Teng Chung-hsia

Background

Teng was born into an impoverished scholar-official family on September 9, 1897. His original name was Teng K'Tang and he adopted Chung-hsia (which he often used as a pen name) only after he began his revolutionary career.

Education

He was a graduate of the Higher Normal College in Hunan and went to Peking University to study Chinese literature until he abandoned it after the May Fourth Movement. A man of action and wide interests, he was involved in various kinds of extracurricular activities. Like many fellow students, such as Lo Chang-Iung, Chang Kuo-t'ao, and Ho Meng-hsiung, three of many who played substantial roles in the Communist Movement, he fell under the influence of Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Li Ta-chao, two Peking University professors who were among the outstanding leaders of the Westernized intelligentsia in China.

Career

In July 1921, while the founding congress of the CCP was being held in Shanghai, Teng was attending a conference of the Young China Association in Nanking. With the formation of the CCP, Communist organizational work among laborers began in earnest. Immediately after the inaugural CCP Congress, the Secretariat of the Chinese Labor Unions (Chung-kuo lao-tung chu- ho shu-chi-pu) was formed in Shanghai, with Chang Kuo-fao in charge, Teng Chung-hsia became the director of the North China branch, at Peking, where he was assisted by Lo Chang-lung. Teng was one of the editors of the Secretariat’s organ Lao-tung chou-k'an (Labor weekly). During the summer, with Li Ta-chao, Teng was in Szechwan on a lecture tour, on the invitation of Yun Tai-ying. When he returned in the winter, he became secretary of the Peking Municipal Committee of the CCP, of which Lo Chang-lung was also a member.

On May 1, 1922, the Secretariat of the Chinese Labor Unions sponsored the First National Congress of Labor in Canton. In the absence of a national federation of labor, the Congress resolved to make the Labor Secretariat the national coordinating office of Chinese labor organizations. Teng replaced Chang Kuo-fao as head of the Secretariat, which he moved from Shanghai to Peking in view of the fact that the center of labor unrest was then in the north China railroad network. Other members of the Secretariat were Chang Kuo-fao, Hsiang Ying, and Liu Shao-ch'i branches were set up in other provinces, with Yuan Ta-shih in charge in Shanghai, Lin Yii-nan in Wuhan, Mao Tse-tung in Changsha, Feng Ch'u-p'o in Canton, and Wang Chin-mei in Tsinan.

Also in May 1922, immediately after the labor conference, Teng attended the First Congress of the Socialist Youth League in Canton, and he was elected to both the Central Committee and Politburo. He was among the contributors to the League organ Hsien-ch'ii (The pioneer), which had been set up prior to the First Congress, and he was also the first editor of the more important journal Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien (Chinese youth),5 which was established in October 1923, but he soon relinquished this post to Yun Tai-ying. In July 1922 Teng was one of the few people who attended the Second Congress of the CCP in Shanghai, he was elected a member of the Central Committee, a position he retained until his death. The CCP was then in the midst of a debate on the wisdom of cooperating with the KMT. The issue was not settled at the Second Congress, but a few weeks later it was again raised at another Party conference. Several of the Peking group of Communists (notably Chang Kuo-fao, Ho Meng-hsiung, and Lo Chang-lung) reportedly formed a “radical” faction, which argued that the Party should concentrate its efforts on mobilizing the laboring classes. The opposing faction, the so-called “gradualists,” who were led by Teng held that the time was not ripe for a proletarian class struggle and therefore it was necessary to carry out the national revolution in cooperation with the KMT. With strong backing from the Comintern, those favoring cooperation with the KMT won the debate, and this was then formalized in 1923. Teng played a key role in the talks with the KMT, in early 1923 he was sent by Li Ta-chao to Shanghai to hold talks with Sun Yat-sen on the reorganization of the KMT and the admission of the Communists to Sun’s party.

In June 1923 Teng was in Canton to attend the Third CCP Congress, which endorsed the policy of CCP members joining the KMT as individuals. He then returned to Shanghai, but because the field of labor agitation was temporarily closed, many key Party and Youth League activists congregated at Shanghai University (see under Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai). This short-lived but important school, founded and jointly sponsored in the latter part of 1923 by the CCP and the KMT, trained a significant number of Communist cadres. By virtue of his leadership position in the Youth League, Teng became dean of studies.

While the labor movement was gathering momentum, Teng went to Canton in May 1925 to attend the Second National Congress of Labor at which the All-China Federation of Labor (Chung-hua ch'iian-kuo tsung-kung-hui) was established (and, in effect, replaced the Labor Secretariat). The new federation affiliated to the Red International of Trade Unions (Profintern). Teng was among the 25 members of the Federation’s Executive Committee, which included Su Chao- cheng, Li Li-san, Liu Shao-ch'i, and Hsiang Ying. Moreover, Teng was elected secretary-general of the federation, as well as director of its Propaganda Department.

In late 1927, just before the Canton Commune (December), Teng led a big strike of some 100,0 textile workers in a factory district in Shanghai. This was quickly suppressed, however, whereupon Teng was assigned to Canton where he replaced the deceased Chang T’ai-lei as secretary of the Kwangtung Provincial Party Committee, while his post in Kiangsu was taken over by Hsiang Ying. His relationship with P'eng P’ai, chief of the Party’s East River Special Committee and head of the Hai-lu-feng Soviet, appears to have been strained, and for a while Kwangtung had two centers of Communist authority. However, this situation did not last long, for by April 1928 Teng had gone to Moscow where he attended the Fourth Profintern Congress. He was elected to the Profintcm Executive Committee, and in the summer he attended both the Sixth CCP Congress and the Sixth Comintern Congress. For the next two years Teng remained in Moscow as CCP delegate to the Profintern, and with Ch'i Ch'iu-pai, Huang P'ing, Chang Kuo- fao, and Yu Fei, formed the five-man CCP delegation stationed in Moscow. The Chinese delegation led by Ch'i Ch'iu-pai was soon embroiled in a power struggle with Pavel Mif and his proteges at Sun Yat-sen University. Apart from their intense dislike of Mif, members of the delegation, with their seniority in the CCP and experience in the “Great Revolution,” held Mif's young proteges in contempt and worked to block Mifs attempt to foist them on the CCP as instruments of his own domination of the Chinese Communist movement. Teng's involvement in the struggle earned him the intense hatred of Mifs proteges, who soon found the opportunity to retaliate. By the spring of 1930 the delegation had been pushed aside by Mifs machinations, their functions collectively assumed by Chou En- lai, whom Mif sent for from China

Politics

Under them Teng developed an absorbing interest in Marxism as well as in working among laborers. Thus, in June 1918 he was a founding member (and later, in 1920, a vice-chairman) of the Shao-nien Chung-kuo hsueh-hui (Young China Association), whose leaders included Li Ta-chao. Later in the year Teng established the Chiu-kuo hui (Save the country society) another organization whose activities were promoted by Li Ta-chao. These organizations were used by Li to organize a group for the study of Marxism and socialism, to which Teng also belonged. In March 1919, with Chang Kuo-t’ao, Hsu Te-heng, Lo Chia-lun, K'ang Pai-chlng, and others, Teng founded the P'ing-min chiao-yii chiang-yen fuan (Mass education speech corps), which undertook educational activities among the laboring classes in and around Peking.

In the days immediately after the May Fourth Incident, the Peking group stepped up its activities. Li Ta-chao urged members of the Marxist Research society to travel to other cities to spread the movement, and in response to this Teng went to Shanghai where in June he took part in strikes in that city. Returning to Peking, he became one of the major initiators of Communist organizational activities, which began with the arrival of Comintern agent Gregory Voitinsky in the spring of 1920. Mao Tse-tung was in Peking at about this same time, and he and Teng, both Hunanese, renewed their friendship (which dated from at least 1918 during Mao’s first trip to Peking). Teng graduated from Peking University in 1920, and in September of that year, with Li Ta-chao, he helped found the Peking branch of the Socialist Youth League, and also with Li he began publishing the Lao-tung yin (The workers' voice) in November, a weekly which lasted only a brief time. In the meantime, in collaboration with Chang Kuo-fao, Teng organized a night school for the railroad workers and their children at Ch'ang-hsin-tien, a major terminal of the Peking-Hankow Railroad outside Peking. The real objective, however, was to begin a workers' union, which he succeeded in forming by early 1921. It took the name club (chii-lo-pu) in order not to be confused with the “labor union” (kung-hui)9 an organization of the hated labor contractors. All over China, except Canton, the name chii-lo-pu became a popular term for unions of workers, the model workers' club at Ch’ang-hsin-tien was soon imitated by workers at other terminals. With the experience gained here, Teng proceeded to Tientsin, TJang-shan, and elsewhere to initiate similar railroad workers' organizations.

Connections

Teng was married to Hsia Ming in the 1920's and by the late 1920's they had at least one child. She is the author of a brief essay on Teng's arrest and execution, which was published in 1958. She does not appear to have been politically active in the post-1949 period, but in 1963 the Communist press mentioned that Hsia, described as a “veteran revolutionary,” had been occupied in relating revolutionary stories to youngsters.

Spouse:

Hsia Ming