Founded in Shanghai at the end of 1945 with the support of the Chinese Communist Party, the founders included Ma Xulun, Wang Shaoguan, Zhou Jianren, Xu Guangping, Lin Handa, Xu Boxin, Zhao Puchu, Lei Jieqiong, Zheng Zhenduo, Ke Ling and others. Its purpose was to oppose the Kuomintang and played an important role in the Communist Party’s seizure of power.
On the eve of the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in September 1949, representatives of the Democratic Progressive faction, Ma Xulun, Wang Shaoguan, Zhou Jianren, Xu Guangping and Lei Jieqiong, were invited by the Chinese Communist Party to attend the first Political Consultative Conference. Thereafter, some of them took up important government positions. However, in addition to those who died prematurely and from illness during one of the campaigns initiated by the CCP, senior officials and prominent figures of the DPP did not escape their fate.
What happened to Yan Jingyao and Lei Jieqiong, founders of the Democratic Progressive Party, during the Cultural Revolution
Among the founders of the DPP, Yan Jingyao and Lei Jieqiong, Lei Jieqiong’s fame was far greater than that of her husband. In the official narrative of the Chinese Communist Party, Lei Jieqiong was “a well-known democracy fighter” in the 1930s and 1940s, who not only “resolutely left the lectern” but also “led the student anti-Japanese movement”. She not only “left the lecture hall”, but also “led the student anti-Japanese movement” and even founded various newspapers and periodicals, until she participated in initiating and forming the Democratic Progressive Organization. After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, he served as Vice Chairman of the CPPCC, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, Vice Mayor of Beijing, and Chairman of the DPP Central Committee.
Yan Jingyao, on the other hand, is a well-known sociologist and jurist, and a pioneer of Chinese criminology. He was a council member and finance member of the first and second councils of the DPP, a member of the third executive council, and a member of the standing committee of the fourth and fifth central committees. In their other capacities, they were professors at the Beijing Academy of Political Science and Law, and Lei Jieqiong was later transferred to Peking University.
As a “fighter,” Lei enjoyed the freedom of speech, publication, and association that a national should have during the period of Kuomintang rule that she was whipping up. However, when she succeeded in the “revolution” she was striving to pursue with the Chinese Communists, not only did she not enjoy these freedoms, but her experience in the Republican era also brought her decades of inhuman life.
According to Ai Qun’s article “The Missing in the History of Chinese Sociology: Yan and Jingyao in Red China,” the two, who had escaped the previous movements, did not escape this time. Lei Jieqiong and Yan Jingyao both wrote accounting materials during the Cultural Revolution, and Yan Jingyao in particular was considered to have significant historical problems. This is because in the 1930s, Yan Jingyao researched having been the deputy warden of Shanghai’s Tilanqiao prison, for which he was also criticized and had his yin and yang head shaved. Their home in Nanluoguxiang was also raided. Lei Jieqiong’s salary was also stopped and only a little living allowance was given.
In 1971, Lei Jieqiong and Yan Jingyao were sent down to the “May 7 Cadre School” in Wupu, Su County, Anhui Province, where they were placed in hard-seat carriages, while the younger faculty members were placed in sleepers.
According to the recollection of Fang Yan of Beijing Law School, “When they were in the cadre school, the hut where Lei Jieqiong and Yan Jingyao lived was cloudy and damp, but they never complained about anything, and they could stand it. The two of them were older, and the work they did was not too heavy, that is, they were asked to pick up vegetable leaves in the vegetable field, between a seedling or something.” By this time, they already knew the importance of being careful with their words.
During the 20 years from 1952 to 1972, Lei Jieqiong and Yan Jingyao went through the restructuring of the faculty at the Beijing Academy of Political Science and Law, the reorganization of the faculty, the following of the Soviet experts’ instructions, the “anti-rightist” movement, and the Cultural Revolution, but they could only swallow the pain because it was their own choice to follow the Chinese Communist Party. During these 20 years, they hardly wrote any more books.
In 1976, Yan Jingyao died of a cerebral hemorrhage, which dealt a heavy blow to Lei Jieqiong. After the Cultural Revolution, Lei Jieqiong was once again touted by the Chinese Communist Party. However, from the fact that Lei Jieqiong did not value her high position after the Cultural Revolution, but positioned herself as a teacher, it is clear that she still had a clear consciousness in her heart, but it is impossible to know to what extent she knew the Chinese Communist Party.
Bing Xin, the honorary chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party Central Committee, was called a “vampire”
Many people are familiar with Bing Xin’s name from the few articles she was selected to write in elementary school textbooks, which were soft and clear, but more detached from reality. Her contemporaries were not highly regarded, such as Eileen Chang, who wrote in “I See Su Qing”: “If it is necessary to divide female authors into a special column for comments, then I cannot be proud of comparing myself with Bingxin and Bai Wei. ……” The first thing that I can say is that I am not proud of myself.
Bing Xin and her husband Wu Wenzao chose to return to China, where they served as Standing Committee members of the DPP Central Committee, Honorary Chairman of the DPP Central Committee, Vice Chairman of the Literary Federation, and Vice Chairman of the Writers’ Association.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, Bing Xin’s family was also raided. After the raid, the Red Guards held an exhibition of the raided family’s materials, in which Xie Bingxin and Wu Wenzao were called “vampires” in the exhibition’s description. Since they could not find any political charges against Bingxin, they gave her two hats: “foreign slave rightist” and “Stanton’s goddaughter”. Bing Xin argued in public that there was no such thing as a goddaughter in foreign countries.
Afterwards, Bing Xin was imprisoned in a cowshed as a “cow, ghost or snake”. After cleaning, she was subjected to endless criticism and battles.
In the summer of 1967, the rebels took Bing Xin and other writers to the southern suburbs of Beijing and criticized them under the scorching sun with landlords and rich peasants, saying that writers and artists were “landlords without land and capitalists without factories”. Bing Xin and the others stood with their heads bent down for two hours, but Bing Xin gritted her teeth and persevered.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Bing Xin said this: “At that time there was no humanity, it became bestial.” Who made the Chinese people inhumane, but bestial? The Chinese Communist Party.
DPP Vice Chairman Che Xiangchen Dies in Prison
Born in Liaoning, Che Xiangzhen studied at the Advanced Cram School of Peking University and participated in the May Fourth Movement. In 1929, he and Yan Baohang of the Chinese Communist Party initiated the Liaoning Association for the Promotion of National Common Sense to promote anti-Japanese propaganda, and was elected as its director. Later, with the support of Zhang Xueliang, he set up night schools and schools for the common people, in which there were many members of the Communist Party of China, thereby promoting Marxism-Leninism.
In 1936, after Zhang Xueliang staged a military revolt in Xi’an, Che Xiangzhen received instructions from the Chinese Communist Party and came to Xi’an to work on persuading the generals of the Northeast Army. Afterwards, he set up Jingcun High School in Shaanxi and continued his education, and took the initiative to accept the leadership and financial support of the CPC.
After the Communist occupation of Heilongjiang, Che Xiangzhen came to Harbin in 1946 and became the chairman of the Education Committee of the Northeast Administrative Committee and the president of Harbin University. With the occupation of the whole northeast and the establishment of the Chinese government, Che Xiangzhen served as the president of Shenyang Normal College, the first principal of Liaoning Experimental High School, the vice governor of Liaoning Province, the vice chairman of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and the vice chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party Central Committee.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, the rebels of Shenyang Agricultural College raided Che’s home and detained him for several days. He was then brutally criticized and escorted to Panjin. During this period, Che wrote to Zhou Enlai several times, pointing out in one of his letters that “it is against Mao’s thinking not to have democrats and not to have a united war policy”. But the letters seemed to sink into the sea.
Soon after, Che Xiang Chen was branded as a member of the “traitorous special agent group of the Northeast Department of Urban Works” and passed away in January 1971 at the age of 73. Before he died, I wonder if he understood that “no democrats, no United Front policy” was the intention of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, and that Che Xiang Chen was not the only democrat who was deceived.
Conclusion
Other members of the DPP Central Committee who were persecuted to death by the CCP include Feng Shaoshan, deputy director of the Shanghai Second Commercial Bureau and deputy director of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau; Li Pingxin, a historian; Xu Chongqing, a member of the Standing Committee of the DPP Central Committee, chairman of the DPP Guangzhou Committee, member of the Standing Committee of the DPP Central Committee and chairman of the DPP Guangdong Committee; and Chen Linrui, a member of the DPP Central Committee and deputy director of the propaganda department of the DPP Central Committee. Do these intellectuals, who made great contributions to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, realize in their lifetime that it was their big mistakes back then that brought about their present end? If there were pills of regret, would they take them?
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