Chen Duxiu

Biography

Chen Duxiu was born in Anqing, Anhui, in 1879 and passed the first level of the imperial examinations in 1896. Drawn to reformist and then revolutionary ideas, he studied at the Qiushi Academy in Hangzhou and in Japan, ran one of China's first vernacular newspapers in Anhui, and took part in anti-Qing organising before and after the 1911 Revolution.

In 1915 he founded the magazine New Youth, which became the main voice of the New Culture Movement, calling for science, democracy and a literature written in the vernacular, and attacking Confucian tradition. From 1917 to 1919 he was dean of letters at Peking University. He backed the student protests of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and was jailed for 83 days.

Turning to Marxism, he set up the first communist group in Shanghai in 1920 with help from Comintern agents and led the Chinese Communist Party from its founding in 1921. He reluctantly carried out the alliance with the Kuomintang, and after its collapse in 1927 he was removed as leader and blamed for the failure. He then sided with Trotsky's opposition and was expelled from the party in November 1929.

Arrested by the Nationalist government in 1932, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison and released in 1937. He spent his last years in Jiangjin, Sichuan, working on philology, and died there in 1942.