Li Dazhao

Li Dazhao or Li Ta-chao (October 29, 1889 – April 28, 1927) was a Chinese intellectual and revolutionary who participated in the New Culture Movement in the early years of the Republic of China, established in 1912. He co-founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with Chen Duxiu in July 1921. He helped build a united front between the CCP and Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist Party (KMT) in early 1924. During the Northern Expedition, Li was arrested and executed by warlord Zhang Zuolin in Beijing in April 1927.

Biography

Early life

Li was born into a peasant family in Laoting County, Hebei (previously Zhili) province in 1889. His father died a few months before he was born, and his mother died when he was a baby. When he was ten, Li married Zhao Renlan, who was nearly six years older; Li's foster grandfather arranged the marriage for Li's protection. He received his traditional education in three village schools in Laoting County for a decade. He started his modern education at Yongpingfu Middle School in 1905. From 1907 to 1913, he completed his college at Beiyang College of Law and Politics in Tianjin. From 1914 to 1916, Li studied political economy at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan before returning to China in 1916. While there, he lived in a YMCA dormitory and participated in Bible studies at the church of Yasuzo Shimizu. He did not finish his learning as he was expelled from Waseda for absence from his classes caused by his participation in the campaign against Yuan Shikai's imperial endeavors, for which he returned to Shanghai in early 1916. A reporter visited the Waseda University Historical Museum to trace the youthful imprints of Li during his study in Japan. In the winter of 1913, after graduating from Beiyang Law and Political School, Li went to study in Japan, residing at the YMCA in Tokyo. In September 1914, he officially entered the Department of Political Economy at Waseda University. At Waseda University's History and Archives Center, the reporter saw two tuition receipt books related to Li, clearly recorded with a fountain pen: Li paid 5 yen on September 9, 4.5 yen on October 26, 4.5 yen on November 9, and so on. Professor Emeritus Ando Hikotaro of Waseda University, in his book "Building a Bridge to the Future: Waseda University and China," not only showed Li transcript but also detailed the 11 courses he took and their respective instructors. He commented, “Compared to other Japanese students, Li's grades were quite good.” The scanned copy of Li's student registration card provided by the Waseda University Chinese Alumni Association clearly shows his name, address, place of origin, and enrollment information. Kawasoko Fumihiko noted that during his time at Beiyang Law and Political School, Li actively learned Japanese and translated Nakazato Miyazosu's "The Program of Tolstoyism" into Chinese in 1913, demonstrating his proficiency in Japanese even before arriving in Japan. In Japan, he continued to learn English while residing at the YMCA. In January 1915, during Li's first year at Waseda, Ōkuma Shigenobu, the then Prime Minister of Japan, and his cabinet secretly proposed the "Twenty-One Demands" to China. This provoked a strong response from Chinese students studying in Japan, and Li actively joined their protest. He refused to take courses from professors like Ukita Kazutami, an ardent advocate of the "Twenty-One Demands," and Hagino Nagayasu, a legal advisor to Yuan Shikai. Li criticized them in articles like "National Conditions." In February 1916, his student registration card was stamped with a withdrawal date and the reason "removed due to prolonged absence."

In April 1916, Li, along with hundreds of other Chinese students in Japan, abandoned their education at prestigious Japanese institutions to join the domestic opposition against Yuan Shikai.

Head Librarian and Professor at Peking University

After returning to China, Li served as an editor in Beijing for a few newspapers on which he published numerous articles to promote democracy, freedom, constitutional rule, and national resurgence. As a leading intellectual in the New Culture Movement, he lashed out at China's feudal tradition, criticized the old tyrannical past, and strongly endorsed the representative system. In January 1918, Li was hired by Cai Yuanpei to be the head of the library at Peking University in Beijing, and a couple of years later, he became a professor of politics, history, and economics there. He taught many different courses at Peking University, and also at four other universities in Beijing. He was invited as a speaker by associations, colleges, and other organizations throughout China. At Peking University, he influenced students during the May Fourth Movement of May 4, 1919, including Mao Zedong, who was an assistant in the library's reading room. In several ways, "Li's urgent calls for democracy, science, and constitutional rule are an essential component of the brilliance of the May Fourth Movement."

More importantly, Li was a prominent leader during the May Fourth Movement; he advised and coached young students in Beijing to take action against the Beiyang government and to protest against the imperialist powers' decision at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to transfer the former German colonial privileges in Shandong to the Japanese Empire. During this time he published productively on a variety of topics championing new and progressive ideas, and became China's earliest self-converted communist. He was one of the earliest scholars to explore the Bolshevik government in the Soviet Union as a possible model for his own nation. Throughout his life, Li maintained a cordial relationship with other New Culture Movement figures such as Hu Shi and Lu Xun, even though they had diverse scholarly opinions and assumed different political stances.

Co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party

By many accounts, Li was a nationalist and believed the Chinese nation could enjoy a renaissance by accepting a new culture, rejuvenating its people, and remolding its civilization. Li admired America for years but changed that attitude to be a pro-Russian intellectual in 1919. Like other intellectuals of his time, Li's thinking was impacted by diverse elements such as Kropotkin's anarchism. After the May Fourth Movement, he and other intellectuals started to turn to Marxism. The success of the Bolshevik Revolution was a factor in remolding his political views.

Later, Li combined his original nationalist thoughts and his newly acquired Marxist views to fashion his political visions for national salvation. Recent studies demonstrate that Li mainly read communist-related works from the Japanese sources which helped deepen his understanding of the communist ideology.

Li's theory of political economy differed from the typical Marxist view that the urban proletariat was the revolutionary class. In Li's view, China's rural peasantry would be the key class-leveling force and the political source for revolution.

Although some piecemeal articles referencing Marxism had been published in China previously, in 1918, Li became the first person in China to spread Marxism through significant published articles. In his 1919 essay ''My Marxist Views'' and his 1924 essay ''The Essentials of Historical Study'', Li stated that generations make their futures through harnessing social energies. In Li's view, historical change occurred through linear stage-oriented progressions of civilizational improvement directed by human agency.

Li initiated the Peking Socialist Youth Corps in 1920. He built China's earliest socialist and communist groups in Beijing even before the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai. Li and Chen Duxiu were regarded as co-founders of the party.

United Front with Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist Party

Under the leadership of Li and Chen, the CCP developed a close relationship with the Soviet controlled Comintern. After the establishment of the CCP, Li and other early communists worked diligently to mobilize Chinese railway and mining workers to fight for their own rights. Directed by the Comintern, Li and Chen joined the Nationalist Party in 1922 and forged a close tie with Sun Yat-sen. Li was elected to the KMT's Central Executive Committee in Guangzhou (Canton) in January 1924, which marked the formal formation of the First United Front between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party. Both parties worked together to fight against their common enemies: the warlord government in Beijing and imperialist powers, which dominated many spheres of influence in China.

Li visited the Soviet Union in late 1924 and stayed there for months. Upon his return from Russia, he wooed the Christian warlord Feng Yuxiang to the Nationalist side, recruited young people into the two political parties, and organized numerous revolutionary activities. He urged Feng Yuxiang to adopt a strategy to fight against Zhang Zuolin from Northwestern China to Henan Province, which was crucial for the success of the Northern Expedition to topple down the warlord regime in Beijing.

Death

Tension between the Comintern and the CCP on one side and the KMT on the other led to political intrigue, especially after Sun Yat-sen died in 1925. In any case, Li was instrumental in the United Front of the two political parties for which he served as its leader in North China. He helped organize anti-government demonstrations, in particular on March 18, 1926, in which government guards fired into the crowd, killing forty-seven people and wounding more than 200. After the March 18 Massacre, Li was put on the Beiyang government's list of the most wanted. He took refuge in the Soviet Embassy in Beijing yet continued to lead political maneuvers in North China to topple the warlord's government. When the United Front collapsed in 1927, Zhang Zuolin of the Fengtian clique ordered a raid on the Embassy on April 6, even though violating diplomatic immunity, this action had already received support from other foreign diplomatic missions. Li, his wife, and daughter were jailed, but his wife and daughter were released shortly after Li was executed. Li and nineteen other allies, both Nationalists and Communists, were secretly sentenced to death, and they were executed by strangulation on April 28, 1927.

Legacy

Li left an enduring legacy on modern Chinese history. As a leading intellectual of China's New Cultural Movement, he wrote hundreds of articles to promote democracy, support constitutional government, endorse individual freedom, and call for a national revival. His ideological world might be complex as he incorporated diverse thoughts. His turn to communism was dramatic; from 1918 to 1919, he became China's first communist, about a year earlier than Chen Duxiu.

Li's thoughts on the role of peasants heavily influenced Mao Zedong. As one of the co-founders of the CCP, Li's key role in decision-making for early communist activities and in bringing forth new theories significantly impacted the initial stage of the Chinese communist revolution. In a particular sense, Li was a special bridge between the first two generations of the communist leadership; Maurice Meisner remarked that Li was the CCP's "first true leader and its greatest martyr" and that he "represents the link between the older generation of democratically oriented and Western-educated intellectuals of the early phase of the New Cultural Movement (ca. 1915–1919), from whom the first Chinese Marxists emerged, and the new generation of young Communist intellectuals who inherited the party leadership after 1927."

The gallows used to execute Li were obtained during a 1949 campaign to locate revolutionary relics and was displayed as "item no. 001" in the Museum of the Chinese Revolution.

In 2021, '' The Pioneer,'' a biopic, was released about Li, starring Zhang Songwen as Li. It premiered on July 1st, 2021 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Family

Spouse:
* Zhao Renlan (1884–1933).
Children:
* Li Baohua (1909–2005) served as the governor of the People's Bank of China from 1978 to 1982.
* Li Xinghua (1911–1979)
* Li Yanhua
* Li Guanghua
* Li Xinhua

References

Citations

Sources

* ''Original text based o
marxists.org article
released under the GNU FDL.''
*
*
*Patrick Fuliang Shan, ''Li Dazhao: China's First Communist'', Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2024.
*

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Li, Dazhao
1889 births
1927 deaths
Communists executed by the Republic of China
Chinese librarians
Chinese Marxists
Chinese revolutionaries
Delegates to the 3rd National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
Members of the 2nd Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
Members of the 4th Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
Academic staff of Peking University
People executed by the Republic of China by hanging
People from Laoting County
People from Tangshan
Political party founders
Waseda University alumni