K’ai Feng

Background

K’ai was born in 1907 in Hunan, China.

Education

tudied in Moscow, probably in the late 1920’s. He attended the CCP’s Sixth Congress, which was held in Moscow in mid-1928, and because he was then only 21 it is likely that he attended while he was a student. He studied at the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and came to be associated with the group known as the “28 Bolsheviks” who were protégés of University Chancellor and Comintern representative Pavel Mif. The activities of this group upon their return to China are described in the biographies of Ch’en Shao-yii and Ch’in Pang-hsien. K’ai’s political fortunes in the ensuing years seem to have coincided with the rise and fall of the “28 Bolsheviks.”

Career

K’ai’s activities are unreported at the time the “28 Bolsheviks” returned to China in 1930 and took over the leadership of the CCP at the Fourth Plenum in January 1931. However, an article he wrote in 1932 suggests that he may already have been active in the student movement, written for the Party journal Hung-ch’i chou-pao (Red flag weekly) of January 15, 1932, it dealt with the current state of student activities. By 1933 the CCP had been forced to close its headquarters in Shanghai and move the seat of Party authority to Kiangsi where Mao Tse-tung, Chu Te, and others had established the Chinese Soviet Republic (November 1931) to administer the scattered rural Communist bases. K’ai was in Kiangsi in 1933, the year he became secretary of the Communist Youth League, a position he held for three years.

The principal leadership of the Party was congregated in Kiangsi in early 1934 for two important meetings, the Fifth Party Plenum, which was in session on January 18, and the Second All-China Congress of Soviets, which opened in Juichin, Kiangsi, in late January. Ch’in Pang-hsien, one of the most prominent of the “28 Bolsheviks,” presided over the Party meeting, and Mao chaired the Soviet Congress. At the close of the Congress K’ai was elected to membership on the Soviet Republic’s Second Central Executive Committee (CEC), the governing body for the soviet government. Thus by early 1934 he had become one of the leaders responsible for the affairs of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Other members of the “28 Bolshevik” group on the CEC with K'ai were Chang Wen-t’ien, Ch’in Pang-hsien, Ch’en Shao-yii, and Wang Chia-hsiang.

It is probable, though undocumented, that K’ai made the Long March (1934-35) as a member of the forces led by Chu Te and Mao. The peak of his career seems to have been during the years after the Communists reached north Shensi at the end of the March. He relinquished the secretaryship of the Youth League to Feng Wen-pin in 1936, although he continued to serve on the League’s Central Committee. According to a Japanese source, K’ai became a Politburo member in 1937 as well as director of the Party’s Propaganda Department. The latter position seems to follow logically from K’ai’s previous writings as a Party ideologue, but the report of his Politburo membership must be treated with caution in view of the number of unreliable reports in the mid-thirties about such membership. However, there are other indications that K’ai was at this time among the top CCP leaders. For example, although American author Edgar Snow has little to say about him, from the context of the brief comments he made about K’ai in 1936 it is evident that he associated closely with key Party leaders. Moreover, K’ai was a regular contributor to several leading CCP publications during the early years of the war. For Ch‘un-chung (The masses), Chieh-fang (Liberation), and other publications he wrote a number of articles on the war and the united front in the years between 1937 and 1941, a period when others of the “28 Bolshevik” group like Ch’en Shao-yii, Ch’in Pang-hsien, and Wang Chia- hsiang were similarly prolific.

K’ai re-emerged, but only inconspicuously, in February 1951 when he was appointed to membership in the Northeast People’s Government (NEPG), then headed by Kao Kang. He was identified then as a member of the Party’s Northeast Bureau, also headed by Kao. A year later (January 1952), K’ai was further identified as a deputy secretary of the Mukden CCP Committee, serving here under Huang Ou-tung. And later in 1952 the Communist press reported him among a number of Party officials in Manchuria who were participating in an intensive study of Mao Tse-tung's essay, “On Contradiction.” He then faded from the news again, and when the NEPG was roerganized into the Northeast Administrative Committee in January 1953, K’ai was among the few not reappointed to membership.

Nothing further was heard of K’ai Feng until his death in Peking on March 23, 1955, when he was identified as a deputy director of the Party’s Propaganda Department. The Chinese Communists have a highly formalistic style of announcing the deaths of their members the most senior leaders receiving page one coverage in the JMJP, with elaborate reportage in subsequent issues on funeral and memorial services. The death of somewhat lesser leaders is normally reported on page two, while all others are mentioned on the last page in small type and without Comment. The announcement of K’ai’s death fell into the last category, and thus the passing of one who had been an important Party leader in earlier years was presented to the Chinese public of the mid-fifties as a minor happening.

Politics

The Fifth Plenum and the Second Soviet Congress both dealt with the Communists’ relations with the revolt of dissident KMT leaders inFukien against Chiang Kai-shek’s government. The Fukien rebels, led by Ch’en Ming-shu and others and supported by Ts’ai T’ing-k’ai’s famous 19th Route Army, proclaimed a “people’s government” in November 1933. However, Chiang Kai-shek’s forces quelled the rebellion just as the Fifth Plenum was held. The Communists’ relations with the Fukien rebels have become obscured partially because of latter-day Maoist interpretations blaming the “28 Bolsheviks” for the fact that the Communists did not give sufficient help to the rebels. The writings of K’ai', published shortly after the rebellion was crushed, provide some insight into the situation and indicate that he was one of the Party polemicists entrusted with “re-examining the rebellion and reappraising Communist policy toward it.” Writing for Tou-cheng (Struggle), the Party’s official journal in Kiangsi, K’ai declared that a small group within the Party had opposed assistance to the rebels, even to the extent of mere encouragement. Prior to the rebellion, the Communists had signed a preliminary agreement with the rebels; it was apparently to justify this involvement that K’ai wrote his second long tract for Tou-cheng on February 23, 1934.

During the latter stages of the war he was clearly supplanted as a top propagandist and idealogue by such men as Lu Ting-i, Ch’en Po-ta, and Hu Ch’iao-mu. Any doubts about his political decline were dispelled when the Party held its Seventh National Congress from April to June 1945. K’ai apparently took no part in the meetings, nor was he elected to membership on the Central Committee.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• K’ai apparently played a key role in the Party’s cheng-feng (“rectification”) movement, which began in early 1942. Mao Tse-tung opened his famous speech on Party “formalism” (February 8) with the words: “Comrade K’ai Feng has just spoken on the purpose of today’s meeting.”10 One writer has commented that “propaganda chief K’ai Feng had elaborated on the evils of formalism in Party literature and propaganda to an audience of 800.” K’ai’s stature within the Party elite at this time is also illustrated in an article by novelist Chou Li-po on the 20th anniversary of Mao’s May 1942 talks on literature at Yenan. Describing the meeting, Chou wrote: “Leading comrades from the Party center, including Liu Shao-ch’i, Chu Te, Jen Pi-shih, Ch’en Yun, Ch’en Po-ta, Hu Ch’iao-mu, K’ang Sheng, Po Ku and K’ai Feng had all taken their seats.” However, after the early stages of the cheng-feng movement K’ai faded from the scene and nearly a decade passed before he appeared again.