Literary figure Qu Qiubai

Author: Han Bingsheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-01-01
Features: Qu Qiubai (1899—1935) was a Chinese proletarian revolutionary leader and theorist, one of the early leaders of the Communist Party of China. Also known as Shuang, he was from Changzhou, Jiangsu. In 1917, he studied at the Beijing Russian Language College. In 1920, he visited the Soviet Union as a reporter for the Morning News, writing numerous dispatches that introduced the real situation after the October Revolution in Russia to the domestic audience. In 1922, he joined the Communist Party of China. In 1923, he returned to China and worked in the Shanghai Central Committee, responsible for editing publications such as New Youth, Vanguard, and Guiding Light. That same year, he attended the Third National Congress of the CPC, participated in drafting the party program, and helped establish Shanghai University, serving as the head of the Sociology Department. During the First Civil War of China, he fought against the rightist "Dai Jitaoism" and the right-leaning capitulationism within the party represented by Chen Duxiu. After the Kuomintang's betrayal of the revolution in 1927, he hosted an emergency meeting of the Central Committee on August 7 and became a standing member of the Provisional Central Political Bureau. During his tenure as head of the central leadership, he made "leftist" adventurist errors but achieved great merits in restoring the party's fighting capacity and opening a new revolutionary period. In 1928, he attended the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in Moscow, was elected as an executive committee member and a member of the presidium, and served as the head of the CPC delegation to the Comintern. In 1930, he returned to China from the Soviet Union and hosted the Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC, correcting the party's "leftist" adventurism. At the Sixth Plenary Session of the Fourth Central Committee in January 1931, he was targeted by Wang Ming and others and removed from central leadership. Afterward, in Shanghai, he worked with Lu Xun to lead the left-wing cultural movement, laying a solid foundation for China's revolutionary cultural cause. In 1934, he went to the Central Soviet Region and served as a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic and the People's Commissar for Education. After the main force of the Central Red Army began the Long March, he remained in the region, serving as the Minister of Propaganda of the Central Bureau and the Minister of Education of the Central Office. He was a member of the Fourth Central Committee of the CPC, a standing member of the Fifth Central Political Bureau, and a member of the Sixth Central Political Bureau. In February 1935, while escaping in a breakout, he was surrounded and captured by Kuomintang troops in Shuikou Township, Changting, Fujian. Betrayed by a collaborator, his identity was exposed, and he was executed heroically on June 18, 1935, in Changting. His posthumous works were compiled into the Collected Works of Qu Qiubai.