Ho Chi Minh City

According to abbreviationfinder, Ho Chi Minh City, until 1976 Saigon, is a city ​​in the south of Vietnam, port on the right of the Saigon River, 80 km from the sea on the northern edge of the Mekong Delta (Cochinchina), city with the rank of a province, 2 090 km ², (2019) 7.02 million residents.

Seat of the Buddhist head of Vietnam and a Catholic archbishop; two universities, agricultural college, technical center, archaeological institute, bacteriological institute, administrative and art academy, conservatory; Radio and television stations, libraries, museums, theaters; Botanical Garden. The city is the most important industrial center in the south of Vietnam and concentrates a large part of the foreign direct investment on itself: machine and vehicle construction (scooters, bicycles), shipyards, building materials, chemical, glass industry, production of batteries, sewing machines, clocks, plastic and aluminum cast goods, Assembly of radio and television sets, textile industry (cotton goods, synthetic and silk fabrics, jute sacks), manufacture of tires, paper and tobacco industry, rice and oil mills, Fruit and fish canning factories, breweries, distilleries. The service sector, the most important branches of which are banking and tourism, is becoming increasingly important. The river port, which can be reached by seagoing vessels and is connected to the Mekong Delta by an extensive network of natural inlets and canals, is the most important port in southern Vietnam; Airport.

The business district is on the river bank and the administrative district on higher terraces. In the west is the suburb of Cholon, founded by Chinese immigrants in 1778 and incorporated in 1932 . Formerly a densely built-up business center, today it has lost its importance as a result of emigration.

Under the protection of a Cambodian fortress, Saigon developed into a trading center that fell under the rule of the powerful South Vietnamese feudal family of the Nguyen in the 17th century and was the provincial capital in the 18th century. Captured by French troops in 1859 and expanded according to a chessboard layout in colonial style, it was the capital of Cochinchina from 1862–1954. As the state capital of South Vietnam (1954–76, from 1955 the Republic) it was the military headquarters of the US troops deployed during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s and was on April 30, 1975 by North Vietnamese troops taken. Ho Chi Minh named the city its administrative function, but remained an economic and cultural center.

Location

Vietnam borders China to the north, the South China Sea to the east and south, the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest, and Cambodia and Laos to the west. Vietnam also raises claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands.

Vietnam has a length of around 1,750 km. It reaches its greatest width with 600 km in the north, it then narrows in the middle section to 60 km and expands again to 350 km in the south. The main habitats are the lowlands, the deltas of the Red River in the north (Tongking [Vietnamese B ǎ c Bô]) and the Mekong in the south (Cochinchina [Vietnamese Nam Bô]) with the urban centers of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Both are connected by a long, narrow coastline (Annam [Vietnamese Trung Bô]). A mountain promontory at 18 ° north latitude (“Annamite Gate”) forms the cultural-geographical border between the Chinese-influenced ancestral land of the Annamites and the more southern coastal landscapes later settled by them, which they wrested from the Cham and Khmer. The delta lowlands are subdivided by embankment terraces, old river arms and natural embankments, behind which extensive backwater swamps extend. The Red River Delta (Tongking Delta) – framed by mountainous lands – is hit by heavy flooding during the monsoonal rainy season. The Mekong Delta, whose beginning is near Phnom Penh in Cambodia, however, has the advantage of a natural regulation of the flood regime. Thanks to the balancing effect of the Tonle Sap , it is much less affected by floods than the north.

Immediately next to the Tongking Delta rises a strongly indented mountainous country, which takes up almost three quarters of the north; an average of 1,000–1,500 m above sea level, in Fan Si Pan it reaches 3 143 m above sea level. Further south, the mountainous region narrows and stretches as a narrow coastal chain from Annam to 11 ° north latitude, then widens again to form extensive plateaus (widely 500–1,000 m above sea level, in the Ngoc Linh 2,598 m above sea level). The Annamite coastal plain, which is divided into individual coastal courtyards by numerous mountain ledges, narrows in places to a width of only 10 km.

Politics

According to the constitution of April 15, 1992 (revised several times), Vietnam is a socialist republic. The constitution formally guarantees fundamental rights such as freedom of the press and freedom of speech. However, these rights are subject to numerous restrictions. Publicly expressed criticism of the government or party can result in a prison term of several years. Article 4 of the Constitution stipulates the role of the Communist Party (CP) as a leading force in state and society. Opposition parties are banned. Nguyen Phu Trong has been General Secretary of the Communist Party since 2011.

Head of state with largely representative functions and commander in chief of the armed forces is the president, who is elected by parliament for a period of five years. This office has been held by party leader Nguyen Phu Trong since October 23, 2018 . The legislature lies with the National Assembly (maximum 500 members, elected for 5 years). The executive body is the government responsible to parliament, chaired by the Prime Minister (since 7.4.2016 Nguyen Xuan Phuc, * 1954). De facto, the General Secretary of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Communist Party determine the guidelines for politics.

In terms of foreign policy, Vietnam pursues a policy of opening up in the interests of economic revitalization. The state has been a member of ASEAN since 1995. In 2015 the Free Trade Agreement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was signed. The intense relations with China are strained by the dispute over the Spratley and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.