Chairman, Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee. The chairman assumed the position of secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union in 2002 and its permanent secretary in 2005. In 2009, he returned to his hometown, Ben Tre Province in the Mekong Delta, to be the deputy secretary of the provincial Party Committee and was elected secretary the following year. He was then appointed Chairman of the Ben Tre People’s Council in 2013. In March 2015, the Politburo terminated his previous duty and dispatched him back to Ho Chi Minh City to become deputy secretary of the city’s Party Committee for 2010-15. Phong won re-election to remain the deputy secretary for the 2015-20 term in October. Born in the southern province of Ben Tre, Nguyen Thanh Phong, an Economics PhD, is Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee. He joined the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1988 and began his political career in Ho Chi Minh City. Chairman Phong was voted the first-ever chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City branch of the Vietnamese Student Association in 1995 and Deputy Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City chapter of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union the following year. In 1999, he was elected secretary of the chapter.