The Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League (; ), commonly known as Thanh niên, was founded by Nguyen Ai Quoc (later known as Ho Chi Minh) in Guangzhou in the spring of 1925. It is regarded as the "first truly Marxist organization in Indochina" and "the beginning of Vietnamese communism".David L. Anderson, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War (2011), p. 98: "Within this radical intellectual milieu, Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnam Thanh Nien Cach Menh Hoi (Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League) in 1925. The Youth League served as the forerunner of Vietnamese Communism …"
With the support of the Chinese Communist Party and the left wing of the Kuomintang, the League educated and trained a significant number of Marxist–Leninist revolutionaries between 1925 and 1927, many of whom later became leading figures of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the broader Vietnamese Revolution. At the time of its formation, Vietnam was part of colonial French Indochina.
The history of the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League
Foundation
In December 1924, following the Fifth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, Nguyen Ai Quoc travelled to Guangzhou as an interpreter for Mikhail Borodin (Mikhail Gruzenberg). Using the Chinese pseudonym "Ly Thuy", he was tasked with promoting communist movements in Indochina and the wider Southeast Asian region.
Soon after his arrival, Nguyen Ai Quoc contacted Vietnamese exile groups in several southern Chinese cities between late 1924 and early 1925. In 1925, he and nine trusted members of Tam Tam Xa (the Society of Like Hearts; Chinese: 心心社) formed a secret organization, the Communist Youth Corps (Thanh niên Cộng sản Đoàn). The remaining members of Tam Tam Xa were expected to join a broader, public, and mass-oriented organization—the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League—with the Communist Youth Corps serving as its nucleus.
On 21 June 1925, Thanh niên was formally established by Nguyen Ai Quoc and several former leading members of Tam Tam Xa. The League's headquarters were located in a rented three-storey house at 13 Wen Ming Street in downtown Guangzhou. From 1925 to 1927, this headquarters functioned as the Central Committee and as the main coordinating centre for underground revolutionary activities in Vietnam.
During the same period, the League organized three sessions of a "Special Political Training Class", which provided instruction in revolutionary theory and practice, along with courses in history and language. Lectures were delivered by Nguyen Ai Quoc, Ho Tung Mau, and Le Hong Son, while additional guest lecturers included members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), left-wing Kuomintang (KMT) activists, and Comintern officials. Each session lasted approximately three to four months. After completing the course, most recruits returned to Vietnam to expand membership and organize underground anticolonial activities. Some recruits joined CCP-affiliated revolutionary movements in China. Several prominent members, including Le Hong Phong, Le Quang Dat, and Tran Phu, were sent for further training at the Whampoa Military Academy or the University for the Toilers of the East in the Soviet Union.
To disseminate revolutionary ideas and attract young supporters, the League published various pamphlets and periodicals in Vietnamese. The Road to Revolution (Đường Kách Mệnh), a training manual compiled from Nguyen Ai Quoc’s lectures, was published by the League of Oppressed Peoples' propaganda section in 1927. Four periodicals were issued regularly during the League's existence: 208 issues of the weekly Thanh Nien (Youth) from June 1925 to May 1930; the weekly Bao Cong Nong (Worker-Peasant) from December 1926 to early 1928; the biweekly Linh Kach Menh (Revolutionary Soldier) from early 1927 to early 1928; and four issues of the monthly Viet Nam Tien Phong (Vanguard of Vietnam) in 1927.
Growth of Thanh Nien
The League expanded slowly during 1925 and gained momentum only after a series of student strikes. Recruitment initially took place at ports and along the Chinese border. Some early members were children adopted by former Tam Tam Xa members—such as Ly Phong Duc, Ly Tri Thong, and Ly Ung Tuan—who had been brought to Guangzhou from Siam in 1920 by Le Hong Son and Ho Tung Mau. New recruits were taken to the tomb of Phạm Hồng Thái to pledge loyalty to the League, although the organization discouraged his reliance on terrorist tactics.
In September 1926, Nguyen Luong Bang, one of the earliest Thanh Niên recruits, volunteered to return to Vietnam to enlist new members. Following Nguyen Ai Quoc's guidance, he sought out friends and relatives in his home village and in urban areas, directing them to mutual-aid and fraternal associations. He raised issues of colonial oppression and the importance of unity when speaking with potential recruits. Those who showed commitment were expected to attract additional supporters.
Young Vietnamese who escaped arrest often travelled to Guangzhou via Hong Kong in groups of ten to twenty. Many were students expelled for participating in strikes or were otherwise affected by the growing political unrest. The Lycée Albert Sarraut in Hanoi and the Franco-Annamite School of Nam Định were particularly significant recruiting centers, supplying many of the League’s new members.
Recruitment reached its peak in 1927, as discontent intensified following the death of Phan Châu Trinh and the arrest of Nguyễn An Ninh in March 1926. Many students from Cochinchina joined the League and later met with their counterparts from Tonkin and Annam in Guangzhou. By March 1927, the fourth wave of trainees had gathered in Guangzhou, but Chiang Kai-shek's 12 April coup and subsequent persecution of communists brought their training to an abrupt end. Nguyen Ai Quoc left for Moscow in June 1927, while leading figures such as Ho Tung Mau and Le Hong Son were arrested.
To avoid repression by the KMT, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Youth League were relocated first to Wuhan and later to Hong Kong (Kowloon). Despite the political turmoil in Guangzhou following the collapse of the KMT–CCP United Front, the League continued some of its activities and military training in the city until the end of 1928.
Split and dissolution
Thanh Niên's propaganda and recruitment efforts were highly successful within Vietnam. By mid-1928, three regional committees (kỳ bộ) had been established in Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. In February 1928, the Central Committee appointed Vuong Thuc Oanh, Nguyen Thieu, and Nguyen Si Sach to lead the Annam Regional Committee. Four months later, Le Van Phat was appointed head of the Cochinchina Regional Committee, with Nguyen Kim Cuong and Chau Van Liem as members. The Tonkin Regional Committee was formed in July 1928, comprising Duong Hac Dinh and Trinh Dinh Cuu. However, this rapid domestic expansion occurred without strong direction from the Central Committee in Guangzhou, which had been weakened by consecutive waves of KMT anti-communist repression in China. The resulting loss of contact with a unified headquarters marked the beginning of factional divisions within the League.
At the end of September 1928, the Tonkin Regional Committee (Bắc Kỳ) reportedly held a "Reorganization Conference" near Hanoi to discuss strategies for 'proletarianizing' the organization. Recognizing that most members were students and teachers, the committee sought to expand recruitment among workers. Two cadres, Ngo Gia Tu and Nguyen Duc Canh, were assigned to strengthen propaganda among miners and factory workers, and to 'proletarianize' petty bourgeois students and teachers by sending them to rural areas and urban factories. Members unable to meet the new requirements were labelled "spoiled" or "lacking in virtue" and dismissed from the League. These actions suggest that the Tonkin committee had lost confidence in the Central Committee. After the Guangzhou headquarters relocated in 1928, the radical northern faction increasingly took direction from the Comintern through the Communist Party of France.
In early May 1929, the League convened a plenum in Hong Kong to vote on a new organizational structure and programme of action intended to align with Comintern requirements for a national communist party. The congress, attended by 17 delegates representing the three main regions of Vietnam as well as Hong Kong and Siam, revealed a clear divide between the Central Committee and more radical domestic members. Delegates from Tonkin and Annam argued that the Youth League should be transformed immediately into a full-fledged communist party, rejecting the concept of a unitary revolution in favour of class struggle. Three delegates—Trần Văn Cung, Nguyễn Tuân, and Ngo Gia Tu—left the congress early and later resigned after Lam Duc Thu and Le Hong Son opposed their demand for immediate party formation, arguing that the time was not yet ripe. Radical dissidents accused the Central Committee of being a "bourgeois group" and "false revolutionaries".
On 17 June 1929, more than 20 delegates from Tonkin held a conference in Hanoi, where they declared the dissolution of the Revolutionary Youth League and the formation of a new organization, the Communist Party of Indochina (not to be confused with the later Indochinese Communist Party founded in 1930, which became the Vietnamese Communist Party).Hue Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (1992), p. 230. Within months, the new Party absorbed most former Thanh Niên members from the Tonkin Regional Committee and began establishing branches in Annam and Cochinchina. It also led a wave of workers' strikes across Vietnam, including in Hanoi, Haiphong, Vinh, Da Nang, and Saigon.
The rise of the Communist Party of Indochina threatened the remaining Thanh Niên leadership in the Cochinchina Regional Committee (Nam Kỳ), which represented the organisation's moderate faction. Consequently, in late 1929, with support from the Central Committee in Hong Kong, the southern leadership dissolved Thanh Niên and reconstituted it as the Communist Party of Annam (Annam Công Sản Đảng). The two successor factions—the Communist Party of Indochina and the Annam Communist Party—competed for leadership of the domestic revolutionary movement.
The political landscape of Guangzhou in the 1920s The establishment of Thanh Niên in Guangzhou in the mid-1920s can be better understood when placed within the broader political environment of the city at the time. Although few sources examine this context in detail, some works provide fragments of the wider background, usually as ancillary information to the League's history. Many narratives emphasise Nguyen Ai Quoc's role, often beginning with his participation in the Fifth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern), while giving limited attention to developments in Guangzhou before his arrival.
Situating Thanh Niên, along with Nguyen Ai Quoc and Tam Tam Xa, within the wider political milieu of Guangzhou highlights that the League's formation was shaped not only by Vietnamese revolutionary initiatives but also by the interactions among the Soviet Union (USSR)/Comintern, the Kuomintang (KMT), and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The shifting political dynamics of Guangzhou in the 1920s created conditions that enabled the organisation's foundation and early activities.
Vietnamese exilic revolutionaries in Guangzhou Before the arrival of Nguyen Ai Quoc, a number of Vietnamese activists had already gathered in Guangzhou and were engaged in anticolonial activities. Sharing a common patriotic commitment and opposition to French colonial rule, these exilic revolutionaries and their organizations created a foundation from which Thanh Niên could later draw members.