Which businessman once refused to be Minister of Economy?

He is businessman Nguyen Son Ha (1894-1980).

Businessman Nguyen Son Ha was born in Hanoi into a poor family. As a child, he was sent to study Chinese and Vietnamese, but things became more difficult when his father passed away. The burden of the family weighed heavily on Son Ha's shoulders, forcing the then 14-year-old boy to drop out of school and go to work.

Nguyen Son Ha started working as an office assistant for a French trading company. Later, he left to work for the Sauvage Cottu oil paint company in Hai Phong because of the better salary. During this time, Son Ha nurtured the ambition to get rich and learned how to produce paint from traditional to modern methods. He cherished the plan to open a Vietnamese oil paint company.

After a period of contributing capital and borrowing more from friends, Nguyen Son Ha opened an advertising shop to have the conditions to live independently and do more research. At night, he quietly experimented with processing and producing paint from the knowledge he learned at the paint company. Shortly after, his products appeared on the Vietnamese market. Because his paint was both good and cheap, it was very popular with Chinese and Vietnamese customers.

From a hired worker with nothing, Son Ha was finally able to become a boss. He was known as the founder of the Vietnamese oil painting industry and was a leading businessman and industrialist in Vietnam during the French colonial period. He was also a typical example, a leading flag for businessmen in Vietnam in particular, and Indochina in general.

Businessman Nguyen Son Ha. (Photo courtesy)

According to information from the National Assembly Electronic Information Portal, during the period when the revolutionary government was still young and had empty finances, General Vo Nguyen Giap, on behalf of the Government, invited Mr. Nguyen Son Ha to take up the position of Minister of Economy . However, this businessman refused with the reason: "I consider myself to be uneducated and incompetent, so I do not dare to accept a position that is too big beyond my capacity, for fear that it will later affect the issues of national security and people's livelihood."

However, Mr. Son Ha's contributions to the resistance war and national construction were enormous. He was a member of the first National Assembly and participated in the revolution when the resistance war broke out.

In 1945, famine broke out everywhere. The businessman did not speculate for profit like some other capitalists, but distributed hundreds of tons of rice harvested from 200 hectares of rice fields in Hai Duong, saving thousands of people from starvation. After the August Revolution, his family contributed 105 taels of gold and many other assets to the Government.

After his eldest son heroically sacrificed his life in the early days of the resistance war, Mr. Ha went to the Viet Bac resistance base to contribute his efforts and intelligence to the revolution. Seeing that our soldiers were not well fed and had to cope with harsh weather, he racked his brains and finally found a formula to make a suitable paint to coat the fabric of raincoats for the soldiers. The multi-purpose raincoat helped the soldiers to protect themselves from the rain, cold, leeches and to lie down on when taking a break in the middle of the march to fight the enemy.

When President Ho Chi Minh received the raincoat given by Mr. Nguyen Son Ha, he wrote a letter of thanks: "To Mr. Nguyen Son Ha, National Assembly delegate, thank you for sending me the raincoat you made. I hope you will find a way to make raincoats quickly, in large quantities, good quality and cheaply to serve as a model for our technologists in the patriotic emulation competition."

After the resistance war against France, he returned to Hanoi and was elected to the Vietnamese National Assembly, terms II, III, IV, and V.

When peace was established, his family returned to Hai Phong to live in the house at 49 Lach Tray. In the last years of his life, this businessman continued to research and produce aircraft paint, write books and teach business experiences to the young generation, contributing to the development of the Vietnamese paint industry.

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Source: https://vtcnews.vn/vi-doanh-nhan-nao-tung-tu-choi-lam-bo-truong-kinh-te-ar934043.html