 Hanoi, being the capital of French Indochina, was the only place in Northern Vietnam with significant French influence.From 1954 to 1976, Vietnam was again divided into two separate countries,it divided by the Bến Hải River in Quảng Trị Province at the 17th parallel.The North, ruled by a communist government, was allied with communist China and the Soviet Union, while the South had a free-market economy, quasi-democratic government of the nation and had contact with the United States, the West and Western-aligned nations.