Vietnamese Ambassador Dang Minh Khoi said the statue, a gift from the Ministry of Public Security, was very significant because China was the country where Uncle Ho spent the most time abroad in the course of his revolutionary career.
He said President Ho Chi Minh highly treasured Vietnam and China’s neighbourly relationship, which has been nurtured by generations of the two countries’ leaders.
There are many places in China that still bear traces of President Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary life and the Vietnamese Embassy in Beijing itself also once had the honour to being visited by him.
The statue portrays President Ho Chi Minh reading a newspaper while sitting on a rattan chair. In front of him is a small table with a stack of newspapers. He was wearing khaki trousers and a pair of rubber sandals.
This was the fifth and final version cast from a mould created by Mexican sculptor Pedro Ramírez Ponzanelli, who drew inspiration for the project from a photo by taken by Dinh Dang Dinh in 1960.
