The authors are right that this bottom-up attraction is unfolding alongside renewed official promotion of people-to-people ties, and that long-standing sensitivities about China have not disappeared. The current wave of Chinese cultural and consumer influence, from hit dramas, trendy brands to a surge in Mandarin study and growing student flows to Chinese universities, however, is better understood as an intensification of a much older pattern than as a new phenomenon. And the reasons should shape how we read both its reach and limits.
Vietnam is arguably the most deeply Sinospheric society outside China itself. It experienced over a millennium of direct Chinese rule. Literary Chinese remained the principal official script for centuries, even after chu Nom emerged as a vernacular script by the 13th century.