PEOPLE

for the voyage. In this case, they got frce passages for thcmsctves
and thirty relatives, plus two taels of gold per adult and one tael each
for minors.
Thus, while the departure system and its cost varied from place
to place, month to month and case to case, it had a basic uniformity.
Security police screened applicants, registered drc names of rhw
qualified to leave and collected payments, Although adults generally
paid eight to ten taels and minors went for half fare, families cwld
arrange lower prices by bribing individual security officials with
vehicles, furniture and other personal possessions before rhese were
officially confiscated by provincial aurhoritics. In a few cases, fm
passage was permitted for Chintse without money who were considered
troubkmakcrs, or those who had tried persistently to escapt
'illegally', meaning without government approval.
After wurity screening, some passengers had to sign declarations
of intent to leave the country and waivers of futurc claims against
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. They listed their property and
signed statements donating it to the government. In other cases,
Chinese refugees aid they had to sign forms stating that the applicant
who had applied for permission to leave wished to give all his
property to the state so that he could go overseas and be reunited
with his relatives. Heads of houscholds and adult males handed in
biographical details and had heir photographs.and fingerprints
taken, They were instructed to declare all gold and jcwcllery in their
possession. (Many refugees did not makc full declarations.) Except
for nvo taels of gold each, all dtclarcd valuables were confiscated.
An important difference beween the exodus from south Vietnam
and that from the north was thmt compulsion was more obvious in
the north, The flight of refugees from northern Vietnam falls into
No categories and, generally, into two different periods. The fint
wave of refugees fled to China, starting id March-April 1978, and
accelerating between May and late July, when China announced the
closurc of its frontier with Vietnama Almost at1 those leaving were
people of Chinese descent, In mid- June 1978, Peking claimed that
China's southern provinces had accepted 160 000 ethnic Chinese
from Vietnam. Officials in Hanoi later offered a slightly lower figure
- 140000; among them were 3500 from the 13000-strong Chinew
community in the Vietnamese capital.
The smaller but more visible exodus from the north was by boat
to Hong Kong: 60 per cent of all the boat pple who had reached
the British territory by mid-August 1979 were from nonhem Vietnam
and most of them were ethnic Chinese. They had begun to
arrive in Hong KDng in relatively small numbers in the last months
of 1978, after China closed its border, claiming that they had left
Vietnam because of persecution. But the flood of northern Viemamesc
into Hong Kong on small hats started after China's month-long
invasion of its southern ncighbour in Febnrary-Mareh 1979. From
then on, ethnic Chinese in northern Viemam were, in effect, forced
to flec.
As in the south, the government agency supervising departurn of
rhe boat people was the PSB'S ofice of alien affairs. A refugee who
had been a long-time employee of the alien affairs ofice in
Haiphong, an industrial centre and pn serving Hanoi, told western
officials in late 1978 that the Haiphong office was organized on the
same lines as that in Ho Chi Minh Ciry. Both had subordinate units
operating in cities and provinces with sizeable ethnic Chin- populations,
such as Hanoi and Quang Ninh in northern Viemam, Da
Nang and Quy Nhon on the central coast, and Can Tho and Bien
Hoa in southern Vietnam. The traditional work of the Haiphong PSB
office, he said, included the monitoring and control of alien residents
and visitors. While it was managed by Vietnamese army ofken,
most of the staff and informants were ethnic Chinese. He claimed
that by insinuating its personnel into almost every illegal activity,
such as private enterprises, smuggling and black-markettering (all
of which, he claimed, were rife in the north), the ofice kept effective
watch on the Chinese population.
When the intense exodus from northern Vietnam swrtcd after the
China-Vietnam war, ethnic Chinese in Hanoi, Hsiphong and other
centres were called to meetings or visited by Vietnamew cadres. The
new policy was explained: Hoa (ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam)
could choose between bting sent to remote labour camps or leaving
by small boat, The Chinese reacted by forming groups and appointing
leaders. These organizers obtained 'letters of introduction', normally
from the local SB alien affairs oflice, that permitted them to