Central Highlands (Vietnam)


The Central Highlands, South Central Highlands, Western Highlands or Midland Highlands was a former region located in the south central part of Vietnam. It did contain parts of the provinces of Đắk Lắk, Gia Lai, Quảng Ngãi, and Lâm Đồng. On June 12 2025 the region merged with South Central Coast.

Geography

The Central Highlands are a series of plateaus bordering the lower part of Laos and northeastern Cambodia, namely Kon Tum Plateau at 500 m, Kon Plông Plateau, Kon Hà Nừng Plateau, Pleiku Plateau at 800 m, Mdrak Plateau at approximately 500 m, Đắk Lắk Plateau at around 800 m, Mơ Nông Plateau with the height of about 800–1000 m, Lâm Viên Plateau of approximately 1500 m and Di Linh Plateau of about 900–1000 m. All of these plateaus are situated south of the Annamite Range.
The Central Highlands are mostly drained by tributaries of the Mekong. The Sesan or Tonlé San river drains the northern portion of the highlands, and the Srepok River the southern. A series of shorter rivers run from the eastern edge of the highlands to the Vietnamese coast.
Tây Nguyên can be divided into three subregions according to their deviation in topography and climate, namely: North Tây Nguyên , Middle Tây Nguyên , South Tây Nguyên . Trung Tây Nguyên has a lower altitude and therefore has a higher temperature than the other two subregions.

Provinces

  • Đắk Lắk
  • Gia Lai
  • Lâm Đồng
  • Quảng Ngãi

    History

The native inhabitants of the Central Highlands are various peoples that mainly belonged to the two major Austronesian and Austroasiatic ethnolinguistic families. According to Peng et al. & Liu et al., Austronesian Chamic groups were well known of being seafarers with the original homeland of Taiwan, might have migrated to present-day Central Vietnam by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia around ~ 2,500 kya, while were making contact/or possibly absorbed the previously earlier Austroasiatic inhabitants.
Throughout pre-modern history, the Central Highlands were not under the control of surrounding lowland classical kingdoms, thus much of prehistoric indigenous cultures were preserved. Highlands and mountains acted like barricades that curtailed much of the lowland influences on the Central Highlands people. The region falls into the geographical category described by James C. Scott as terra zomia, a huge mountainous landmass of Mainland Southeast Asia.
During the early fifteenth century, the northern part of Central Highlands had a dubious ruler named Śrī Gajarāja with the title "The great king of the Montagnards of Madhyamagrāma", who was a vassal of Cham king Indravarman VI in the lowland. Despite geographic barriers, the Cham extensively used the Highlands as their resources backyard to provide medieval commodities. They also built several temples in the Highlands, for example, the temple of Yang Prong constructed by king Simhavarman III. It is evident that Chamic-speaking peoples of the lowlands had engaged direct contacts and trade with the peoples of the Central Highlands for a long time before Kinh Vietnamese colonialism, resulting in mutual linguistic borrowings in both colloquial languages and cultural similarities.
Ethnic Vietnamese people arrived in the Central Highlands after France annexed the area into Vietnam in 1889. The Vietnamese now outnumber the indigenous Degars after state-sponsored settlement directed by both the government of the Republic of Vietnam and the current Communist government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Montagnards have fought against and resisted all Vietnamese settlers, from the anti-Communist South Vietnamese government, the Viet Cong, to the Communist government of unified Vietnam.
The Champa state and Chams in the lowlands were traditional suzerains whom the Montagnards in the highlands acknowledged as their lords, while autonomy was held by the Montagnards. After 1945, concept of "Nam tiến" and the southward expansion was celebrated by Vietnamese scholars. The Pays Montagnard du Sud-Indochinois was the name of the Central Highlands from 1946 under French Indochina.
Up until French rule, the Central Highlands was almost never entered by the Vietnamese since they viewed it as a savage populated area with fierce animals like tigers, "poisoned water" and "evil malevolent spirits". The Vietnamese expressed interest in the land after the French transformed it into a profitable plantation area to grow crops on, in addition to the natural resources from the forests, minerals and rich earth and realization of its crucial geographical importance.
An insurgency was waged by Montagnards in FULRO against South Vietnam and then unified Communist Vietnam. A settlement program of ethnic Kinh Vietnamese by the government of the Republic of Vietnam was implemented and now a Kinh majority predominates in the highland areas. After mass demonstrations and protests during 2001 and 2004 by ethnic hill tribe minorities against the communist government, foreigners were banned from the Central Highlands for a period of time.

Ethnic groups

Below is a list of officially recognized ethnic groups in Vietnam that are indigenous to the Central Highlands and nearby areas. They speak Austroasiatic languages of the Katuic and Bahnaric, as well as Chamic languages. Population statistics are from the 2009 Vietnam Population Census.
Listed by province, from north to south as well as west to east:
is the second ethnic group, after the Kinh people, to have their language written based on Latin script by French missionaries in 1861. The Ede people, then, had their writing system in 1923. The first known epic poetry Dam San was compiled and published in Paris, France, under the name Le Chanson de DamSan. The bilingual Ede-French edition was then released in 1933 by the French School of the Far East's magazine in Hanoi. In February 1949, a prehistoric lithophone named Ndut Lieng Krak was discovered in Dak Lak, which is now kept at the Museum of Mankind, Paris. The space of gong culture in the Central Highlands of Vietnam was recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on 15 January 2005.

Economy, natural resources, society, and environment

In comparison with other regions in Vietnam, the Central Highlands has to encounter great difficulties in socio-economic conditions such as the skilled labor shortage, poor infrastructure, possibilities of ethnic-group conflict in a small area and a low standard of living. This area, however, has many advantages in natural resources. The region is home to nearly 2 million hectares of fertile basalt, making up for 60% of the national basalt soil, which is very suitable for industrial crops such as coffee, cocoa, pepper, mulberry, and tea. Coffee is the most important industrial commodity of the Central Highlands. The current coffee area here is over 290 thousand hectares, accounting for 80% of the country's coffee area. Dak Lak is the province with the widest coffee area and Buon Ma Thuot coffee is famous for its high quality. The Central Highlands is also the second-largest rubber tree region after the Southeast, mainly in Gia Lai and Dak Lak. The Central Highlands is the most enormous mulberry and silkworm area in our country as well, the most in Bao Loc Lam Dong. This place has a consortium of the largest silk incubators exported in Vietnam.
Unequal land and resource allocation also spark many disputes. Previously, the government aimed to exploit the Central Highlands of Vietnam by establishing a system of state-owned agriculture and forestry farms. In reality, these economic organizations control most of the Central Highlands’ land. In Dak Lak province, by 1985, three agricultural-forestry-industry Union Enterprises managed 1,058,000 hectares, which accounted for half of the province's area, plus 1,600,000 hectares of state-owned rubber tree growing area. In total, the state runs 90% of Dak Lak’s area, and 60% of Gia Lai’s. Overall, by 1985, 70% of the Central Highlands’ surface area was under the state's management. After 1993, although there was a shift in management mechanism, this number only decreased by 26%.
Forest resources and forestry land areas in Tay Nguyen are facing the risk of serious attenuation due to different reasons, such as small unowned area of deep forest is being trespassed by newly arrived migrants for residential and production purposes, as well as deforestation and illegal exploitation of forest products. Due to the attenuation of forest resources, the output of logging has constantly been decreasing, from 600 to 700 thousand square meters in the late 1980s - early 1990s to about 200-300 thousand square meters per year at the moment. Currently, local authorities are experimenting with allocating, leasing forestry land to organizations, households and individuals for stable usage and forest allocation, and contracting to forests protection for households and communities in the villages.
With the geographical advantages of highland and numerous waterfalls, hydropower resources of the area are large and are used effectively. Two hydroelectric power stations built in this region before are Da Nhim on Da Nhim River and Dray H’inh on Serepok River. Moreover, Yaly Hydropower, Dai Ninh Hydropower, and Plei Krong Hydropower have all been completed and are operational. Tay Nguyen does not abound in mineral resources but is abundant in bauxite reserves measuring at billions of tons.
According to old Soviet documents, the Central Highlands holds about 8 billion tons of bauxite reserve. On 1 November 2007, the Prime Minister signed Decision no.167 to approve the zoning plan for exploration, mining, processing and using of bauxite ore in the 2007–2015, orientation to 2025. Vietnam National Coal - Mineral Industries Group is currently exploring and investing in some bauxite exploring, alumina mining projects in the Central Highlands. However, this implementation has generated fierce opposition from scientists and local people due to the environmental destruction and the negative impacts on social culture, especially the indigenous culture of the Central Highlands.