Ts’ai Ho-sen was one of the major figures in the early history of the CCP and a close friend of Mao Tse-tung. Ts’ai was never in strong health, nor particularly a man of action, but from his student days in Changsha he displayed a bent for leadership which made him stand out in the group of young Hunanese intellectuals to which Mao also belonged.
Background
Ts'ai, known in his school days as Ts’ai Lin-pin, was born in Hsiang-hsiang, a rural area not far southwest of Changsha, the Hunan capital. He was the eldest of six children. His father was a minor official in the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai which was established by Tseng Kuo-fan the famous Ch’ing statesman to whom Ts’ai’s mother was distantly related. One of Ts’ai’s grandfathers served in Tseng Kuo-fan’s Hunan Army. Ts'ai's modern-minded mother had a lively interest in her children’s careers and opened her home in Changsha to their radical student friends. After entering a primary school for her own education at the age of 50, she accompanied her son and daughter to France where they went as students in 1919 (see below).
Education
Ts'ai went to Changsha in 1913, and enrolled in the tuition-free Hunan First Normal School where he probably first became acquainted with Mao Tse-tung. In 1915 he transferred to the Hunan Higher Normal School. He and Mao became close friends, and Mao often attended the discussion groups of normal school students which were held at the TsJai home in Changsha. During one of their summer vacations the two students made a walking trip around the Tung-t'ing Lake region of northern Hunan. They were the leaders of the student society formally established in April 1918. Known as the Hsin-min hsuch-hui (New people’s study society), many of its 70-odd members became Communists, among them Hsiang Ching-yu, Ts’ai Ch’ang, Hsia Hsi, and Li Wei-han.
Mao and Ts'ai were instrumental in getting a number of Hunanese students, many of them from the Hsin-min hsueh-hui, to join the student groups then going to France for a program of work and study, while Hsiang Ching-yii and Ts'ai Ch'ang recruited women students in Hunan for the same program. Mao did not accompany them, but Ts’ai and his group left for France in November 1919. Most of the Hunan students went to the College de Montargis, south of Paris, where they formed a branch of the Hsin-min hsueh-hui. Remaining in close touch with developments at home, the French group led by Ts’ai was soon drawn to Marxism. Mao took over the leadership of those who remained in Hunan. In connection with this period, one writer has commented that there “is no doubt that Ts’ai’s influence on Mao was strong” and that his “passionate revolutionary temperament was very much in tune with Mao’s.’’
Career
Ts'ai and his colleagues established the Kung- hsueh hu-chu she (Work and study cooperative society). This was the nucleus for the establishment in 1921 of the Socialist Youth League in France which in turn led to the formation in mid-1922 of what amounted to a CCP branch in France. But by that time Ts'ai and Hsiang Ching-yii, whom he had married in 1921, had been deported from France (October 1921) for their political activities (see under Ch’en I).
They arrived in Shanghai in the winter of 1921-22 (only a few months after the founding of the CCP) and immediately became active in the Communist movement. During the following decade Ts'ai was frequently involved in the serious ideological and power struggles that were characteristic of the CCP*s early growth. There is not sufficient evidence to indicate all the positions which he took as the Party line shifted and turned, but the available evidence suggests a resilience and ability to move from one controlling group to the other.
In July 1922, at the Party's Second Congress, Ts’ai and his wife were both elected to the Central Committee. At the Congress and immediately afterwards, the Party leaders vigorously debated the question of cooperation with the KMT, as well as the issue of whether or not Communists should also join the KMT. In regard to the matter of dual membership, there are conflicting versions about who supported the idea and who opposed it, but it appears that Ts'ai (and, in particular, Party chief Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Chang Kuo-fao) opposed the scheme. A month later, a special conference was held at West Lake, Hangchow, to reconsider the question. Comintern representative Maring, who strongly urged acceptance of the proposal, was initially opposed by five delegates, including Ch’en, Chang, and Ts'ai. However, they subsequently changed their views and the conference decided that dual membership would be allowed. Despite his former attitude, Ts'ai was one of the first to join. He was among four men who had done so by 1922, the others being Ch’en Tu-hsiu, Li Ta-chao and Chang T’ai- lei.
Soon after the Second Party Congress, Hsiang- tao chou-pao (Guide weekly) was established under Ts’ai’s editorship. One of the Party’s most influential journals, it was first published in Shanghai in September 1922 (and later in Canton). Ts'ai continued as the editor until the magazine was disbanded in mid-1927, except for a period from late 1925 to early 1927 when he was abroad. Like so many of the Party leaders in Shanghai in the mid-twenties, Ts'ai was on the faculty at Shanghai University, a school that served as a training ground for Communist cadres until it was closed down by the authorities in June 1925 during the early stages of the May 30th Movement. Among his colleagues at the university were Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai, Teng Chung-hsia, and Chang T'ai-lei.
When the CCP held its Fourth Congress in Shanghai in January 1925, Ts’ai was once again elected to the Central Committee. During that winter and spring he was one of the chief organizers of trade union activities which culminated in demonstrations known as the May 30th Movement (see under Li Li-san). Ts'ai is said to have favored bold action by the Party to capitalize on the workers unrest,y and with Li Li-san and Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai he was a major figure in the establishment of the Shanghai General Labor Union. In late 1925 the Ts’ai’s left for Moscow to attend the Sixth Plenum of the Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI), held in Febru- ary-March 1926. They remained for a year, returning home in 1927 in time for the Fifth CCP Congress in Hankow (April-May). Ts’ai was elected for the first time to the Politburo and afterwards went to work for the Party’s Propaganda Department.
In the summer of 1928 Ts’ai was in Moscow again, this time to attend the Sixth CCP Congress. He was re-elected to the Politburo, but on this occasion he opposed Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai. According to Chang Kuo-fao, the Party was then divided into two approximately equal factions (see under Ch’li Ch’iu-pai). Chou En-lai, Li Li- san, and Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai headed the so-called “left” faction, while Ts’ai, Chang Kuo-t’ao, and Hsiang Ying led the “right-wing” group. Over the next few years some of these alignments shifted, but Ts'ai's allegiance seems to have remained unchanged. Following the Congress, Li Li-san took control of the Party, but his political actions were soon to be questioned by the Comintern. Chang Kuo-fao has asserted that Ts'i published an article in June 1929 which was critical of Li Li-san and which was endorsed by the Comintern, this in turn led the Li Li-san leadership to “banish” Ts’ai to Moscow. However, Li Li-san, in his short biography of Ts’ai,stated that Ts'ai had gone to Moscow in early 1929 to be a member of the Chinese delegation, then headed by Ch'ii ChJiu-pai, to the Comintern. In any event, Ts'ai was in Moscow by mid-1929 and attended the 10th ECCI Plenum in July 1929. (During his stay in the USSR he was briefly confined to a sanitarium on the outskirts of Moscow.) Significantly, he did not return to China until mid-1930 when Li Li-san's power had begun to decline. He may have been accompanied by Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai, who was returning home with Comintern orders to convene the Third Plenum and block Li’s ambitions. This critical meeting was convened in late September at Lu-shan in north Kiangsi, Ts'ai attended, and Ch'u led an unsuccessful attempt to oust Li, presumably aided once more by Ts’ai.
Politics
At about this time, Ts’ai was also involved in other intra-Party disputes, among them the controversy regarding the rather novel ideas of one of the Party founders, Li Han-chiin. Ts'ai is said to have opposed Li’s ideas (described in Li’s biography) and in doing so he stood together with Chang Kuo-fao. Of interest to the historian is the fact that his collaboration with Chang is mentioned in a biography of Ts’ai published in 1936 before Chang lost his political struggle with Mao Tse-tung and deserted the CCP. However,Chang’s name was deleted when this same biography was reprinted in 1952.
As history was soon to demonstrate, both courses would be futile. In May 1927, the Communists suffered further serious setbacks in Changsha resulting from attacks on their organizations there by military leader Hsu K'o-hsiang, and the abortive counterattacks led by CCP-organized peasant bands from nearby rural areas (mainly from Plng-chiang and Liu-yang hsien). In the face of the defeats suffered by the ill-equipped peasant forces, Ts'ai offered a "Resolution on Hunan and Hupeh in June which called for the mobilization of ''about 20,000 peasants and 300,000 KMT masses' for further attacks on Changsha. No immediate action was taken to implement Ts'ai's plan, but it foreshadowed some of the Party’s actions later in the summer. Following these successive defeats, the CCP underwent an intense internal struggle, during which a new leadership under Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai, Mao, Ts'ai, and others was able to unseat Ch'en Tu-hsiu and lay plans for the far-reaching campaign of peasant insurrections known as the Autumn Harvest Uprisings. The new leadership took control at the famous “Emergency Conference” on August 7, 1927, only one week after the complete KMT-CCP break at the time of the Nanchang Uprising (see under Yeh T’ing). Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai chaired the meeting and Ch’en Tu-hsiu was deposed as the Party chief by a hastily assembled “rump” committee that replaced the Central Committee elected at the Fifth Congress only three months earlier. Despite the fact that Ts’ai and Ch’li had held differing opinions on important policy issues in the spring of 1927, Ts’ai was named to the “rump” committee and was also appointed secretary of the Party’s North China Regional Bureau. In being named to the latter post Ts'ai, in effect, replaced Li Ta-chan who had been executed shortly before by the northern warlords. It is not clear whether Ts'ai went to Peking to assume this post, and if he did, it is evident that he had to operate in an underground capacity. It is known, however, that his wife remained in the Wuhan area, where she was apprehended and executed in the spring of 1928.