Chinese Nùng

The Chinese Nùng composed 72%[1] to 78%[2] of the population of the Nung Autonomous Territory of Hai Ninh (1947–1954) located in the Vietnamese Northeast, covering parts of the present-day Quảng Ninh and Lạng Sơn provinces.

[citation needed] The Chinese Nùng's name originated from the fact that almost all of them were farmers (nồng nhằn (農人) in Cantonese).

[3] After the Treaty of Tientsin, the French refused to recognize this group as Chinese due to political and territorial issues on Vietnam's northern frontier border, therefore the French classified them as Nùng based on their main occupation.

After 1954, more than 50,000 Chinese Nùng led by Colonel Vong A Sang (黃亞生, or Swong A Sang) fled as refugees, joining the 1 million northern Vietnamese who fled south and resettled in South Vietnam, mostly in the Đồng Nai and Bình Thuận provinces.

[5] They often served as bodyguards to the Special Forces and were regarded as a good source of security for green berets who were recruiting and training locals.