Hoang Van Hoan

Hoàng Văn Hoan (1905 – 18 May 1991) was a Vietnamese politician and diplomat. An early member of the Indochinese Communist Party, he became an ally of Ho Chi Minh during the struggle against French colonial rule. Following independence, he became an important politician in Hồ's communist-controlled Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and served as a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam from 1960 to 1976. He was a leading figure of the Party's pro-China wing, and his political fortunes deteriorated in tandem with Sino-Vietnamese relations. Following the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, he controversially defected to China and spent the rest of his life in exile.

Biography

Early life and political career Hoan was born in Nghệ An Province in 1905. In later years, it was occasionally rumored that he was part of Vietnam's Hoa Chinese minority. However, he denied the accusations and said that he was "100% ethnic Vietnamese."

In the 1920s, he moved to Guangzhou, China, a base for revolutionaries from then-French Indochina. He studied at the Whampoa Military Academy and became an associate of Ho Chi Minh. In 1930, he helped Ho found the Indochinese Communist Party. In 1941, he set up the Viet Minh to fight against French colonial rule.

His political career effectively ended at the Fourth National Party Congress in December 1976, where he was removed from the Politburo and the Central Committee as the party formalized its pro-Soviet orientation.

Defection and exile In early 1979, Vietnam and China fought a brief, but significant, war. Hoan was subjected to political isolation and surveillance.

After the war ended, Hoan defected to China in July 1979. While traveling to East Germany for medical care, he eluded his escorts during a transit stop in Karachi, Pakistan, and sought refuge at the Chinese consulate before flying to Beijing. At a press conference in August 1979, Hoan stated that Vietnam's persecution of its ethnic Chinese minority was "even worse than Hitler's treatment of the Jews" and accused Vietnamese leaders of becoming "subservient to a foreign power," a reference to the Soviet Union. The Vietnamese authorities denounced Hoan as a traitor and sentenced him to death in absentia.

During his exile, Hoan attacked the Vietnamese government and defended China against Vietnamese complaints, such as a November 1979 allegation that China undermined Vietnamese revolutionaries during the revolution against France. He also authored a political memoir titled Giọt nước trong biển cả (released in English as A Drop in the Ocean: Hoang Van Hoan's Revolutionary Reminiscences). In his writings, he alleged, without providing evidence, that the CPV's Central Committee had decided in 1982 to increase opium production to raise foreign currency.

In January 1991, Hoan was hospitalized with a lung infection. He died in Beijing on May 18, 1991.

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