134,566 (23.6%) of household heads are single, widowed, separated, or divorced 9.5%

of married household heads are female

The remaining ethnic groups, particularly the Central Highland minorities andthe Hmong in the Northern Uplands, have very low rates of intermarriage withmembers of other groups It is perhaps surprising that the Hmong and the Dao, wholive in overlapping mountainous areas and belong to the same Kadai sub-group,intermarry very infrequently When the Dao do intermarry, it is most often with aTay partner.

The low-intermarriage groups are also the groups where school enrolment ratesare the lowest Whether these groups apartness is a matter of choice, or anunintended consequence of linguistic and geographic barriers, is unclear We would,however, suggest that the most difficult challenge of public policy towards ethnicgroups is bringing the ‘less-assimilated’ groups into the economic mainstream; alarge number of the ‘more-assimilated’ ethnic groups are already half-way there

Religion

A final aspect of the assimilation of different ethnic groups into Kinh society that can

be examined using the 1999 Census is that of religion This is a sensitive issue inVietnam The protests in the Central Highlands by ethnic minority groups in early

2001 were partly in response to official efforts to restrict religious practice in theregion, especially among the growing number of evangelical Protestants

Article 70 of the 1992 Constitution guarantees all Vietnamese citizens freedom ofreligion or non-belief, but indirect controls and local restrictions often discourageparticular religious groups (United Nations Economic and Social Council, 1998).Furthermore, in the past, some religious groups (especially Protestant Christians inthe Central Highlands and Northern Uplands) have been accused of being alignedwith organisations whose aim is the overthrow of the State (Winrock International,1996); or were historically associated with opposition to the government (forinstance, the Cao Dai) Although in recent years the government’s attitude towardsreligion has become noticeably more relaxed, many de facto regulations still exist sothat the position of many religious communities is best described as one in which

‘circumscribed areas of freedom are emerging within a general framework ofcontrols, limitations and even prohibitions’ (United Nations Economic and SocialCouncil, 1998) For those minority groups that have large numbers of religiouspractitioners, these restrictions are an important source of irritation and evenalienation from the central authorities

Table 6 shows the percentage breakdown of professed religious observance at thetime of the 1999 Census.13More than three quarters of people in Vietnam stated theyhad no religion, with Buddhism, Christianity (mainly Catholicism), Cai Daoism andHoa Hao (two indigenous religions that blend a number of oriental and occidentalbeliefs and practices), and Islam accounting for the remainder Some of the smallerethnic minorities are known to have their own, often animist-based, religions but it isunclear how well these were enumerated in the Census

About three-quarters of the Kinh and Hoa stated that they practised no religion;among practitioners, Buddhism is the most common religion, followed byChristianity A significant number of ethnic groups, particularly in the NorthernUplands, profess essentially no religion, including the Tay, Thai, Muong, Nung, Daoand Hmong

On the other hand, a number of the Central Highland minorities count a highproportion of believers: almost half of the Ba-Na are Christian (mainly Protestants),

as are substantial percentages of the Xo-dang and Gia-rai A majority of the Khmerare practising Buddhists Islam only has a significant number of adherents among theCham, while Cao Daoism and Hoa Hao are practised mainly by the Kinh living inthe south-east and Mekong Delta Just under 5 per cent of the Hmong are Christian(most of whom are Protestants), though it seems likely that the Hmong’s traditions

of spirit worship have been overlooked in the Census data

IV Historical Context and Policy toward the Minorities

Little is known about the origin of many of Vietnam’s ethnic minority groups, many

of whom probably inhabited the area now occupied by the modern Vietnamese statebefore the ancestors of the Kinh arrived from southern China four to five thousandyears ago (Higham, 1989) The Kinh emerged as a distinct group from the variousindigenous groups living in and around the Red River Delta, gradually absorbingmany smaller groups until they became the dominant culture Followingindependence from Chinese rule in 939AD, the Vietnamese Royal Court pursued

a policy of collecting tribute from these indigenous groups while leaving them togovern their own affairs (Duong, 2000) Under French colonial rule from 1867,Catholic missionaries converted many of the Central Highland minorities (who theytermed ‘Montagnards’) to Christianity and capitalised on ancient antipathies byestablishing a degree of local autonomy in many mountainous areas At the sametime, the French expropriated land, exacted forced (‘corvee’) labour and imposedheavy taxes on both the ethnic minorities and the Kinh leading to a number ofrebellions, notably by the Hmong, in the early twentieth century When war brokeout between the French colonial government and the Viet Minh in 1946, the ethnicminorities were split between supporting the two sides In the interest of preserving

Table 6 Ethnicity and religion (% distribution)

Source: Authors’ calculations based on 3% enumeration sample of 1999 Census

Note: ‘Other religions’ include Cao Dai, Hoa Hoa and Islam