Vietnam

Located in southeast Asia, Vietnam is one of the largest nations in the world with a population of over 85 million people. Bordered by China, Laos, Cambodia, and the South China Sea, Vietnam is a relatively poor country, with a gross domestic product of $90.7 billion as of 2008. Its economy is largely agricultural, and the country's major exports include rice, cashews, coffee, tea, and black pepper. For well over 1,000 years the Vietnamese people fought for independence and national sovereignty against various colonizers, including China, France, Japan, and the United States. The nation's millennium-long struggle for independence helped to shape various social networks within Vietnam, including Ho Chi Minh's successful Viet Minh independence movement, which began in 1941. Following the end of the Second Indochina War in 1975, which unified the nation, the Communist Party consolidated its power and control over the government, and the country remains a single-party state today. Due to the one-party rule of the Communist Party, the existence of social networks in Vietnam, particularly in the political sphere, is extremely limited.

The Communist Party has complete domination over nearly all aspects of the modern nation, including the government, business and industry, and the larger society. In the fall of 2009, for example, the Vietnamese government sent notices to the country's Internet service providers demanding that they deny access to popular social networking sites Facebook and MySpace, which had hundreds of thousands of members before the ban. The Communist Party also exerts stringent control over the nation's political system. Only political parties that are sanctioned by the Communist Party—and are themselves affiliated with the ruling party—are permitted to participate in elections. In this regard, large-scale [Page 927]social networking outside of the Communist Party is limited. In the last National Assembly elections, held in 2007, 99 percent of all candidates were either selected by the Communist Party or a member of the party. The supreme court and municipal, local, and military courts are also controlled by the Communist Party. Opposition groups are not recognized by the government, although they do exist in small numbers within the communities of Vietnamese exiles in the United States, France, and other nations. Notable opposition groups include the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League and the Government of Free Vietnam, both of which are based in the United States. The Government of Free Vietnam has embarked on numerous guerrilla campaigns into Vietnam and against Vietnamese embassies throughout the world, ultimately hoping to upset the Communist Party's control of the country. The group has been denounced by the Vietnamese government as a terrorist organization.