This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
On 9 May 1997, Vietnam's government issued Decision No. 10/QD/TGCP granting legal recognition to a reorganised Cao Dai governing body seated at the Tay Ninh Holy See, its charter dated 5 April 1997, ending more than two decades during which the religion could not be openly practiced inside the country. Open practice at Tay Ninh resumed under the state's own supervision from that recognition forward.
Accounts of what exactly was recognised differ, and this atlas records the dispute rather than resolving it. The government and the newly recognised body describe the 1997 decision as the religion's lawful re-establishment inside Vietnam. Part of the tradition's own diaspora, which had continued practising abroad since 1975 and formed its own overseas umbrella body the following year, does not accept the reorganised body as the sole legitimate continuation of the faith founded in 1925, holding that its own pre-1975 Sacerdotal Council and Religious Constitution were never restored.
What the 1997 decision changed for Cao Dai's spread was division rather than simple reunion: practice inside Vietnam resumed under one recognised structure while diaspora communities established after 1975 continued to grow independently across North America, Cambodia, Europe and Australia, each side of that divide reading the same 1997 decision differently.