Image:Pvk.jpg
'''Phan Văn Khải''' (born December_25, 1933 in suburb of Cu Chi, of the former City of Saigon), now the Municipality of Hồ Chí Minh City, is the Prime_Minister of Vietnam since September_24 1997, and was re-elected in August 2002.
Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải was born on December_25, 1933 in Tan Thong Hoi Village in Cu Chi district, now a Suburban ward of Hồ Chí Minh City (formerly Saigon).
He began his activist career at a very early age, when he was admitted to the village's chapter of the Vietnam_revolutionary_children's_movement at the age of 14. Just before he turned 21, Khải was among those members of the VietMinh who moved to northern Vietnam under the Geneva_Agreement_on_Indochina signed in July 1954.
Shortly after his arrival in the North in October of 1954, Khải took part in a land reform drive launched in northern Vietnam to reallocate land from its owners to poorer Peasants.
Khải attended a special training school for workers and peasants and obtained a secondary-education diploma before being admitted to the Foreign Languages College in Hanoi. Thereafter, Khai was sent to the former Soviet_Union for five years to study Economics at the Moscow_National_University.
After returning home, he worked as an economist and was later promoted to the post of deputy chief and then chief of a section attached to the General Department of the State Planning committee. In 1972, Khải became a researcher of southern Vietnam's economy. One year later he served with the Vietcong in South_Vietnam.
He returned to Hanoi in 1974 and was appointed deputy director of the aid planning department of the Government's National Reunification Committee. One year after, when the Vietnam_War ended in April 1975, Khải became deputy director of the planning department of the People's Committee of Hồ Chí Minh City. He was promoted to director of the same department and vice mayor of Hồ Chí Minh City over the next three years.
Then, in 1981 he was appointed HCM City permanent deputy Mayor. Khải was elected to the post of Hồ Chí Minh City Mayor in 1985 and remained in that job for five years when he was appointed chairman of the State Planning Committee in 1989.
He was appointed to the post of permanent deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1991 and to the post of permanent deputy prime minister the following year. He remained in the post until 1997 when he was elected the new Prime Minister of Vietnam. Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải was re-elected in August, 2002.
Khải was admitted to the Communist_Party_of_Vietnam (CPV) when he was 26 years old. His first position in the Party organisation was established in 1979 when he was elected as executive member to the HCM City Party Committee.
He was elected as alternate member to the CPV Central Committee at the fifth National Party Congress in March 1982 and became full member to the CPV Central Committee in July 1984. He remained a full member of the Party Central Committee for eight years until the seventh National Party Congress was convened in June 1991 when he was elected as member to the Political Bureau of the CPV Central Committee. He was re-elected as member to the Political Bureau of the CPV Central Committee at the Eighth National Party Congress in June 1996 and at the Ninth National Party Congress in April 2002.
He met President Bush on June_21, 2005.
(''This is a re-write of the article from the Embassy of Vietnam cited in the external link below. It is an effort to make the piece more understandable to English-speaking readers'')
==External links==
*Vietnamese Embassy biography
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Category:Vietnamese_people
Khai, Phan Van
Es:Phan_Van_Khai
Fr:Phan_Van_Khai
Gl:Phan_Van_Khai
Ja:ファン・ヴァン・カイ
Vi:Phan_Văn_Khải
Zh:潘文凱