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Essay on Vietnam's Economic System
Vietnam lies along the eastern edge of the peninsula of mainland Southeast Asia. Shaped like an enormous letter S, the country extends from the border of China in the north to the tip of the Ca Mau peninsula in the south, a total distance of slightly more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers). Bordered on the east by the South China Sea, it is separated from its neighbors on the west for much of its length by mountains that extend from the Chinese border in the north to the extensive plateau of the Central Highlands.
South of Saigon the country flattens out into the vast marshy delta of the Mekong River, which flows into the South China Sea after a journey from the mountains of Tibet nearly three thousand miles away. At the southern tip lie the dense mangrove swamps of the Ca Mau Peninsula. Of a total land area of 127,259 square miles (329,556 square kilometers), only about 16 percent is under cultivation. The remainder consists of mountains or dense forests.
Vietnam is often described metaphorically as two baskets of rice separated by a bamboo pole. In the north lies the crowded triangle of the Red River delta, the ancestral homeland of the Vietnamese people; in the south, the flat, waterlogged delta of the Mekong River, one of the great river systems of the world. These two rich alluvial plains, separated from each other by several hundred miles, provide the major source of food for the population. Here live more than two-thirds of all Vietnamese, now numbering more than 75 million. The vast majority is rice farmers, living in villages and hamlets scattered like mushrooms over the flat green plains. Linking these two deltas is the narrow waist of Central Vietnam. In some areas, a flat coastal....
