Ai Szu-ch’i

Background

Ai Szu-ch’i was born in 1910 at T’eng-ch’ung, Yunnan, China.

Education

Though nothing is known of Ai’s younger years, it is apparent that he received some higher education, for by the early thirties he was working and writing in Shanghai, then the major center for leftist and Communist intellectuals.

Career

Like so many of the intelligentsia in Shanghai, Ai left for the Communist stronghold at Yenan when war against Japan erupted in mid-1937. He remained in Yenan for the next decade, establishing himself as one of the most important Communist philosopher-propagandists. During these 10 years he taught at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political Academy (K’ang-ta), and he was director of the Cultural Research Office of the Party Central Committee’s Central Research Institute, “a higher research organ for the training of the Party’s theoretical cadres.”

He also served as secretary-general of the Central Committee’s Cultural Committee and as a deputy editor of the Party’s most important newspaper, the Chieh-fang jih-pao (Liberation daily). In addition, he engaged in the translation of various Marxian classics,7 and from 1938 he was president of the “Society of the New Philosophy,” which he had helped to establish.

In June 1942 Ai assumed her post as editor of the cultural page of the Chieh-fang jih-pao. He was reported to be a member of the Shensi-Kansu- Ninghsia (Shen-Kan-Ning) Border Region Government Council by 1943, and by the following year he was also teaching philosophy at Yenan University. Ai was also active in the Shen-Kan-Ning Cultural Association; a visitor to Yenan in the spring of 1944 described him as one of the five persons responsible for the association, a group that included Wu Yii-chang (q.v.) and Chou Yang.10 Ai was again associated with Wu in 1948 at the North China University (Hua-pei ta-hsueh), located in the Communists’ Shansi-Hopeh-Shantung-Honan Border Region.

By the early part of 1949 Ai was in Peking and at a youth congress held in May of that year he was elected to the First National Committee of the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth. In July 1949 Ai became a vice-chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the China New Philosophy Research Association, continuing in the post when the organization was formally established in 1951 (under a slightly altered title: China Philosophy Association). Ai’s was probably the guiding Party hand in the Philosophy Association, for the chairman, Li Ta, was not a Party member even though he had been among the Party founders in 1921. Li had left the Party in the twenties, and although he held positions of nominal power in the PRC after 1949, he was finally denounced in 1966 during the “great proletarian cultural revolution” shortly after Ai’s death. Also in July 1949 Ai had been named to Standing Committee membership for the China Social Sciences Workers’ Conference, and in that capacity he attended the inaugural session in September 1949 of the CPPCC, the organization that brought the new government into existence on October 1. During the CPPCC sessions, he served on an ad hoc committee chaired by Kuo Mo-jo to issue public statements on the work of the CPPCC. In the new PRC Government Ai became a member, again under Kuo Mo-jo, of the Culture and Education Committee, one of the four major committees under the Government Administration Council (the cabinet). He held this post, as well as Council membership in the Association for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language and membership on the First Executive Board of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association, until the latter part of 1954.

In September 1949 the Communists began to publish Hsueh-hsi (Study), the Party’s most important theoretical and political journal until it was superseded by Hung-ch’i (Red flag) in 1958. Ai served from the outset as a member of the editorial board and was among its most prolific contributors, particularly in the early numbers of the journal. For example, the first seven issues of Hsueh-hsi (then a monthly) carried no less than five articles or speeches by Ai, in addition to advertisements for his previously published books and essays on Marxism- Leninism. Over the ensuing years he was to write several more articles for Hsueh-hsi, including a blistering attack on the bourgeoisie for the March 16, 1952, issue during the course of the “five-anti” campaign against businessmen and another article on the need to study Stalin’s teachings that appeared in the March 2, 1954, issue.

In July 1950 Ai became a member of the newly formed Southwest Military and Administrative Committee, and although he retained this position until the Committee was reorganized in early 1953, there is no indication that he spent any time in the southwest. In fact, at the very time he was appointed to the post, he was identified as a professor of the Party Central Committee’s Marx-Lenin Institute in Peking, the most important CCP school for the training of cadres. Ai remained with the institute, known from the mid-fifties as the Higher Party School, until his death. By the late summer of 1957 he was identified as the director of the School’s Philosophy Pedagogic Research Office, and by March 1961 he had become a vice-president, a position he was holding at the time of his death. Though relatively little information has been published about the Higher Party School, Ai worked during his time there under at least three presidents, Yang Hsien-chen, Wang Ts’ung-wu, and Lin Feng (qq.v.).

Like most important Party leaders, Ai was called upon to lend his name to the various “mass” organizations. Thus, from 1950 to 1958 he was a member of the National Committee of the China Peace Committee, and from 1954 to 1959 he was a Standing Committee member of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. An assignment more germane to Ai’s field of work was with the CPPCC’s Study Committee, whose task was to promote the intensive study (particularly among the non-Communist CPPCC members) of Marxist-Leninist works, the writings of Mao Tse-tung, and various policy statements issued by the central government; he was a member of the Study Committee from February 1952 until the latter part of 1954. Equally germane was Ai’s work with the Academy of Sciences. In December 1954, in conjunction with the Union of Chinese Writers, the Academy inaugurated a series of forums to criticize the thought of Hu Shih, an activity that occupied much of Ai’s time over that winter, and later in December he was named as one of nine members to establish the Research Institute of Philosophy under the Academy, and then when the Academy formed the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences in May-June 1955, Ai was appointed as a member, another post he held until his death 11 years later.

Ai was a deputy from Kweichow to the First and Second NPC’s (1954-1964), but he represented his native Yunnan in the Third NPC that opened in late 1964. Yet any part that he may have played in the PRC’s legislative body was clearly peripheral to his continuing importance as a writer and lecturer on Marxism-Leninism. For example, Ai contributed articles on this subject for Hung-ch’i (Red flag, issues of July 16, 1958, and February 16, 1959) and for the January 31, 1959, issue of the JMJP. Similarly, he was often called upon to write commemorative articles or to give speeches marking important Communist holidays; for instance, he authored an article on the 80th anniversary of Stalin’s birth for the December 21, 1959, issue of the JMJP and in April 1961 he spoke at a rally commemorating the 91st anniversary of Lenin’s birth. One of Ai’s last articles {JMJP, November 1, 1964) was a refutation of the views of Yang Hsien-chen, his former superior in the Higher Party School who was the object of a sustained ideological attack in the Party press in 1964. In August 1964 Ai was a member of the Chinese delegation to the Peking Symposium, a meeting attended by 367 delegates from 44 nations, mainly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Achievements

• Since mid 1937 he established himself as one of the most important Communist philosopher-propagandists.
  
  He was named as one of nine members to establish the Research Institute of Philosophy under the Academy.

Politics

Ai Szu-ch’i was among the most important Chinese Communist interpreters and popularizes of Marxist-Leninist thought.

Membership

• In the new PRC Government Ai became a member, again under Kuo Mo-jo, of the Culture and Education Committee, one of the four major committees under the Government Administration Council (the cabinet). He held this post, as well as Council membership in the Association for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language and membership on the First Executive Board of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association, until the latter part of 1954.

  Culture and Education Committee , China

  1949 - 1954

• In July 1950 Ai became a member of the newly formed Southwest Military and Administrative Committee, and although he retained this position until the Committee was reorganized in early 1953, there is no indication that he spent any time in the southwest.

  Southwest Military and Administrative Committee , China

  1950 - 1953

• National Committee of the China Peace Committee , China

  1950 - 1958

• Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries , China

  1954 - 1959

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Chou Yang - “generally agreed that Ai . . . has been the Communist Party’s chief thinker.”

References

• Ai Ssu-ch'i's Contribution to the Development of Chinese Marxism