Nguyen Thi Minh Khai

Who was Nguyen Thi Minh Khai?

Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai was a Vietnamese revolutionary and a leader of the Indochinese Communist Party during the 1930s.

Khai was born in Vinh, Nghệ An Province. In 1927, she co-founded the New Revolutionary Party of Vietnam which was a predecessor of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In 1930, she went to Hong Kong and became a secretary for Hồ Chí Minh in the office of the Orient Bureau of the Comintern. In 1931 she and Hồ became romantically involved. They planned to get married, but were separated when Khai was arrested and jailed by British police on suspicion of involvement in subversive activities. Very little is known about Hồ and Khai's relationship: according to some reports, they were in fact married; some historians believe that they passed each other off as husband and wife without ever having had an official marriage ceremony. The modern government of Vietnam maintains that Hồ Chí Minh never had any romantic relationships in life, let alone got married.

From 1931 to 1934, she was jailed by the British administration in Hong Kong. In 1934, she and Lê Hồng Phong were voted to be attendees in the Seventh Congress of Comintern in Moscow. Later she married Lê.