Chen Duxiu (; 8 October 187927 May 1942) was a Chinese revolutionary socialist, educator, philosopher and author, who co-founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with Li Dazhao in 1921. From 1921 to 1927, he served as the Communist Party's first general secretary. Chen was a leading figure in both the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and the May Fourth Movement for scientific and democratic developments in the early Republic of China. After his expulsion from the CCP in 1929, Chen was for a time the leader of China's Trotskyist movement.
Chen's ancestral home was in Anqing, Anhui, where he established the influential vernacular Chinese periodical New Youth. In order to support overthrowing the Qing government, Chen Duxiu had joined Yue Fei Loyalist Society () which emerged from Gelaohui in Anhui and Hunan province.
Biography
Life in the Qing dynasty
Chen Duxiu was born on 8 October 1879 in the city of Anqing, in the Anhui province of the Qing Empire. He was the youngest of four children born to a wealthy family of officials. In his youth, he was described as volatile, emotional, intuitive, non-intellectual, and a defender of the underdog. His father died when Chen was two years old, and he was raised primarily by his grandfather; and, later, by his older brother.
Chen was given a traditional Confucian education by his grandfather, several private tutors, and his elder brother. A thorough knowledge of Confucian literary and philosophical works was the pre-requisites for civil service in Imperial China. Chen was an exceptional student, but his poor experiences taking the Confucian civil service exams resulted in a lifelong tendency to advocate unconventional beliefs and to criticize traditional ideas.
Chen took and passed the county-level imperial examination in 1896, and succeeded in the provincial-level examination the following year. He later wrote a sardonic memoir in which he reminisced about the filthy conditions, the dishonesty, and the incompetence that he observed when taking the imperial examination. In 1898, he passed the entrance exam and became a student of Qiushi Academy (currently Zhejiang University) in Hangzhou, where he studied French, English, and naval architecture. He moved to Nanjing in 1902, after he was reported to have given speeches attacking the Qing government, and then to Imperial Japan the same year under a scholarship from the government to study at the Tokyo Shimbu Gakko, a military preparatory academy. It was in Japan where Chen became influenced by socialism and the growing Chinese dissident movement. While studying in Japan, Chen helped to found two radical political parties, but refused to join Tongmenghui Revolutionary Alliance, which he regarded as narrowly racist. In 1908, he accepted a teaching position at the Army Elementary School in Hangzhou.
Life in the early republic
From the late 19th century, the Qing dynasty suffered a series of military defeats against the colonial foreign powers, most recently in the First Sino-Japanese War and the war against the Alliance of Eight Nations, which invaded China in response to the 1901 Boxer Rebellion. Government corruption resulted in economic paralysis and widespread impoverishment. During this time, Chen became increasingly influential within the revolutionary movement against both foreign imperialism and the Qing.
Influenced by his time in Japan, Chen founded the Anhui Patriotic Association in 1903 and the Yue Fei Loyalist Society in 1905. By 1905, the Yue Fei included anti-Qing gentry like Sun Yujing and Bo Wenwei. Chen was an outspoken writer and political leader by the time of the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, which started the Xinhai Revolution and led to the collapse of the Qing dynasty. Yue Fei branches were added in Wuhu and Anqing, with those in Anqing infiltrating and agitating within the Qing military. In 1912, Chen became secretary general to the new military governor of Anhui, while also serving as the dean of a local high school. He used the Yue Fei Loyalist Society to establish an organization of students from Anhui public school, pro-rebel Qing soldiers and secret society members. However, Chen fled to Japan again in 1913 following the short-lived "Second Revolution" against Yuan Shikai, but returned to China soon afterwards. He also created the Anhui Patriotic Society associated with the Anhui public school. These organizations won Chen recognition in Anhui, and contact with nationally prominent revolutionaries.