At the same time, the leaders of Thanh Nien also organized 3 sessions of “Special Political Training Class”, teaching revolutionary theory and practices (history and language courses were also included in the curriculum[11]).
With Nguyen Ai Quoc's instructions, he attempted to look for friends and relatives in his home village or the city and led them to multi-help or fraternal associations.
[19] In 1927, recruitment into the League was at its peak, for young Vietnamese were extremely disaffected by the French authorities after the death of Phan Chu Trinh and the arrest of Nguyen An Ninh in March 1926.
[10] In March 1927, the fourth wave of trainees was gathering in Guangzhou; but, Chiang Kai-shek’s April 12 coup and his sequent persecution of communists crushed their training.
[22] However, the explosive domestic expansion of Thanh Nien took place without strong guidance from the Central Committee in Guangzhou because of a series of KMT’s anti-communist repression in China.
[23] At the end of September 1928, the Tonkin Regional Committee (or Bac Ky) is said to have a “Reorganization Conference” near Hanoi to discuss approaches to ‘proletarianize’ their group.
[23] In the beginning of May 1929, the League held a plenum in Hong Kong to vote on a new organizational structure and a new program of action, in order to meet Comintern requirements for a national branch.
[27] This Congress, attended by 17 delegates from each of the three main administrative districts of Vietnam, as well as Hong Kong and Siam, reveals a gap between the Central Committee and radical domestic members at the opening day of the meeting.
[28] The Tonkin and Annam delegates insisted on transforming the Youth League to a proper communist party by eschewing the concept of unitary revolution in favor of class struggle.
[29] In a few months, the Party managed to absorb most former Thanh Nien members in Tonkin Regional Committee and began to found branches in Annam and Cochinchina.
If we situate Thanh Nien, as well as Nguyen Ai Quoc and Tam Tam Xa in a broad context, i.e. the political landscape of Guangzhou, the establishment of Thanh Nien is not only the story of Vietnamese contact and practice of Communism, but also a consequence of the interactions between Soviet Union (USSR)/Cominten, KMT and CCP and the transformation of the political milieu of Guangzhou.
Sharing with the same patriotic passion and resentment towards the French colonizers, these exilic revolutionaries and organizations prepared potential members for Thanh Nien.
[31] Guangdong Revolutionary Government buried him next to the tomb of 72 martyrs who sacrificed in the Huang Hua Gang Uprising, in spite of French protests.
Although CCP succeeded to organize many workers’ strikes and peasant movements in China and was able to mobilize large populace soon after its foundation, the Party was still very weak in power and reputation comparing to warlords and Sun Yat Sen’s KMT.
Most importantly, at its early years, CCP didn’t have its own military power and weapons, thus it was suppressed by the French authority in Shanghai and the local warlords like Wu Peifu.
Since Comintern and USSR provided guidance and strategies in organization and operation, they sought for a cooperator with military power, reputation, as well as the same necessity to fight against foreign imperialism and domestic feudal warlords.
After the failure of a series anti-feudal movements from 1913-1922, Sun fell into despair to the situation, and began to consider the possibility to cooperate with USSR and CCP, in order to expel feudal warlords and remove one of the biggest block in KMT’s development.
[42] When Nguyen Ai Quoc had arrived Guangzhou in the winter of 1924, the United Front was preparing for expelling warlord Chen Jiongming in East River district.
Although Sun Yat Sen died in March 1925, which was regarded as the loss of a great supporter to USSR and CCP, KMT rightists and CCP/USSR still managed to bury their conflicts in interest for the Northern Expedition.
[45] Therefore, in 1925, Guangzhou, as the base of Guangdong Revolutionary Government (the United Front) with the policy of cooperation with USSR and CCP, provided a relatively friendly environment for communist party and activities.
[48] In two letters of Nguyen Ai Quoc asking for Soviet Union’s help in early 1925, he mentioned that he had to use the $150 left over from his travel money from Moscow to bring the first bunch to Guangzhou.
[49] However, the English sources (either written by Western or Vietnamese author) seldom mention, or only spend two or three sentences writing, how Thanh Nien managed to survive for several years in a foreign country, which was invaded by several colonial powers.
Some CCP and KMT Left members (who were also trainers or officers in Whampoa Military Academy), like Zhou Enlai, Li Fuchun, Zhang Tailei, Peng Pai, Chen Yannian, etc., were invited to the “Special Political Training Class” to give lectures.
[12] Moreover, the Whampoa Military Academy, the KMT school established by Mikhail Borodin and General Galen, had admitted and trained a large number of Vietnamese students sent by the League, many of whom continued their study in Moscow, became members of CCP or participated in Chinese military activities like the Northern Expedition, the Long March even the Anti-Japanese War (while the rest students were sent to Vietnam or Siam to recruit new adherents and organize revolutionary movements).
[citation needed] After April 1927, the League confronted a very difficult situation and was finally forced to move to Kowloon, because of the breakup of the CCP-KMT United Front and Chiang Kai-shek's persecution of communists.
Even at that time, the Guangzhou Provincial Committee still tried to offer their support to solve their problems of living, and to restore the communications between the Comintern and the League's regional branches in Vietnam.