Li Dazhao

Li Dazhao the Chinese intellectual and revolutionary of the early twentieth century (1889-1927) who was a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party and one of the first Chinese thinkers to embrace Marxism. He was a librarian and professor at Peking University, a central figure of the New Culture and May Fourth movements, and a martyr to the revolutionary cause.

Early Life and Education

Li Dazhao was born on 29 October 1889 in Laoting, in Hebei province, into a peasant family. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by his grandparents and showed exceptional talent as a student. He received a classical education and then studied law and political economy at the Beiyang College of Law and Political Science in Tianjin, where he came into contact with modern political thought.

In 1913 he went to Japan to continue his studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he read widely in European political philosophy and in the socialist and democratic literature of the day. The experience of a modernising Asian nation and the debates of Japanese intellectuals broadened his horizons and prepared him for the role he would play on his return.

He returned to China in 1916 and entered the world of journalism and academia. He became an editor of a Beijing newspaper and then joined the staff of Peking University, where he was appointed chief librarian and later became a professor of history and economics. The university placed him at the centre of the intellectual movements of the age.

New Culture, May Fourth and the Turn to Marxism

Li Dazhao was an active participant in the New Culture movement, writing on democracy, youth and national renewal for the journals of the day. He contributed to New Youth and published essays calling on the young to throw off the dead weight of tradition and to build a new China, and he was a familiar figure among the students and professors of Peking University.

His thinking was transformed by the Russian revolution of 1917. In a series of celebrated essays he greeted the revolution as the dawn of a new age and argued that it showed the way forward for oppressed nations and classes. He was among the first Chinese intellectuals to study and to expound Marxist theory, and he became the leading interpreter of socialism for a Chinese audience.

He was a central figure in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, supporting the student protest and taking part in the debate over its meaning. His own evolution toward socialism was thoroughgoing and he engaged seriously with Marxist economics and historical theory, seeking to adapt them to the conditions of a country that was still overwhelmingly agrarian.

Founding the Communist Party

In 1920 Li Dazhao helped to found the first communist group in Beijing, working in close cooperation with Chen Duxiu in Shanghai. The two were known as the founders of the party, and Li's base at Peking University made the university a nursery of revolutionary organisation and recruitment.

He took part in the preparation of the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and continued to guide the northern organisation of the party. He worked to unite the small communist groups and to build links with the labour movement, and he helped to organise strikes and the early activity of the party among railway workers and students.

He was an important theorist of the party's strategy, arguing that the revolution in China must reckon with its agrarian population. He encouraged the study of the peasant question and the organisation of rural work, and his early interest in the countryside anticipated the direction that the movement would later take.

The United Front and Martyrdom

With the formation of the first united front between the Communist Party and the Nationalists, Li Dazhao worked patiently to hold the alliance together. He negotiated with Nationalist leaders, including Sun Yat-sen, and represented the party in the northern regions, where the two movements cooperated against the warlords and the foreign powers.

The alliance was marred by friction, and in 1927 the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek turned against the Communists. In April of that year the warlord authorities in Beijing, acting in concert with the anti-communist turn, raided the Soviet embassy compound where Li had taken refuge and arrested him.

He was tried and executed by hanging on 28 April 1927 in Beijing, at the age of thirty-seven. He met his death with calm and dignity, and his courage made a deep impression even on his opponents. He was the first of the party's leaders to be killed, and his name became a symbol of sacrifice for the revolutionary cause.

Influence and Legacy

Li Dazhao is remembered as one of the two principal founders of the Chinese Communist Party and as the first significant Chinese Marxist. His essays made the ideas of the Russian revolution intelligible to his countrymen and helped to persuade a generation of students that a new and just order was possible, and his activity gave the small socialist circles their first organisation and direction.

His intellectual legacy includes an early and prescient concern with the peasantry and with the adaptation of revolutionary theory to Chinese conditions. He combined an open and enquiring mind with a willingness to commit himself to action, and his willingness to study foreign ideas without abandoning the needs of his own society gave him an influence that outlasted his short life.

He is honoured as a martyr of the revolution and as an example of the intellectual who joined thought to practice. His life, brief and dedicated, traced the path from the cultural criticism of the New Culture movement to the organised politics of the Communist movement, and he stands at the point where the two strands of modern Chinese history met and became one.

See also

• Chinese Communist Party
• May Fourth Movement
• New Culture Movement
• Marxism in China