Chen Duxiu

Chen Duxiu the Chinese revolutionary, journalist and political leader (1879-1942) who founded the journal New Youth, helped to launch the New Culture movement and was the first leader of the Chinese Communist Party. He was a central figure in the intellectual and political upheavals of the early twentieth century.

Early Life and Revolutionary Activity

Chen Duxiu was born on 8 October 1879 in Huaining, in Anhui province, into a family of officials. He received a classical education and obtained the xiucai degree, but he turned against the traditional examination path and became involved in the revolutionary movement against the Qing dynasty. He studied in Japan, where he encountered the ideas of Western liberalism and of socialist and anarchist writers.

He took part in anti-government agitation and in the founding of societies and journals, and he was associated with the revolutionary cause long before the fall of the dynasty. His repeated clashes with authority and his restless, polemical temper marked him out as one of the most radical of the young intellectuals of the period.

After the revolution of 1911 he held posts in the provincial government of Anhui and founded a newspaper, but the reaction that followed the consolidation of power by Yuan Shikai drove him again into opposition. He concluded that political change alone was insufficient and that the culture and the character of the people must first be transformed.

New Youth and the New Culture Movement

In 1915 Chen Duxiu founded the journal New Youth, which became the principal organ of the New Culture movement. In its pages he called on the youth of China to break with the dead traditions of the past and to embrace the twin ideals of science and democracy, which he set against the superstition and the authoritarianism he associated with Confucianism.

His essays attacked the Confucian family system, the subordination of women and the passivity of the younger generation, and his rhetoric of iconoclasm and renewal gave the movement its fighting spirit. New Youth gathered the leading writers of the new generation, including Hu Shi and Lu Xun, and became the platform from which the movement spread to universities and schools throughout the country.

Chen became a professor and then dean at Peking University, where his journal and his ideas were protected by the chancellor Cai Yuanpei. The intellectual ferment of these years culminated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, in which students protested against the decisions of the peace conference and against the weakness of the Chinese government, a movement Chen helped to inspire.

Founding of the Communist Party

The Russian revolution of 1917 and the apparent betrayal of China by the Western powers at the peace conference turned Chen toward Marxism. He began to study and to propagate socialist ideas, and in 1920 he helped to found the first communist group in Shanghai. The Chinese Communist Party was formally established at a congress in 1921, and Chen, though absent, was elected its first general secretary.

Under his leadership the party grew and entered into the first united front with the Nationalists of Sun Yat-sen, an alliance brokered with the help of Soviet advisers. The strategy of cooperation with the Nationalists was controversial, and Chen was criticised both for accepting it and for the way it was managed.

As the general secretary he guided the party through a period of rapid expansion and deepening conflict. The united front and the urban strategy on which it rested came under increasing strain, and the events of 1927 would expose their weakness and bring his leadership to an end.

Expulsion, Imprisonment and Later Life

In 1927 the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek turned on the Communists in a series of violent purges, and the party suffered catastrophic losses in the cities. Chen was blamed for the failures of the leadership, held responsible for the defeat of the revolutionary strategy, and removed from his post and expelled from the party in 1929.

He turned to the criticism of the party he had founded, adopting positions influenced by the exiled Russian opposition and arguing against the direction taken by the new leadership. He became an isolated figure, and in 1932 he was arrested by the Nationalist government and imprisoned, remaining in jail until the outbreak of war with Japan led to his release in 1937.

In his last years he lived in retirement in Sichuan, in poor health and estranged from the political movements he had once led. He continued to write and to reflect on the fate of the revolution, and he died on 27 May 1942 in Jiangjin. He had refused offers of support from both the Nationalists and the Communists, maintaining an independence to the end.

Influence and Legacy

Chen Duxiu occupies a central place in the intellectual and political history of modern China. As the founder of New Youth and the figurehead of the New Culture movement he did more than any other individual to set the radical agenda of his generation, and the ideals of science and democracy that he proclaimed became defining themes of the century.

As the first leader of the Communist Party he gave the Chinese revolutionary movement an organised form, though his tenure ended in defeat and recrimination. His career illustrates the tension between intellectual criticism and political organisation, and the difficulty of translating the ferment of ideas into a durable movement.

He is remembered as a man of uncompromising conviction whose influence outlasted his fall from power. The journal he founded and the slogans he coined shaped the way a whole generation understood its task, and his willingness to break with both tradition and his own party marked him as one of the most independent and consequential figures of modern China.

See also

• New Youth
• New Culture Movement
• May Fourth Movement
• Chinese Communist Party