Background
Nothig is known about his background.
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Yang Ming-chai
Edit ProfileEducation
Yang Ming-cha was educated locally.
Career
In May 1920 Ch'en Tu-hsiu assembled a number of individuals (Li Han-chun, Shen Hsuan-lu, Li Ta, Yii Hsiu-sung, and Shih Ts'in- t'ung) to secure their agreement to form a provisional central committee and draft the statutes of the projected Communist Party. The committee elected Wen as secretary and proposed to set up similar cells in other cities. In the same month, also in Shanghai, Yang assisted in the formation of the first Communist cell (which was led by a provisional committee with Ch’en as secretary) and, in August, the first nucleus of the Socialist Youth League. He was also placed in charge of the Sino-Russian News Agency, a cover organization for Voitinsky's activities, and of the Foreign Language School, also a cover for Communist organizational activities. Its proposed French and English classes were never held, but one was given for Russian; Yang Ming-chai and Mrs. Voitinsky tutored a fluctuating group of 10 to 20 students and prepared them for further study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, the important cadres school in Moscow. The first batch of students left for the Soviet Union in the winter of 1920-21, the group included Liu Shao-ch'i, Jen Pi-shih P’eng Shu-chih, Lo I-nung, Pu Shih-ch’i, Yuan Ta-shih, Pao P’u and Liao Hua-p’ing.
Late in 1920 the pace of Communist activity slowed down somewhat as Ch'en left for Canton to serve as provincial educational commissioner in Ch’en Chiung-ming’s government, and Voitin- sky too departed for the Soviet Union. Also, much dissension among anarchists and communists was evident at this time. Other members departed from Shanghai, Shen Hsuan-lu going to Canton, Shih Ts’un-t’ung to Japan. About this time, an Educational Commission (Chiao-yli wei-yuan-hui) was organized with Tung Pi- wu and Yang Ming-chai in charge, the primary objective being to screen the Socialist Youth League elements to send them to the Soviet Union for training.
At about the time of the formation of the CCP in mid-1921, Yang switched his membership from the CPSU to the CCP. Then in September 1921, he was arrested by the Shanghai Settlement authorities along with ChJen Tu-hsiu and his wife, K'o Ch'ing-shih, and Pao Hui- seng. Bolshevik gold proved most useful at this juncture, when Comintern agent Maring hired a French lawyer and had Ch’en Tu-hsiu bailed out after a day and a half at a cost of 50,000 yuan; Yang and the rest remained in jail for a few more days until they were released after being convicted and fined 5,000 yuan (also on Comintern expense) for propagating bolshevism in the Hsin chfing-nien. Nothing more is known about Yang’s connections with the Chinese Communists. According to Chang Kuo-t'ao, he broke with them sometime in 1923-24.
Politics
After the October Revolution he joined the Soviet Communist Party, and in April 1920 he appeared in Peking accompanying a delegation of Comintern agents, whom he served as guide and interpreter. Members of the Comintern delegation were Gregory Voitinsky, I. K. Mamaev, and their wives. (Mamaev had some knowledge of Chinese; he was in charge of Chinese affairs at the Far Eastern Secretariat at Irkutsk; he returned to China in the fall of 1924 as political adviser at the Whampoa Military Academy and served during the Northern Expedition as adviser to Li Tsung-jen's Seventh Corps of the National Revolutionary Army.) The Voitinsky group had been sent to China to investigate the May Fourth Movement and to mobilize sentiment in China in ways that would be favorable to the Soviet Union. The delegation got in touch with Sergei A. Polevoy, a faculty member of the Russian Department of Peking University who sympathized with the new Soviet regime, Polevoy introduced them to his colleague, Li Ta-chao, who had organized a society for the study of Marxist theory and a society for the study of Soviet Russia only the month before, in March 1920. Li Ta-chao in turn directed them to Ch'en Tu-hsiu in Shanghai, who was then editing the Hsin ch'ing-nien (New youth).
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1920
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1920