Vietnam

From Gothpoodle

• Population: 130 million
• Aspects: Stable, Repressive, Third Wave

History has not been kind to Vietnam, which has spent most of the last 150 years either at war or recovering from war. The most recent round of this cycle began in 2061, when the Communist government of Vietnam reorganized itself along infosocialist lines. In the following decade, ideological nanosocialism spread through most of Southeast Asia and beyond, making Vietnam a member of the new nanosocialist bloc.

Unfortunately, this brought Vietnam into direct confrontation with its old rival China. Well before 2084, the PRC had already opened a “proxy war” by sponsoring anti-nanosocialist guerrillas throughout Indochina. The outbreak of the Pacific War only formalized the conflict, as Chinese regular forces invaded Vietnam from the north. By war’s end, Hanoi had fallen and the Vietnamese government had been forced to flee to the south.

Chinese troops occupied northern Vietnam for several years, despite a fierce guerrilla campaign by Vietnamese irregulars. PRC forces waited until 2091 to withdraw, Hanoi in ruins behind them. Vietnam’s economy has been slow to recover, despite aid from its more prosperous TSA allies. Much of the recovery effort has been devoted to rebuilding the Vietnamese military, causing civilian development to lag.

Vietnam remains a committed member of the TSA, despite (or perhaps because of) the disaster of the Pacific War. The ruling party is more ideologically radical than that of any other TSA nation, its rhetoric fiercely militant and anti-Chinese. The country is almost closed to outsiders. There are persistent rumors that the Vietnamese government has been sponsoring radical bioengineering projects, designing super-soldiers and other bioweapons for a future conflict.