In early 1988, Laoss Council of Ministers issued an instruction to the nations ministries, state committees, mass organizations, provinces and municipalities. Titled stepping up population management work, the document articulated a vision of the Lao countryside that emphasized the tight connections between economic development and national security. Population management work, it explained, entailed grasping population statistics, recording birth and death statistics, issuing identification cards, organizing population relocation, arranging domicile patterns, and finding and create new occupations for multi-ethnic citizens who own no land on which to earn their living. And its fundamental principle, the instruction noted, was to allow Laoss multi-ethnic citizens to enjoy legitimate equal rights in all spheres of life and to further enhance their right to collective mastership and a sense of creativeness in fulfilling their two strategic tasks: defending the country and building socialism.