Hoang Van Hoan

Hoàng Văn Hoan (1905–1991) was a personal friend of Ho Chi Minh, a founding member of the Indochinese Communist Party, and a Politburo member of the Lao Dong Party (Vietnam Workers' Party-VWP) from 1960 to 1976. Hoan was a crucial link between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and China, ambassador to Beijing 1950-1957, and leader of many delegations to China as Vice Chairman of the DRV National Assembly Standing Committee in the 1960s. He lost much of his influence after Ho Chi Minh's death in 1969, and particularly after the Fourth National Party Congress in 1977, when the Vietnamese Communists shifted to a pro-Soviet position. Like Truong Nhu Tang, who went into exile in Paris, Hoang defected and surfaced in Beijing in July 1979, after shaking off political persecution by the Vietnamese communist authorities.

Hoang charged that Vietnam's abuse of its ethnic Chinese minority was "even worse than Hitler's treatment of the Jews" and that Hanoi had become "subservient to a foreign power," referring to the Soviet Union. Hoang disclosed that in 1982 North-Vietnam's Central Committee decided that opium production should be used to raise badly needed foreign currency, for example, U.S. dollars.

Hoang is also author of a book, A Drop in the Ocean: Hoang Van Hoan's Revolutionary Reminiscences (Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 1988). ISBN 7-119-00604-5