The word for democracy “dan chu” entered the Vietnamese language around 1900 and literally means "the people as masters" What “the people as masters” actually entails and how to put it into practice have long been debated. That is not surprising After all, the history of trying to actualize democracy pretty much everywhere, including the West, has been riddled with controversy, arguments, even wars. In Vietnam, such debates were prominent while Vietnamese fought to free their nation from colonial rule in the 1920s to 1940s. An agreement emerged that sovereignty in an independent Vietnam should rest with "the people. not with rulers, a monarchy or god. But consensus about democracy's content and how "the people' should be or could be "masters" has been elusive.