Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
He never had any formal schooling but apparently did a good deal of independent study. In the years before and after the May Fourth Incident (1919), Hsiao taught school in Wuhan, where he became involved in the “new culture” movement. In 1919 he edited the Ta Han pao (Great Han newspaper) there. Hsiao hoped to enroll at a Wuhan university but he was never able to accumulate enough money. Instead he audited classes at Chung-hua University in Wuchang. It was apparently at this time that he met Yun Tai-ying who attended the University from 1915 to 1919. Probably in association with Yun, Hsiao became very active in the Wuhan youth movement, and sometime between 1919 and 1921 his political activity cost him his job on the Ta Han pao. After being fired, he was invited to Hsiang-yang, a town about 150 miles northwest of Wuhan, to teach in the Hsiang- yang Provincial Normal School. However, he also lost this job for his continued political activities and a warrant for his arrest was issued. Returning to Wuhan, he lived as a fugitive in the Social Benefit Bookstore (see under Yun Tai-ying).
Hsiao contributed to Wu-han hsing-ch’i p’ing- lun (Wuhan weekly review), which was founded in Hankow in 1921 and which later became a Communist publication. In the late summer of that year he accompanied Yun and Li Ch’iu- shih to Lu-chou, Szechwan, where they taught at the Lu-chou Associated Normal School (see under Yun Tai-ying). Afterward, Hsiao left Yun to go to Chungking where he taught school and became editor of the Hsin-Shu jih-pao (New Szechwan daily). He also wrote articles for local newspapers, encouraging Szechwanese youths to adopt the “new thought” and propagandizing socialist theory. Hsiao was in Szechwan until the fall of 1923 when he was transferred to Shanghai to work on the Socialist Youth League Central Committee. At that time Yun Tai-ying was editing Chung-kuo ch’ing-nien (China youth), the League’s organ, and Hsiao became a co-editor and contributor. He also lectured at the radical Shanghai University as did his fellow Communists Yun, Teng Chung-hsia, Chang T’ai-lei, and Ts’ai Ho-sen. After the Whampoa Military Academy was founded in May 1924 in Canton, Hsiao was sent there as a political instructor. In the same year, with Tung Pi-wu and Ch’en T’an-ch’iu, he went to Chin-chai hsien, Anhwei, to lead the peasant movement and set up a CCP organization. After the May 30th incident in 1925 he went to Honan where he engaged in propaganda work for Feng Yu-hsiang’s KuominchUn. Because Feng was then beginning to cooperate with both the Soviet and the Chinese Communists, quite a few CCP members were operating in his area (see under Wang Jo-fei).
Hsiao’s career was cut short in early 1927 when he became ill and entered the Sun Yat-sen University Hospital in Canton. On April 12, the right-wing KMT launched its coup against the Communists. Hsiao, still hospitalized, was unable to escape and was killed there on April 18. He was only 33 at the time.
Returning to Canton, Hsiao attended the Second Congress of the KMT in January 1926, and afterward served in the KMT Central Committee’s Propaganda Department, headed by Mao Tse-tung. He also taught a course in the history of 19th-century social thought at the newly established Social Science Institute of Kwangtung University (later Sun Yat-sen University). In March, Hsiao and Mao Tse-tung were members of the Committee for Peasant Movements of the KMT Central Peasants’ Department. In that same month, Nung-min yun-tung chiang-hsi-so ts’ung-shu (Collected reprints of the Peasant Movement Training Institute) was compiled (although it was not published until 1927). The book included an article by Hsiao entitled “She-hui-chu-i chiao-shou ta-kang” (A teacher’s outline of socialism). Hsiao, Mao, Chang T’ai-lei, and Teng Chung-hsia then worked at the Peasant Movement Training Institute in Canton during its sixth term (May-October 1926). Mao was the Institute’s principal and the others were full-time teachers. Hsiao’s courses were entitled “Imperialism,” “The history of the Chinese people’s revolutionary movement,” and “Social problems and socialism.”0 During this period Hsiao was again a political instructor at Whampoa and in November 1926 the Academy’s Political Department published a book entitled She- hui k’o-hsueh kai-lun (A summary of social science) by Hsiao. In 1926 he was also co-editor with Li Ch’iu-shih of Shao-nien hsien-feng (Youth vanguard), published in Canton.