Initial Activities
Financial problems compounded the VNQDD's difficulties. Money was needed to set up a commercial enterprise, a cover for the revolutionaries to meet and plot, and for raising funds. For this purpose, a hotel-restaurant named the Vietnam Hotel was opened in September 1928. The French colonial authorities were aware of the real purpose of the business, and put it under surveillance without taking further preliminary action. The first notable reorganisation of the VNQDD was in December, when Nguyen Khac Nhu replaced Hoc as chairman. Three proto-governmental organs were created, to form the legislative, executive and judicial arms of government. The records of the French secret service estimated that by early 1929, the VNQDD consisted of approximately 1,500 members in 120 cells, mostly in areas around the Red River Delta. The intelligence reported that most members were students, minor merchants or low-level bureaucrats in the French administration. The report stated that there were landlords and wealthy peasants among the members, but that few were of scholar-gentry (mandarin) rank. According to the historian Cecil B. Currey, "The VNQDD's lower-class origins made it, in many ways, closer to the labouring poor than were the Communists, many of whom… from established middle-class families."
Beginning in 1928, the VNQDD attracted substantial Vietnamese support, provoking increased attention from the French colonial administration. This came after a VNQDD death squad killed several French officials and Vietnamese collaborators who had a reputation for cruelty towards the Vietnamese populace.
Read more about this topic: Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang
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