Background
Teng Fa was born on March 7, 1906 in Yunfu, Guangdong, China. He was born into a poor family, but nothing is known about his upbringing.
邓发
Teng Fa was born on March 7, 1906 in Yunfu, Guangdong, China. He was born into a poor family, but nothing is known about his upbringing.
Apparently he had no formal education, because at an early age he went to work as a cabin boy on ships owned by the Butterfield and Swire Company of Britain.
When the Northern Expedition opened in mid- 1926 Teng Fa was put in charge of Youth Corps activities at the Kwangtung KMT Headquarters. Thus he remained in south China while most of his fellow cadets from Whampoa went to Wuhan or Kiangsi with the military forces.
By the end of 1927 Teng Fa was secretary of the CCP branch in the Kwangtung labor union for workers in the vegetable oil industry. In a minor role he participated in the Communists coup at Canton (December 11-14, 1927), commanding a force of Red guards and assisting one of the Soviet- trained military experts who had been his political instructor at Whampoa. Teng Fa was sufficiently low in rank to be able to remain in the area after the Communists had failed at Canton and many of their better-known agitators were forced to flee. During the year 1928 he held several lesser posts in the Party apparatus in the Canton-Hong Kong organization. Within a brief period he rose to more important positions, becoming secretary of both the Hong Kong and Canton CCP Committees, and head of the Kwangtung Party Committee's Organization Department. At this time also his name began to appear as a contributor to the CCP organ Hung-Ki (Red flag).
By mid-1931 Teng Fa was transferred to the Central Soviet area in Kiangsi where Mao Tse-tung and Chu Te had their headquarters. There he became director of the security apparatus. At the First All-China Congress of Soviets, held in Juichin in November 1931 the Chinese Soviet Republic was established. Teng Fa was elected to the Republic’s Central Executive Committee (CEC), and his role as security chief was formalized when he was named chief of the CECs National Political Security Bureau (Kuo-chia cheng-chih pao-wei chii). He was re-elected to the CEC at the Second Congress, held in January-Fehruary 1934, and at that time he was also named to the newly created CEC Presidium. This 17-member organization, in charge of the day-to-day operations for the larger CEC, was under the chairmanship of Mao Tse-tung, as was the CEC itself. Teng made the Long March with Mao’s armies and continued to direct security operations during the march. He was still holding this post when he met American journalist Edgar Snow in the summer of 1936.
Teng Fa had returned to Yenan by 1939, and in the latter part of the following year he received three positions of considerable importance, he became president of the Central Party School and secretary of the Industrial Workers Committee (Chih-kung wei-yuan-hui) and the Mass Movement Committee (Min-lien wei-yuan-hui), all three of which were directly subordinate to the Party Central Committee. In the same year he also took part with Lin Yii-ying in publishing Chung-kuo kung-jen (Chinese workers). At the end of 1941 Teng began a reorganization of the Party School, and in the following year, when Mao opened the famous political "rectification" movement, Teng participated in the program within the school. Teng Fa left this important institution in 1943, by which time he had already become active again in the labor movement and in the development of local industry that was so vital for the self-sufficiency of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region.
In the summer of 1945 Teng Fa became chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the newly established Liberated Areas Trade Union Federation. In September he left Yenan for Chungking, and from there he went to Paris with Chu Hsueh-fan, the veteran non-Communist labor leader who was then head of the China Association of Labor. In Paris Chu and Teng attended the inaugural congress in Septcmbcr-October of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), which in a brief time was to become an almost completely Communist-dominated organization. At the meeting Teng was elected to alternate membership on both the General Council and the Executive Committee of the WFTU. A month later Chu and Teng attended the non-Communist 27th International Labor Congress, also held in Paris. Afterwards, over the next few weeks, Teng Fa traveled widely in Western Europe, speaking before overseas Chinese communities and making useful contacts there. He is known to have visited England, Switzerland, and Italy during this period. Teng Fa returned to Chungking in January 1946, having traveled home by way of the Philippines according to Epstein.
Teng Fa married Ch’en Hui-ch’ing in Hong Kong in 1929 while both were working there in the labor movement. Nym Wales (Mrs. Edgar Snow) met Ch’en on her visit to north China in 1937 and described her as a “short, healthy, plain-looking woman, who was very friendly. Then 27 years old, she was one of the small group of women who made the Long March with Mao’s army.