Nguyễn Thiện Nhân


Nguyễn Thiện Nhân is a Vietnamese politician,Professor and the current Secretary of Ho Chi Minh City's Central Party Committee since May 10, 2017. His previous post was the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front. He was a Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam between 2007 and 2013, and was Minister of Education and Training of Vietnam between 2006 and 2010. He is a member of the 11th Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam. He had been the 1st vice mayor of Ho Chi Minh City before being appointed Minister of Education on June 28, 2006, by Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng. He was appointed by the National Assembly, upon recommendation of Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam. He received a PhD in cybernetics at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg in East Germany in 1979.

Early life and career

Nguyễn Thiện Nhân was born on June 12, 1953 in Cà Mau, Vietnam. His family is originally from Chau Thanh, Tra Vinh province. His father Nguyễn Thiện Thành was a Professor and a Doctor. His father was an intellectual who was active in the Vietnamese independence movement. Under the provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1954, his father brought his family to the North to live in the part of Vietnam under the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Encouraged by his father, after high school, in June 1970, Mr.Nhan enlisted in the Vietnam People's Army as a cadet in the field of engineering. In 1972 he was sent to study abroad at the Technical University of Magdeburg, East Germany. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in 1976.
In 1979, he successfully defended his PhD thesis in Cybernetics. His doctoral dissertation is Untersuchungen zur automatischen Steuerung der optimalen Fahrweise von Fernwärmeversorgungssystemen . After returning home in 1980, he worked as a researcher at the Controlled Arms Institute of the Military Institute of Technology under the Ministry of Defense until 1983. Also in 1980, he was admitted to the [Communist Party of Vietnam. He was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1980, Senior Lieutenant in 1982.
In 1993, he studied and earned an MPA of governance at the University of Oregon and a course of Investment Project Assessment at Harvard University, USA. He has been the professor at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology.
Nguyễn Thiện Nhân is known for a number of efforts in reforming the Vietnamese education system, widely supported by the Vietnamese public. He is also one of the senior officials in the Vietnamese government who has a good command of English along with Hoàng Trung Hải, another vice prime minister. Mr. Nhan is fluent in both English and German.
He replaced Đinh La Thăng as the Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam for Ho Chi Minh City beginning on May 10, 2017.