Hoang Van Hoan; High Vietnam Official Defected to China in 1979

Hoang Van Hoan, a onetime Politburo member in Vietnam’s Communist Party who defected to China after the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, died May 18 in the Chinese capital, state-run media reported Wednesday. He was 86.

Hoan was hospitalized in January with a lung infection and chronic heart and lung disorders, the Xinhua news agency said. There was no explanation of why his May 18 death was not disclosed sooner.

Hoan, once a close associate of Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, was prominent in the top levels of Vietnam’s communist government and party, holding a seat on the Politburo.

He lost influence in the mid-1970s because he disagreed with Hanoi’s tilt toward Moscow, which came at China’s expense.

Hoan was vice chairman of the Vietnamese national assembly when, at the age of 74, he secretly defected to China, apparently in June, 1979, shortly after China’s disastrous invasion of Vietnam, making him the highest-ranking official to betray the Hanoi government.

Hoan surfaced at a Beijing news conference in August, 1979, to denounce Vietnam’s poor treatment of ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, charging that they were forced into poorly prepared “new economic zones” or into leaky refugee boats.

Beijing often called on the exiled official to bolster its denials of Vietnamese allegations--particularly Hanoi’s November, 1979, charge that China was an unreliable and even unfaithful backer during Vietnam’s long conflicts with France and the United States.

Hoan’s staunch pro-Beijing attitude even prompted questions about his ethnicity, but Hoan denied being part Chinese.

“I am 100% ethnic Vietnamese,” Hoan said at his first Beijing news conference.