in Vietnamese to protect their own economic interests. The bang also provided various welfare services for new Chinese immigrants, including financial services such as the collection of taxes. As more Han immigrants poured in by the 19th century, the bang served as meeting points and nodes for Chinese community leaders to band together to pool seed capital and establish their own businesses. At their disposal were guilds and business cooperatives that enabled the Hoa to conduct business with higher quality information and greater entrepreneurial cooperation. In addition, Hoa entrepreneurs established Overseas Chinese business contacts, adduced bargains and deals to entice and maintain customer satisfaction, as well as put in extra hours by conscientiously working more relentlessly to gain a competitive business edge over their French and Kinh counterparts. A mild business temperate coupled with astute business-making decisions coupled with a preference for earning small profit gains over a long period of time rather than to make a quick buck were also major factors that allowed the Chinese to prevail economically in Vietnam. The Hoa were notoriously enterprising entrepreneurs that traded and manufactured a myriad of goods and services of value ranging from fine Chinese silk to black incense. The monopolized gold export trade was entirely under Chinese hands in addition to Chinese domination of local trade in paper, tea, pepper, arms, sulfur, lead, and lead oxide. The economic clout wielded by the Hoa coupled with repeated military incursions and other invasive attempts by succeeding Chinese dynasties to conquer and dominate Vietnam inflamed anti-Chinese sentiment, hostility, bitterness, and resentment from their Kinh counterparts. Nonetheless, Chinese economic dominance continued to surge unswervingly following the establishment of the Nguyễn dynasty in 1802. As wealthy Chinese merchants and investors served as a source of tax revenue and political interests of the Nguyen officials. By the time the French arrived in the mid-18th century, the Hoa dominated the Kinh majority in trade, mining, and every urban market sector in addition to prospering under the colonial laissez-faire market policies enshrined by the French colonialists. Vietnam's gold industry in particular, was monopolized entirely by Chinese merchants. The Hoa monopolized the entire internal gold procurement and distribution system. The French colonial regime saw the advantage of market expertise offered by the Chinese and allowed Chinese merchants to freely engage in external trade; sometimes leading to a certain amount of cooperation between the French and Chinese in both import