Nguyễn Minh Triết was born on 8 October 1942 in Bến Cát district in Bình Dương province, in a middle-class farming family.

He is one of the top leaders of Vietnam who are southerners and one of the few that had not regrouped to the North following the division of the country in 1954 (he was only 12 at the time).

He guided the largely agricultural province into an attractive destination for foreign direct investment.

In November 1963, Nguyễn Minh Triết escaped to a war zone working in Sàigòn - Gia Định.

On 30 March 1965, Triết was admitted to the Southern Revolutionary People's Party under alias Trần Phong also known as Sáu Phong, and was appointed secretary of the Youth Union Central Committee of the People's Revolutionary League in South Central Committee and went to the battlefield in Mỹ Tho Province until 1973.

In September 1979, he was sent to study at the Nguyễn Ái Quốc Party School and graduated with a Bachelor of Political Science in July 1981.

In the early years of economic renovation, Bình Dương and Ho Chi Minh City were fast growing places, attracting a lot of foreign investment capital.

In December of the same year, he joined with Nguyễn Phú Trọng, Phan Diễn, and Phạm Thanh Ngân in the Fourth Plenum of the Executive Committee, in addition to the Politburo.

During this trip, Nguyễn Minh Triết met about 800 businessmen in Orange County, California, most of them were of Vietnamese descent.

[6] Also on this trip, he was considered to have altered many of the long-held stereotypes of the US Congressmen with their calm, clever answer, releasing many complex issues.

To build an affluent and prosperous society, we chose the path of a Socialist-oriented market economy.