Background
He was bom about 1911 in Chu-chi, about 30 miles southwest of Shao-hsing, Chekiang, a rail center not far from the provincial capital.
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Feng Wen-pin
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In 1919 he was taken by his family to Shanghai where he received one or two years of primary school training and also studied in a night school.
Career
Afterward, he worked in a match factory and, together with his father and sister, joined the Communist Youth Corps (or League) in 1927; subsequently, he became an apprentice in a coal company and participated in trade union activities. Japanese sources claim that in 1926 Feng had joined the KMT—at a time when a number of Communists belonged to both the CCP and the KMT, a situation abruptly changed following the CCP-KMT split of 1927. In 1927 Feng went to Wuhan where he enrolled in the Peasant Movement Training Institute (headed there for a brief period in 1927 by Mao Tse-tung). In the following year Feng joined the CCP, and in July of that year he was in Hunan where he participated in the P’ing-chiang Uprising led by P’eng Te-huai and T’eng Tai-yuan (see under T’eng Tai-yuan) as a member of the “Red Guards.”
Sources are conflicting on the whereabouts of Feng in the two-year period following the failure of the P’ing-chiang Uprising. He apparently went to Kwangtung in 1929 where he joined Communist guerrillas fighting in the East River (Tung- chiang) area (see under Ku Ta-ts’un) and then made his way to western Fukien where the Communists were gradually establishing base areas. There Feng belonged to the Red Fourth Army, the military force commanded by Chu Te. He is next reported to have been involved in Communist underground work in Shanghai in 1930. Because Feng was later a member of a telecommunications unit in the Red Army (see below), it is possible that during this period in Shanghai he was among CCP members who received training in a secret telecommunications school set up by the Communists (see under Li Ch’iang). In American authoress Nym Wales’ brief biography of Feng, she claims that he went to the soviet areas in 1930. He apparently returned to the Fourth Army (subordinate to the First Army Corps), the Fourth Army was then led by Lin Piao and the Corps by Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung. In early 1931 he was instrumental in the establishment of a small unit to train radio and telecommunications personnel in Kiangsi; the unit was commanded by Wang Cheng and Feng was the political commissar (see under Wang Cheng). Also, according to a Com-munist-published biography of Feng, it is claimed that he worked in the Communist Youth League during the Kiangsi Soviet period prior to the Long March. The League was then headed by Kuan Hsiang-ying. Feng’s work with the Youth League at this time was indicative of his major activity in the years ahead. However, during the Kiangsi days Feng’s chief responsibilities apparently continued to center on military and political duties. By 1932 he was head of a “political guards’’ unit in the Third Army Corps (commanded by P’eng Te-huai and T’eng Tai-yuan), and in the following year he was secretary of the CCP Committee in Fukien.
In the meantime, Feng had accompanied Chou En-lai to Sian in December 1936 immediately after Chiang Kai-shek had been arrested by dissident generals under his nominal command (the Sian Incident: see under Chou En-lai). After the war broke out in mid-1937, Feng was associated with Hu Ch’iao-mu in directing a youth training class in north Shensi, and by 1938 he was also a senior official at the important Anti-Japanese Academy (K’ang-ta) in Yenan.
Feng's wartime and postwar activities are not well documented, but it is evident that he continued to be the top youth leader. According to Japanese sources he was head of the Party Central Committee’s Youth Work Committee by about 1944, but it is more likely that he held this post from the mid-thirties. In August 1948, the Communists held their Sixth National Labor Congress in the Manchurian city of Harbin. Although it is not certain that Feng attended the meetings, he was elected to the Executive Committee of the All-China Federation of Labor (ACFL), retaining this position until the next congress in 1953. (From May 1949 to about 1951, he was also head of the ACFL’s Youth Workers’ Department.) At the time of his election to the ACFL, he was identified as the chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the Alliance of Democratic Youth in Liberated Areas, an organization that apparently grew out of a youth work conference held in mid-1947, which was convened to prepare for the re-establishment of the Youth League. Further steps leading to the formation of the League were taken in the fall of 1948 (presumably with Feng’s participa-tion) , when the Central League School was established as well as the semi-monthly Chung-kuo ch’ing-nien (China youth). Finally, at a major congress held in Peking in April 1949, the League was re-established under the name New Democratic Youth League (NDYL), retaining this title until the traditional name Communist Youth League was adopted in 1957. At the 1949 congress, Party leader Jen Pi-shi, who could be considered the spiritual father of the NDYL, delivered the keynote political speech. But aside from Jen’s speech, Feng’s addresses before the meetings were the most important; one talk concerned the responsibilities and work of the League and another summarized the work carried out at the congress. At the close of the meetings he was elected to the League’s Central Committee as well as the League secretary. Feng’s two immediate subordinates were Deputy Secretaries Liao Ch’eng-chih and Chiang Nan-hsiang.
Politics
In July 1936, Feng succeeded K’ai Feng as secretary of the Youth League.4 By this time, however, the CCP Central Committee had already decided (in November 1935) to divide “the Youth League into several broadly representative and mass anti-Japan and national salvation youth bodies,” a shift in strategy in accord with the Comintern’s united front policy decided upon at the Seventh Comintern Congress in mid-1935.5 Thus, in the spring of 1937 the Communists began a series of moves that had the nominal effect of dissolving the Youth League (although youth activities undoubtedly continued to come under the direction of the Party Central Committee). The first of these steps was taken in April 1937 when the Communists convened the “First Conference of Representatives of Youths in the Northwest,” a meeting attended by some 300 delegates and described as the first large meeting held by the Youth League since its Fifth Congress held in Moscow in 1928.“ At the 1937 conference the Northwest National Salvation Association of Youth was created. Feng assumed the chairmanship of the Association and retained it throughout the Sino-Japanese War. In the fall of 1937 another youth congress was held at which time the “Joint Office of China Youth Organizations for National Salvation” was formed to coordinate the activities of all youth organizations under Communist control (such as the National Liberation Vanguards of China - see under Li Ch’ang). It is probable that Feng was the major figure involved in the wartime activities of the Joint Office. The Communists have claimed that the various youth organizations in the Communist-held areas had a membership of one million by 1940.
Membership
Although Feng was not a member of the Cen¬tral Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic, he did attend the Second All-China Congress of Soviets held in Jui-chin, Kiangsi, in January-February 1934. Deputies (e.g., Mao Tse-tung from Kiangsi) attended this congress as representatives of the different Communist-run Soviet bases, but there was a special category, Red Army representation, which included Feng, together with such important Communists as Chu Те and Chou FTi-lai.Prior to the beginning of the Long March in 1934, certain Youth League members were organized into a special division, with Feng as its political commissar; he remained in this post throughout the march.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1930
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1931
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1951