Founding anniversary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, 3 February

In the early twentieth century Vietnam was a French colony. Many patriotic movements rose up, from Phan Bội Châu's Đông Du movement to Phan Châu Trinh's Duy Tân reform campaign, but all were suppressed and none found a path to victory. On 5 June 1911 the young Nguyễn Tất Thành left the Nhà Rồng wharf, beginning thirty years of travel across several continents in search of a way to free his country.

In 1920, reading Lenin's first draft theses on the national and colonial questions, Nguyễn Ái Quốc found the direction he had been looking for. In December 1920, at the Tours Congress of the French Socialist Party, he voted to join the Communist International and became one of the founding members of the French Communist Party.

In June 1925 in Guangzhou, Nguyễn Ái Quốc founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, launched the newspaper Thanh niên and ran training courses for activists. The lectures from those courses were collected in the book Đường Kách mệnh, printed in 1927. The young people trained there returned home and went into factories, mines and plantations to spread the message and build local networks.

By 1929 the movement at home had grown strongly, giving rise to three communist organisations: the Indochinese Communist Party in Tonkin, the Annamese Communist Party in Cochinchina and the Indochinese Communist League in Annam. All three shared the same goal yet worked separately, which made it urgent to merge them into a single party.

From 6 January to 7 February 1930, in Kowloon, Hong Kong, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, acting as envoy of the Communist International, chaired the conference that merged the communist organisations into the Communist Party of Vietnam. It was held in secret and under very difficult conditions, with delegates from the Indochinese Communist Party and the Annamese Communist Party.

The conference adopted the Party's brief political programme, brief strategy, summary programme and brief statutes, regarded as its first political platform, which set national independence as the goal. On 24 February 1930 the Indochinese Communist League was admitted, completing the unification of the communist organisations across the country.

In October 1930 the first plenum of the Central Committee renamed the party the Indochinese Communist Party, elected Trần Phú as General Secretary and adopted the Political Theses. The First Congress met in Macau in March 1935. The Second Congress, held in February 1951 in Chiêm Hoá, Tuyên Quang, in the middle of the resistance against France, brought the party into the open under the name Vietnam Workers' Party.

The Third Congress, in Hà Nội in September 1960, set 3 February as the founding anniversary. The Fourth Congress in December 1976, after national reunification, renamed it the Communist Party of Vietnam. The Sixth Congress in December 1986 launched the Đổi mới reforms. The Seventh Congress in 1991 adopted the platform for building the country in the transition period, supplemented and developed at the Eleventh Congress in 2011.

Our Party is morality, is civilisation

President Hồ Chí Minh, 30th founding anniversary, 1960

The anniversary falls in early spring, in many years right around Tết, so red flags with the gold star and banners for the Party blend with the new-year mood in streets across the country. Party cells hold ceremonies to present membership badges, and localities offer incense at historical sites, memorial houses and monuments.

In offices, organisations and businesses, 3 February is not a day off, but it is often chosen for the first gathering of the year, a look back at shared history and the launch of performance drives. It is also when many places hold the spring tree-planting festival, a habit dating from 1960 at the call of President Hồ Chí Minh.