Chinese Nùng

The Chinese Nùng (Vietnamese: người Hoa Nùng, Hán-Nôm: 𠊛華農; Chinese: 華裔儂族) are a group of ethnic Han Chinese living in Vietnam. The Chinese Nùng composed 72% to 78% of the population of the Nùng Autonomous Territory of Hải Ninh (1947–1954) located in the Vietnamese Northeast, covering part of the present-day Quảng Ninh province.

The Chinese Nùng's name originated from the fact that almost all of them were farmers (nồng nhằn 農人 in Cantonese). They are largely unrelated to the Tai-speaking Nùng people. 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. The most widely used languages of the Chinese Nùng are Hakka Chinese and Yue Chinese since they descended from people speaking these languages.

Following the 1954 partition of Vietnam, nearly 50,000 Chinese Nùng led by Colonel Vòng A Sáng (黃亞生, or Swong A Sang) fled as refugees, joining the one million northern Vietnamese who fled south and resettled in South Vietnam, mostly in the Đồng Nai and Bình Thuận provinces. In South Vietnam, they were considered part of the Hải Phòng Chinese, named after the port city in North Vietnam from which they had departed. During the Vietnam War, Chinese Nùng soldiers were known for their loyalty to the US Special Forces. 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.