Vietnam (Czech pronunciation [vjetnam], Vietnamese Việt Nam), the full name of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnamese Cộng hòa Xã hội của nhại Việt Nam; also abbreviated VSR in Czech), is a country in Southeast Asia, in the east of the Back India Peninsula at coast of the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Its neighboring states are Cambodia, China and Laos. The population exceeds 99 million, making Vietnam the fifteenth most populous country in the world and the ninth most populous in Asia. The capital is Hanoi, the largest is Ho Chi Minh City with 10 million inhabitants. The official language in Vietnam is Vietnamese.

From 111 BC until 939, the territory of Vietnam was part of the Chinese Empire. The first independent Vietnamese state was established in 939, after the Vietnamese victory at the Battle of the Bạch Đằng River. The Vietnamese Empire then retained sovereignty until French colonization in the mid-19th century, followed by Japanese occupation in the 1940s. After its end, on September 2, 1945, President Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence. Colonial France refused to put up with this and the Indochina War ensued, in which the French were defeated (the decisive battle at Điện Biên Phủ took place in 1954). After that, Vietnam was divided into two states, the northern, communist (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the southern, anti-communist (Republic of Vietnam). Their conflict led to the Vietnam War, with the United States directly involved on the side of South Vietnam from 1965 to 1973. The war ended with the victory of North Vietnam in 1975. Vietnam was then unified under communist rule. In 1986, the Communist Party of Vietnam launched a series of economic and political reforms that allowed the development of private enterprise and integration into the world economy.

Since 2000, Vietnam's economic growth rate has been one of the highest in the world.[5] In 2007, Vietnam became a member of the World Trade Organization. It is also a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC).