Background
Lu was born in Wu-hsi (Wusih), Kiangsu, where his father was a small landowner and the operator of a textile factory.
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Lu Ting-i
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Lu Ting-i, a Youth League leader in the twenties, has devoted most of his career to propaganda work for the Red Army and later the CCP. For the better part of two decades after 1945 he headed the Party's Propaganda Department and wrote a large number of authoritative articles delineating Party policies in cultural and educational fields.
Education
He graduated from Nan-yang (South Seas) University in Shanghai (later known as Chiao-t’ung or “Communications” University) and while there participated in the May Fourth Movement (1919). He joined the Socialist (later Communist) Youth League in the early twenties and was also said to have been employed by the Canton-Kowloon Railway. Various Japanese sources claim that he studied in the United States, but other details known about his career suggest that these reports are erroneous. In 1924 Lu joined the CCP and the editorial board of Nan-yang (published at the Nan-yang school in Shanghai), a journal that promoted patriotism and social reform. During these years of the mid-twenties, he apparently worked closely with Party leader Jen Pi-shih, whom, after the latter's death, Lu described as his “leader, comrade, and teacher.’’ In 1927 Lu became head of the Propaganda Department of the Youth League, then led by Jen. In the same year he also became editor of Chung-kuo ch'in-nien (China youth), the organ of the Youth League, but within a year or so he had been replaced by Li Ch’iu-shih.
Career
Partly because of the dangers of holding Party meetings in China, the CCP convened its Sixth National Congress in Moscow in mid-1928. Lu attended and was also the chief Communist Youth League (CYL) delegate to an international Communist youth conference in Moscow. He remained there as a student; according to some sources he studied at the Sun Yat-sen University. Returning home in 1929 he worked in the Propaganda Department of the CCP headquarters in Shanghai. Like many prominent CCP and CYL leaders, Lu left Shanghai for the Kiangsi Soviet by 1931, and from that year to 1934 he headed the CYL Propaganda Department, then headquartered in Juichin. During a part of this period he was concurrently editor of Hung-se Chung-hua (Red China), then one of the most important Party newspapers. In addition, he was identified in 1933 as a member of the Propaganda Department of the Red Army5s General Political Department, continuing in this capacity during the Long March (1934-35).
When Edgar Snow was in north Shensi in 1936 he identified Lu as a member of the CYL Central Committee, then headed by Feng Wen-pin. Snow saw a good deal of Lu during his visit, and records that Lu requested (presumably in jest) that the American writer “buy, equip and man an air fleet” on the proceeds of his sales of photographs of the Communists. Authoress Nym Wales also saw Lu during her visit to Yenan in 1937 noting that he spoke “excellent English.” During the period from 1936 to 1937, Lu headed the Propaganda Department of the Red Army's General Political Department and in 1937 was also identified as director of the Propaganda Department of the First Front Army, the force that Mao had led from Kiangsi on the Long March. When the Eighth Route Army was activated immediately after the outbreak of war in mid-1937, Lu became deputy director of its Propaganda Department, a post he presumably held throughout the war against Japan.
The period in the “wilderness” ended in early 1949 when Mao, Lu, and the others went to Peking, which had been surrendered to the Communists in January 1949. Like most of the leading Communists, Lu spent the remainder of the year engaged in preparations for the inauguration of the new central government and many of the “mass” organizations. For example, he spoke at two major conferences in July 1949, one of literary and artistic workers and another of social science workers, and in September he was named as a vice-chairman of the China New Political Science Research Association Preparatory Committee. In the last part of September, as a representative of the CCP, Lu attended the First CPPCC, the organization that brought the new government into existence (October 1). When assignments were made in the central government in October, Lu was appointed as a vice-chairman of the Culture and Education Committee (CEC) under Chou En-lai's Government Administration Council (the cabinet). Kuo Mo-jo was the chairman of the CEC, but the real political authority was obviously held by Vice-Chairmen Lu and Ch'en Po-ta, Lu's deputy in the Propaganda Department. The CEC, in fact, could be regarded as the government counterpart of the Propaganda Department and under its authority. In addition to his government assignment, Lu received three others during October 1949 in mass or professional organizations: member, Executive Board, Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (to date), member, National Committee, China Peace Committee (to 1958) and Council member, Association for Reforming the Chinese Written Language (to 1954).
From the earliest days of the PRC Lu made some of the most authoritative statements pertaining to the field of propaganda, journalism, arts and letters, and education. In fact, the basic CCP policies in these fields during the first 15 years of the Communist government can be traced by an examination of Lu’s numerous speeches and articles, as is readily revealed in the writings of scholars who have dealt with Chinese Communist cultural and educational programs. One of his earliest essays, which echoed Mao's theories about art and literature, was published in the Cominform journal For a Lasting Peace, For a Peoples Democracy! (Bucharest, March 31, 1950) and reprinted in authoritative CCP publications. Lu summarized the new government's educational philosophy and stressed that art and literature must be regarded as “major weapons” in “ideological education.” In a section dealing with the “reformation of intellectuals” he noted that the Communists had already given more than 200,000 intellectuals short courses to “build up a revolutionary outlook on life and an ideology of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.”
In 1954 Lu was elected to represent his native Kiangsu in the First NPC, the organization that inaugurated the constitutional government at its initial session in September 1954. At this time Lu was made a member of the NPC Standing Committee, retaining the post until the Second NPC opened in April 1956 In 1956 he received the following related posts: vice-chairman, Committee for the Popularization of the Common Spoken Language (p'u-t'ung-hua), member, National Association for the Elimination of Illiteracy and member, Committee for the Examination and Formulation of the Plan for the Phoneticization of the Han Language. (The language reform programs are described in the biography of Wu Yii-chang.) But these assignments were far overshadowed by Lu's speech of May 25, 1956 one of the most famous and important speeches in the history of the PRC. Entitled “Let Flowers of Many Kinds Bloom, Let Diverse Schools of Thought Contend, it was delivered before a meeting of Party members, scientists, and men of letters. This was an elaboration of an unpublished speech earlier in the month by Mao, as well as of a talk given earlier in the year by Chou En-lai. Collectively, these speeches were an attempt by the Party to encourage the intellectuals to have greater independence of thought and creativity. In particular, encouragement was given for work in scholarship and the arts, although it was made clear that the advocacy of “counterrevolutionary” political ideas would be crushed. In the words of one writer, the campaign it seemed designed to encourage the intelligentsia to believe that the regime should be viewed as authoritarian but not totalitarian.’’ In fact, however, the movement was slow in gathering force probably because the intellectuals had learned to be cautious in light of previous campaigns directed against them. Although the Hundred Flowers or “blooming and contending” period is often dated from Lu's May 1956 speech, it was not until a year later that, under further encouragement, the intellectuals expressed themselves with extraordinary candor. The CCP, suddenly finding itself under a sweeping attack, moved swiftly to end the movement, launching a counterattack known as the anti-rightist campaign. It was under these circumstances that Lu, a major initiator of the “liberal” program, was now cast in the opposite role, that of articulating the Party’s demand to silence the critics of the CCP. This new “rectification” campaign directed against “rightists” was a major theme of the third session of the First NPC in June-July 1957.
Serving again as a deputy from Kiangsu, Lu attended (he first session of the Second NPC in April 1959. Although not re-elected to the NPC Standing Committee, he was named one of four new vice-premiers in Chou En-lai's State Council. In February 1960 Lu was chairman of the preparatory committee for a national conference of “advanced workers” in cultural and educational fields. The conference was held in June, and with over 6,000 persons in attendance it was one of the largest meetings in the history of the PRC. Lu gave a brief inaugural address, but the keynote speech was delivered by Lin Feng.
In 1960 Lu returned to the forefront as a spokesman for the Chinese viewpoint in the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute, which was becoming increasingly public. The Chinese used the month of April (the 90th anniversary of Lenin’s birth) as the occasion for major articles in Hung-ch'i (Red flag) and the JMJP, as well as a major speech by Lu, to attack and reject the Soviet position on crucial issues “peaceful co-existence, the non-inevitability of war, and the possibility of peaceful roads to power in non-Communist countries.’’13 The issues were the subject of further discussions in November-December 1960 when Liu Shao-che led a top-level delegation (including Lu) to Moscow. The ostensible purpose was to attend the 43rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution, but far more important was the Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers' Parties. In later years Communist media revealed that this landmark “summit” meeting of world Communist leaders was the scene of bitter Sino- Soviet disputes.
Politics
By the time of the Party's Seventh Party Congress, held in Yenan from April to June 1945, Lu could be regarded as one of the CCP's top propagandists. He addressed the meetings and at the close of the Congress was one of only 44 full members elected to the Central Committee. That same year he succeeded Ch'in Pang-hsien as director of the Party's Propaganda Department, a post he was to hold for most of the next two decades (see below). In 1946, when the Communists last participated in the national governments Political Consultative Conference in Chungking, Lu attended as one of the CCP representatives. He was also among the chief Party negotiators in the discussions held between the CCP, the KMT, and the Americans following the cease-fire agreement (January 1946) worked out by U.S. Special Envoy George C. Marshall (see under Chou En-lai, the top CCP negotiator).
In the early days of January 1947, when all hopes for any reconciliation between the KMT and the CCP were collapsing, Lu delivered a strong statement denouncing the KMT and the United States. In this “memorandum” dealing with the postwar international situation, Lu called for a uworld-wide united front against. . . American imperialism” and support for the Soviet Union. His statement was the logical extension of Mao's international policies, outlined in the latter’s famous “On New Democracy” of 1940, and a precursor of Mao's 1949 statement that China was “leaning to one side”（i.e. the Soviet Union). Lu closed his January 1947 statement with the prophecy: It may be forecast categorically that the face of China and the world will be vastly different after three to five more years.” Within a few weeks after this statement, KMT forces captured Yenan. The top command of the CCP broke up into two sections (see under Hsu Kuang-ta), Lu joined Mao, Chou En-lai, and his old colleague Jen Pi-shih in a circuitous march through the barren hills of north Shensi in an effort to avoid pursuing Nationalist forces. To lead this small band of key Communists, a special unit known as the Third Detachment was formed, with Jen as the commander and Lu as political commissar.
Although Lu has written most frequently about domestic questions, he authored an important article on the 30th anniversary of the CCP (July 1, 1951) entitled “The World Significance of the Chinese Revolution.” This was published in Hsueh-hsi (Study), then the Party's leading journal, and also in For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy. During 1952, in view of this Soviet attitude, the need for Soviet support because of the growing tension in Korea, and the failure of the Communist insurrections in Southeast Asia except in Vietnam, the CCP dropped its calls to "armed struggle" against ‘imperialism’ in Asia and moderated its claims for its own revolutionary model.’’ In many respects Lu’s article followed the call issued less than two years earlier by Liu Shao-ch’i for “Chinese style” revolutions (see under Liu). The fact that little was heard of Lu for the next two years, suggests that he may have been offered as the scapegoat for having made a policy statement opposed by the Soviets. If true, it is ironic that his ure-emer- gence” in 1953 was marked by a eulogistic article on Stalin's writings, published in the JMJP (November 23, 1953). Lu also ran afoul of domestic Party policies in 1952, and in April of that year made a “self-confession,” apparently in connection with the “correct” manner of dealing with China’s bourgeois capitalists. A more substantive sign of his temporary decline in power is the fact that by mid-1953 Hsi Chung- hsun replaced Lu as director of the Propaganda Department, holding the post for about a year and a half. Hsi was a veteran associate of Politburo member Kao Kang, often regarded as a pro-Soviet element within the CCP. During the 1953-54 period Lu served as a deputy to Hsi. However, by October 1954 Lu was back as the director, retaining the post for more than a decade, during which he once again made some of the regime's most important pronouncements.
Membership
In the meantime, at the Party's Eighth Congress in September 1956, Lu was re-elected a member of the Central Committee. A day later, at the First Plenum of the new Central Committee, Lu made a significant advance in the Party hierarchy when he was elected for the first time as an alternate Politburo member. Fourteen months later, in November 1957, he was among the large group of key Party leaders who accompanied Mao Tse-tung to Moscow for the celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Connections
Lu’s first wife, by whom he had two children, was executed by the Nationalists in 1928. He remarried in 1941 and by 1947 he and his second wife had three children.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Education
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1919
Career
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1928
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1934
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1937
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February, 1960