Word: diem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...French colonialism to save the truncated country from the onrushing tide of the Communist Viet Minh. As late as two years ago, touring Columnist Joseph Alsop pronounced South Viet Nam doomed. And the French, embarrassed at seeing the U.S. succeed with South Viet Nam's Ngo Dinh Diem where they had failed, whispered that it was only a matter of time...
Cause of Cholon's unwonted somberness was a frontal assault by South Viet Nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem on a problem common to all Southeast Asian nations: the threat posed by unassimilated colonies of overseas Chinese. In South Viet Nam, where they make up only one-tenth of the population, Chinese control nearly two-thirds of the economy. Though many come from families that have been in the country for centuries, almost none have taken out Vietnamese citizenship...
Last summer, worried by the possibility that Viet Nam's Chinese might one day shift their loyalty from Chiang to Mao-as Cambodia's Chinese colony apparently did recently-Diem swore that "Before I die, I will Vietnamize Cholon." He issued a series of decrees declaring all Viet Nam-born Chinese to be Vietnamese citizens and prohibiting foreigners, i.e., Chinese, from engaging in eleven vital trades, from rice milling to brokerage...
...nothing, and to the dismay of Viet Nam's farmers, the domestic price of rice fell to its lowest level in years. Large-scale shipments of Chinese capital to Hong Kong sent the price of gold and black-market dollars soaring in Viet Nam. But stubborn Ngo Dinh Diem had no intention of backing down...
...Communist thaw and a need to conciliate the Soviet Union, but he also had much kinder words for U.S. policy past and present, overflowing personal tributes for President Eisenhower and, most surprisingly, thoughts of stronger support for South Viet Nam's doughty anti-Communist President Ngo Dinh Diem, whom Nehru had once belittled as a U.S. puppet. "What good will the U.S. has not been able to achieve in the past," India's Statesman reported, "was accomplished overnight by a bold and imaginative decision...