Gulf of Tonkin
|Gulf of Tonkin|
|Traditional Chinese||1. 東京灣
|Simplified Chinese||1. 东京湾
|Literal meaning||1. Gulf of Tonkin
2. Gulf of the northern part
|Vietnamese||1. Vịnh Bắc Bộ
2. Vịnh Bắc Phần
3. Vịnh Bắc Việt
|Chữ Nôm||1. 泳北部
The Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnamese: Vịnh Bắc Bộ, simplified Chinese: 北部湾; traditional Chinese: 北部灣; pinyin: Běibù Wān) is a body of water located off the coast of northern Vietnam and southern China. It is a northern arm of the South China Sea. The Gulf is defined in the west by the northern coastline of Vietnam, in the north by China's Guangxi province, and to the east by China's Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan Island.
The bay's Vietnamese and Chinese names – Vịnh Bắc Bộ and Běibù Wān, respectively – both mean "Northern Bay". The name Tonkin, written "東京" in Hán-Nôm characters and Đông Kinh in the Vietnamese alphabet, means "eastern capital", and is the former toponym for Hanoi, the present capital of Vietnam. It should not to be confused with Tokyo, which is also written "東京" and also means "eastern capital". During Vietnam's French colonial era, Tonkin was used to refer to the north of the country.
On 2 August 1964, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson erroneously claimed that North Vietnamese forces had twice attacked American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Known today as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, this event spawned the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 7 August 1964, ultimately leading to open war between North Vietnam and the United States. It furthermore foreshadowed the major escalation of the Vietnam War in South Vietnam, which began with the landing of US regular combat troops at Da Nang in 1965.
- "LBJ tape 'confirms Vietnam war error'." Martin Fletcher. The Times. 7 November 2001.
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