Vietnam

Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is a unitary communist state at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with Hanoi as its capital and Ho Chi Minh City as its largest urban center. The Viet Minh declared independence from Japan in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, but after French forces were defeated the country was partitioned at the seventeenth parallel in 1954; North Vietnam achieved military victory over the South in 1975, and the country reunified under communist rule in 1976. Vietnam is governed by the Communist Party of Vietnam, with a National Assembly as its legislature, and though it maintains a formally planned economy it has undergone substantial market-oriented reform since 1986. With over 102 million people, it is the sixteenth most populous country in the world, and it is classified today as a developing, upper middle income nation that has become deeply integrated into global markets.