Ch’en Shao-yii

Background

Ch’en was born in Liu-an in west-central Anhwei, an area that was in the early 1930’s a part of the Communists’ Oyiiwan Soviet (see under Chang Kuo-t’ao). He came from a family of well-to-do peasants.

Education

There are varying reports about his middle-school years (some suggested he studied in Anhwei, others Wuhan), but by about 1925 he was enrolled in Shanghai University (see under Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai), one of the most important recruiting grounds for young Communists in the mid-1920’s. Ch’en joined the CCP in 1925.

Ch’en himself records that he arrived in Moscow in November 1925 among a group of 50-odd Chinese students to attend Sun Yat- sen (Chung-shan) University. The school opened the month Ch’en arrived. Because this was a period of rather close KMT-CCP cooperation in China, it was supported in part by funds from wealthy KMT members', in fact, the initial class had far more KMT than CCP members, a point disregarded in later Communist histories. The students, who were subsidized, went through a two-year course oriented toward the social sciences, and they also took field trips to factories, courts, and other institutions. The first rector was Karl Radek, but he was later replaced by one of Moscow’s best-known China specialists, Pavel Mif, a man destined to play a critical role in Ch’en’s future career.

Career

Ch’en learned Russian well during his stay at the university, and, according to his own account, in 1926 he was elected chairman of the university’s “student commune” (hsueh-sheng kung-she). There were a number of other Chinese students there who were to become part of the group known as the Russian-returned students, or “28 Bolsheviks,” and which included Ch’in Pang-hsien, Chang Wen-t’ien, Shen Tse-min, Wang Chia-hsiang, and Ch’en’s wife-to-be (in 1929), Meng Ch’ing-shu. In early January 1927 Ch’en left for home on a temporary assignment to take part in “secret work.” This coincided with the beginning of the serious deterioration in KMT-CCP relations, and thus, for the next half year, Ch’en was an eyewitness to some of the most dramatic and disastrous events in CCP history. He went to Wuhan, then the center of Communist activities, and there, in April-May, he served as interpreter for Mif at the CCP’s Fifth National Congress. Ch’en returned to Moscow in early August. He went back to Sun Yat-sen University, possibly still as a student or perhaps as an instructor.

At the CCP’s Sixth National Congress, held in Moscow in June-July 1928, Ch’en’s ability in Russian won for him the assignment as chief interpreter for the many observers who were there. Some reports maintain that Ch’en returned to Shanghai in 1929 to engage in Party and trade union work, but Chang Kuo-t’ao, who knew Ch’en and who was then himself in Moscow, claims that he remained in the Soviet capital until 1930. In any case, he was in the Soviet Union in the early part of 1930, and in the spring returned to China where, within the next year, he was to become a major actor in one of the most celebrated intra-Party struggles in CCP history. It is generally accepted that the returned student group was steadfastly loyal to Stalin and, more particularly, to Pavel Mif, who in 1930 became the Comintern’s representative in China. It is also usually accepted that Ch’en’s group had been sent to China to take control of the CCP from Li Li-san, or, at a minimum, to rein in the headstrong Li. In the period after the Sixth Congress in Moscow, Li had emerged as the most powerful CCP figure in China, and in the early part of 1930 he had set in motion a train of events which were to climax during the summer in abortive attempts to capture the key cities in the Yangtze Valley.

The reason for Ch’en’s departure from China has never been adequately explained. Whatever the reason, his new assignment with the Comintern represented a major turning point in his checkered career. In the words of Benjamin Schwartz, “His return to Moscow was more in the nature of an exile from the sources of power in the Chinese Communist movement than a climb to new heights of power. It must ... be emphasized that the power of the Chinese Communist leaders after 1931 did not derive solely from the mandate of Moscow, but was solidly based on the control of a military force, a territorial base, and a government,apparatus. Ch’en had no access to this ‘real power’ ... in Moscow.” The next few years of Ch’en’s career were characterized by an endless stream of articles by him, principally on Comintern policies in colonial areas and on events in the Chinese Soviet Republic.

After some six years in Moscow, Ch’en left for home in the fall of 1937. En route he and K’ang Sheng held discussions in Sinkiang with Sheng Shih-ts’ai concerning his cooperation with the CCP (see under Teng Fa and Ch’en T’an-ch’iu).13 Ch’en was in Yenan in time to attend a Politburo meeting in December, when he reiterated the primacy of the united front policy. In the same month he told a Western correspondent that he had seen Stalin shortly before his departure from Moscow and had returned specifically to confer with Chiang Kai-shek about the possibility of closer KMT-CCP cooperation, especially the question of Communist representation in the national government. Because the degree of cooperation with the KMT was then a vital matter to the CCP, such statements were of course not unnoticed by Mao. In later years CCP historians have deemphasized Mao’s willingness to cooperate with the Nationalists, so perhaps Mao did not then take exception to Ch’en’s comments to an outsider. However, a case can be made that Ch’en’s return to China was not a matter for rejoicing by Mao and some of his colleagues. The authority of the Comintern had been considerably diluted in contrast to earlier CCP history, but Ch’en evidently arrived on the scene with considerable prestige because of his close ties to Moscow. In organizational terms, he was apparently still a member of the CCP Politburo.15 Whatever Ch’en’s power within the CCP, it was not sufficient to unseat the Maoist leadership, if, in fact, he ever attempted to do so.

Ch’en was an obvious candidate to head the Party’s United Front Work Department, and it was equally obvious that much of the united front work had to be carried out at the Nationalist capital. Thus, in the early days of 1938 Ch’en went to Hankow, which had become the temporary national capital after the fall of Nanking shortly before. Concurrently with his United Front Department post, Ch’en now took charge of the Party’s Yangtze Bureau. The CCP apparatus in the Yangtze Valley had been dormant for several years, but it was rapidly re-activated in the early months of the war. Apart from Ch’en’s presence there, a number of top Communists (for example, Chou En-lai and P’eng Te-huai) regularly visited Hankow and other Yangtze cities for conferences with the Nationalists on measures to stop the onrushing Japanese armies. During the spring, in a conciliatory gesture, the Nationalists announced that a consultative body known as the People’s Political Council would be established. The seven-member CCP delegation consisted of Mao (never more than a nominal member), Ch’en Shao-yii, Lin Po-ch’ii, Tung Pi-wu, Wu Yii-chang, Ch’in Pang-hsien, and Chou En-lai’s wife, Teng Ying-ch’ao.

Politics

In 1930 a complex set of factors surrounded Li Li-san’s control of the CCP and affected his policies. On the positive side, from Li’s point of view, a short-term and divisive war had broken out between Chiang Kai-shek on the one hand and north China warlords Yen Hsi-shan and Feng Yii-hsiang on the other. On the negative side, Li was faced with serious policy disagreements from a faction in the CCP headed by labor leaders Ho Meng-hsiung and Lo Changing in Shanghai. Ho and his colleagues felt that Li’s impetuous policies would ruin the slim chance the Party had to build up a Communist-dominated labor movement. Perhaps more seriously, Li was frustrated in his efforts to win the forthright allegiance of the hinterland guerrilla armies, which was vitally important if these forces were to carry out the assaults on the key cities in central China. In particular, he was unable to get firm commitments from the most important guerrilla force the one led by Mao Tse-tung and Chu Te in southeast Kiangsi. Thus, the arrival of Ch’en Shao-yü and his group presented Li with one more contending faction and one viewed by many Party members as a group of untested youths who were unaware of the hard realities of being a revolutionary activist. It is indeed true that Ch’en and his colleagues were young. Most of them were only in their mid-twenties. And it is also true that few of them had first-hand experience in China during the years immediately prior to 1930 when so many of their Communist colleagues lost their lives.

The details of the struggle for power are contained in the biographies of Li Li-san, Ho Meng-hsiung, Lo Chang-lung, and Ch’in Pang-hsien (the last mentioned being Ch’en Shao-yü’s most important protégé within the returned student faction). In brief, Li was initially strong enough to fend off and even chastise his critics in the spring and summer of 1930. Ch’en, for example, was placed on probation as a Party member for half a year and relegated to a propaganda post in the Kiangsu Party apparatus.

There is doubtless a measure of truth in these charges, but the nature of Ch’en’s role in CCP policies after mid-1931 remains unclear. Sources differ on when Ch’en left for Moscow to become chief CCP representative to the Comintern (leaving the Party apparatus under the control of his returned students’ colleagues, especially Ch’in Pang-hsien and Chang Wen-t’ien). It would ap¬pear that he left about September 1931, but in any case it is clear that he was in Moscow by the late fall. This meant he was not present for the First All-China Congress of Soviets held in Juichin, Kiangsi, in November 1931. (At this congress Ch’en was elected in absentia to membership on the Central Executive Committee, which was established as the major political organ of the newly formed Chinese Soviet Republic, and he was re-elected to this position at the Second Congress in January-February 1934.)

Interests

• Two works written by Ch’en in 1933, Su-wei- ai Chung-kuo (Soviet China) and Chung-kuo Su-wei-ai cheng-ch’iian ti ching-chi cheng-ts’e (The economic policy of the Chinese Soviet Government), suggest that he was able to keep in relatively close touch with developments in the soviet areas in China. Earlier, in September 1932, he attended the 12th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI), and in December 1933 he spoke at the 13th Plenum. His 1933 speech, together with one delivered by K’ang Sheng, was published in New York in 1934 under the title Revolutionary China Today. Ch’en stressed the need for the continued struggle against imperialism (the main thrust of the Comintern line at that time) and against the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek in particular. However, somewhat in keeping with earlier calls by the Chinese Communists in the Kiangsi Soviet for cooperation with military forces willing to take up arms against Japan, Ch’en also mentioned the possibilities of “working among the armed forces of the enemy” (that is, KMT troops).
  
  Continuing in this vein, he called for work among the “soldier masses,” adding that “today we must also pay attention to work among the lower and even the middle commissioned and non-commissioned officers.” Taking cognizance of the rising wave of anti-Japanese sentiment in China (the “national sal-vation” movement; see under Sung Ch’ing-ling), he also spoke of the need to win over disaffected elements among the “petty bourgeois intellectuals.” Such language, although a subordinate part of Ch’en’s address, was soon to be a major theme in Comintern and Chinese Communist pronouncements. Moreover, despite the anti-imperialist tone of the 12th and 13th ECCI Plenums, it should be noted that the Kremlin was in the midst of diplomatic maneuvers to cope with the rising threat from Nazi Germany and Japan. Thus, between the two Comintern Plenums, Moscow established diplomatic relations with the Chiang Kai-shek government (December 1932) and received formal diplomatic recognition from the United States (November 1933), and in September 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations.