ABSTRACT
The city, located at the near midpoint of Vietnam's coast along the South China Sea, is one of the few Vietnamese cities that has both sides of its riverbank urbanized. The Geneva Conference of 1954 split Vietnam at the 17th parallel with each region having a distinct economic structure, reflecting the competing ideologies in the Cold War. The north, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), gradually built-up a socialist economy; the south, Republic of Vietnam (RVN), adopted a modified capitalist system. The classic communist discourse of the structural imbalance between consumer towns' and the producing' rural areas was found in Vietnam. The French left Vietnam in 1954, following their defeat by the Viet Minh in the First Indochina War. Festival Hue receives technical and financial assistance from the Central Government of Vietnam and with the support and cooperation of France. The tourist economy in Hue can take advantage of much more than merely the citadel and the imperial mausoleums.
