Background
Chou I-ch’iin was born in 1898, China.
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Chou I-ch’iin
Edit ProfileEducation
He graduated as a logistics officer from the second class of the Whampoa Military Academy in Canton in June 1925 when he was about 27. That same year the KMT sent him to western Hunan to convince Ho Lung, already noted for his military exploits, to join the Nationalists.
Career
In mid-1926, he became commander of an independent regiment in Chang Fa-k'uei’s Fourth Nationalist Army. Chou was made the regiment’s chief political officer. At that time Chou was a CCP member, but Ho was not. The two men worked together during the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927 (see under Yeh T’ing), when the final split occurred between the KMT and the CCP. Although he was not a Party member until after the Nanchang defeat, Ho had a major role in the uprising and Chou continued as one of his political officers. After the failure at Nanchang, Ho Lung’s 20th Red Army joined the southern march to Swatow along with Yeh T’ing’s 11th Army and Chu Te’s Nanchang garrison regiment. In addition to his political work Chou commanded the Third Division of the 20th Army on the march. He entered Swatow with the Red forces in late September 1927. The next month he wrote an article for a leading Party journal criticizing some of the campaign strategy and commenting: “In the 20th Army, party work was most advanced in 3rd Division.” During the Swatow campaign, he wrote, “Ho Lung and Kuo Mo-jo . . . found it best to join CPP because they had no other future.”
Chou commanded some of the operations to take and hold Swatow. When the campaign failed in the last days of September he led some of the surviving troops out of the city. It was not until he secretly returned to Swatow and boarded a steamer for Shanghai on October 5 that he learned that the Communist defeat had been complete, that the particularly strong 24th Division of Yeh T’ing’s 11th Army had suffered heavy losses, and that Yeh himself had been wounded.
Not long after these events he went to south-west Hupeh where, with a local partisan leader named Tuan Te-ch’ang, he organized the Sixth Red Army. Ho Lung was organizing the Second Army across the border in northwest Hunan at about the same time. The two armies fought together under Ho Lung’s command in mid- 1930 when Li Li-san, then the most influential leader of the Party headquarters in Shanghai, ordered the Red forces in central China to move from their rural bases into the Wuhan area for an attack on the major cities of China’s industrial heartland. Ho’s joint force attacked Wuhan and suffered heavily (see under Ho Lung). When the campaign ended, the Sixth Army withdrew to the south. Chou I-ch’iin, however, remained in west Hupeh where he directed political work in the West Hunan-Hupeh Soviet, which Ho Lung headed. In the spring of 1931 Chou was the acting Party secretary of the West Hupeh District.
Politics
At this time Party work in the rural base areas was often disastrously affected by the confusion and political tensions which existed among the highest CCP leaders, especially those at the Party headquarters in Shanghai. There a number of personnel changes had resulted in the ouster of Li Li-san in the fall of 1930. By January 1931 the Party hierarchy had been taken over by the “Russian-returned students” (see under Ch’en Shao-yii), sometimes known as the “28 Bolsheviks.” Ho’s West Hunan-Hupeh area did not escape the effects of these power struggles. In March 1931 Hsia Hsi, an emissary of the Russian-returned student group, arrived there to succeed Teng Chung-hsia as the key political leader. Hsia and his supporters are said to have expelled Chou I-ch’iin from the leading Party organs in the West Hunan-Hupeh Soviet. Shortly afterward, in May 1931, Chou lost his life while on an inspection trip in the area.
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Born
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Died
1931 (aged 33) -
Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Education
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1925
Career
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1926