ere forcibly relocated to rural areas. A process of reurbanization began in the 1980s.
             Ethnic Cambodians, or Khmer, constitute 90 percent of the population. About 5 percent of the country's inhabitants are of Vietnamese origin, and only 1 percent are Chinese due to the mass murdering of their kind in Cambodia. Semi nomadic tribal groups concentrated in the mountainous northeast make up the remaining 4 percent of the population. Cambodia's official language is Khmer, or Cambodian. French was formerly an important secondary language in the country, but English has gained considerable ground in the 1990s. Other languages spoken include Vietnamese and an assortment of South Chinese dialects.
             More than 90 percent of Cambodia's inhabitants adhere to Theravada Buddhism, which is the dominant religion in most Southeast Asian nations. Buddhism originated in India in the 6th century BC and arrived in Cambodia during the first centuries AD. Nevertheless, a minority of modern Cambodians still practices Mahayana Buddhism. Other religions practiced in Cambodia include Roman Catholicism and Islam. All these religions were banned in 1970, "Because villagers resisted giving up their religious and cultural practices, they became 'reactionary' by the Khmer Rouge constitution, and [deemed] unclean in terms of social morale." (U.S demands, 12/30/98)
             Cambodia is one of the world's poorest nations. In 1997 its total gross domestic product (GDP) was $3 billion, yielding a per capita GDP of just $290, among the lowest in the world. Even before being plunged into civil conflict in the 1970s, Cambodia lacked significant industrial development, with most of the labor force engaged in agriculture. The country was self-sufficient in food and produced exportable surpluses of its principal crops of rice and corn. In spite of relatively low yields and a single harvest per year, Cambodia annually exported hundreds of thousands of tons of rice. The civil war fro...