Background
Born in Pingxiang County, Jiangxi, Zhang was involved in revolutionary activities during his youth.
Born in Pingxiang County, Jiangxi, Zhang was involved in revolutionary activities during his youth.
Zhang Guotao received classical training in his hometown and Western education in Nanchang. In 1916 he entered Peking University and was exposed to the New Culture Movement led by Chen Duxiu, who became his teacher and lifetime friend. Another mentor who influenced Zhang at the university was Li Dazhao, the head librarian.
During the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Zhang served as the director of the speech department of the Beijing Student Association and directed student agitators. Like his teachers, Chen and Li, Zhang in 1920 was impressed with the Bolshevik Revolution and Communism. In that autumn he joined Li’s Communist nucleus in Beijing.
Zhang was present at the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai in 1921, and was elected a Central Committee (CC) member and director of organization. Afterward, he served as director of the China Trade Union Secretariat in charge of the labor movement. In late 1921 and early 1922, he represented the CCP at Comintern meetings in the Soviet Union where he interviewed Lenin. Elected again as a CC member at the Second CCP Congress in 1922, Zhang continued to direct trade union work. Having opposed the Comintern's policy of creating a Communist bloc within the Guomindang (GMD),however Zhang’s status declined and he was excluded from the reorganized Central Executive Committee at the Third CCP Congress in 1923.
Despite his earlier objections to the United Front, Zhang in January 1924 was elected an alternate member of the First GMD Congres Central Executive Committee. At the Fourth CCP Congress in 1925, he became a member of the Central Bureau and director of the worker and peasant department. During the Northern Expedition in 1926, Zhang directed the Shanghai trade unions and later moved to Wuhan, the center of the Left-wing GMD government. In May 1927, he was elected a standing member of the new Politburo at the Fifth CCP Congress.
In the wake of the Nationalist purge of the CCP in the spring of 1927, Zhang was ordered by the Communist leaders at Wuhan and their Comintern superiors to halt the uprising at Nanchang. But he discovered that it could not be halted, and reluctantly directed the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927, since then known as the founding day of the Red Army.
At the Sixth CCP Congress held in Moscow in 1928, Zhang was elected a Politburo member, and served as the CCP representative to the Comintern until he returned to China in early 1931. Zhang was assigned to direct the Hebei-Henan-Anhui Soviet and serve as political commissar of the Fourth Front Army. In November 1932, under pressure from the GMD suppression campaigns, Zhang and his men retreated to northern Sichuan and Shaanxi. By April 1935, without permission from the CCP Center, Zhang's group abandoned their base and moved to the Sichuan-Xikang border because of attacks from provincial forces. In June, his forces met Mao Zedong's Long Marchers at Maogong, Sichuan.
By then Mao had captured the military leadership of the CCP when he became the head of a new three-person Central Military Council at the Zunyi Conference in January 1935. Zhang, however, remained a major leader because he controlled more troops than Mao at their reunion in mid- 1935. Refusing to follow Mao's proposal of moving north to Shaanxi, Zhang and his men retreated to Xikang. In October 1935, he established a new “Party Center.” In early 1936 however,the GMD troops dislodged these Communists from their base, and in June 1936 Zhang was forced to abolish his “Party Center.” In July, he was appointed as secretary of the
CCP Northwest Bureau. The remnants of his army reached northern Shaanxi in December 1936. At the Enlarged Meeting of the Politburo in Yan’an in March 1937, Zhang was denounced for “splittism”,“flightism” and “warlordism.” In September 1937, he served as the nominal vice-chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border government. Anticipating his purge by Mao, Zhang escaped to GMD-controlled areas in early April 1938. On April 18, the Party Center expelled him from the CCP. Soon Zhang was engaged in anti-CCP activities when he worked as director of a w research office on special political issues” in Dai Li’s Military Statistics. The agents and graduates from the office were ineffective in fighting the CCP, however.
During the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945), Zhang served on the Second, Third, and Fourth People’s Political Councils but took no active role in them. After the war, he served in 1946 as director of the Jiangxi regional office of the Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In November 1948 he escaped to Taiwan and in 1949 he moved to Hong Kong. In 1968 he migrated to Toronto, Canada, and passed away there in 1979.