In the Soviet Union and China
In 1923, Nguyễn (Ho) left Paris for Moscow, where he was employed by the Comintern, studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East,[14][15] and participated in the Fifth Comintern Congress in June 1924, before arriving in Canton (present-day Guangzhou), China, in November 1924.
In 1925–26 he organized "Youth Education Classes" and occasionally gave socialist lectures to Vietnamese revolutionary young people living in Canton at the Whampoa Military Academy. These young people would become the seeds of a new revolutionary, pro-communist movement in Vietnam several years later. According to Duiker, he lived with and married a Chinese woman, Tang Tuyet Minh (Zeng Xueming), on 18 October 1926.[16] When his comrades objected to the match, he told them, “I will get married despite your disapproval because I need a woman to teach me the language and keep house.”[16] She was 21 and he was 36.[16] They married in the same place where Zhou Enlai had married earlier, and then lived in the residence of a Comintern agent, Mikhail Borodin.[16]
Hoang Van Chi argued that in June 1925, Nguyễn betrayed Phan Boi Chau, the famous leader of a rival revolutionary faction and his father's old friend, to French Secret Service agents in Shanghai for 100,000 piastres.[17] A source states that Nguyễn later claimed he did it because he expected Chau's trial to stir up anti-French resentment, and because he needed the money to establish a communist organization.[17] In Ho Chi Minh: A Life, William Duiker repudiated this hypothesis. Other sources claim that Nguyen Thuong Hien was responsible for Chau's capture. Chau, sentenced to lifetime house arrest, never denounced Nguyễn Ái Quốc.
Chiang Kai-shek's 1927 anti-communist coup triggered a new era of exile for Nguyễn. He left Canton again in April 1927 and returned to Moscow,
He remained in Thailand, staying in the Thai village of Nachok,[18] until late 1929 when he moved on to India, then Shanghai. In early 1930, in Hong Kong, Nguyễn Ái Quốc chaired a meeting with representatives from two Vietnamese communist parties in order to merge them into a unified organization, Communist Party of Vietnam. In June 1931, he was arrested in Hong Kong. To reduce French pressure for extradition, it was (falsely) announced in 1932 that Nguyễn Ái Quốc had died.[19] The British quietly released him in January 1933.
He moved to the Soviet Union, where he spent several years recovering from tuberculosis. It is said that in this period he lost his positions in the Comintern because of a concern that he had betrayed the organization. His influence among his Vietnamese comrades faded significantly.
In 1938, he was allowed to return to China and served as an advisor with Chinese Communist armed forces, which later forced China's government into exile on Taiwan.
He was jailed in China by Chiang Kai-shek's local authorities before being rescued by Chinese Communists.[24] Following his release in 1943, he returned to Vietnam.