Qu Qiubai (January 29, 1899–June 18, 1935) was born in
ChangzhouChangzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It was also known as Yanling, Lanling, Jinling, and Wujin previously...
,
Jiangsu' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou...
,
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
. He was a leader of the
Communist Party of ChinaThe Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and the ruling political party of the People's Republic of China and the world's largest political party...
in the late 1920s and an important contributor to Mao Zedong Thought.
From a prominent, though impoverished, regional family, Qu suffered tragedy at an early age. His father, an opium addict., unable to extract wealth from their land or attain a good bureaucratic position was forced to take a remote teaching position that left no money to send home.
Qu Qiubai (January 29, 1899–June 18, 1935) was born in
ChangzhouChangzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It was also known as Yanling, Lanling, Jinling, and Wujin previously...
,
Jiangsu' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou...
,
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
. He was a leader of the
Communist Party of ChinaThe Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and the ruling political party of the People's Republic of China and the world's largest political party...
in the late 1920s and an important contributor to Mao Zedong Thought.
Early life
From a prominent, though impoverished, regional family, Qu suffered tragedy at an early age. His father, an opium addict., unable to extract wealth from their land or attain a good bureaucratic position was forced to take a remote teaching position that left no money to send home. In 1915, his mother, overwrought by her life's mounting difficulties and debts, committed suicide. In 1916, Qu found himself in
BeijingBeijing is a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People's Republic of China...
, after having spent some time with relatives in
Wuhan' is the capital of Hubei province, People's Republic of China, and is the most populous city in central China. It lies at the east of Jianghan Plain, and the intersection of the middle reaches of the Yangtze and Han River...
, without any means to pay for a regular university tuition. Therefore, Qu enrolled in the newly established Russian Language Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (俄文专修馆), as it was tuition-free, offered a stipend and held the promise of work upon graduation. A reluctant participant in revolutionary discourse Qu would become radicalized by his experience in the May 4th Movement.
Communist Party Involvement
Qu led a solitary existence under the demanding regimen of the language institute, studying both French and Russian and on his own time
BuddhistBuddhist philosophy deals extensively with problems in metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics, and epistemology.The Buddha's general outlook has been described as neither ontological nor metaphysical, but empirical. He assumed an unsympathetic attitude toward speculative and religious thought in general...
and
classical ChineseChinese philosophy is philosophy written in the Chinese tradition of thought. Chinese philosophy has a history of several thousand years; its origins are often traced back to the Yi Jing , an ancient compendium of divination, which uses a system of 64 hexagrams to guide action...
philosophical works. Early contact in revolutionary circles occurred with his participation in a discussions hosted by
Li DazhaoLi Dazhao was a Chinese intellectual who co-founded the Communist Party of China with Chen Duxiu in 1921.-Early life:Li was born in Laoting , Hebei province to a peasant family...
, head librarian at Beijing University, about Marxist analysis.
Mao ZedongMao Zedong was a Chinese revolutionary, political theorist and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976...
would also be present at these meetings. Qu then later chose to accept a job as a journalist for a Beijing newspaper and be stationed in Moscow. Qu was one of the first Chinese to report from Moscow about life in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution.
He became acting Chairman of the
Chinese PolitburoThe Politburo of the Communist Party of China , formerly as Central Bureau before 1927, is a group of 19 to 25 people who oversee the Communist Party of China...
in 1927 after the fall of
Chen DuxiuChen Duxiu played many different roles in Chinese history. He was a leading figure in the anti-imperial Xinhai Revolution and the May Fourth Movement for Science and Democracy. Along with Li Dazhao, Chen was a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. He was its first Chairman and first...
, thus becoming the
de facto leader of the party. He organised actions such as the
Guangzhou UprisingThe Guangzhou Uprising of 1927 was a failed communist uprising in the city of Guangzhou in southern China.At 3:30 AM on 11 December 1927, communist political leaders ordered communist militia and worker red guards to launch an uprising in Guangzhou , despite the strong objections of communist...
of December 11, 1927.
Unable to join his comrades on the
Long MarchThe Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but several, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the...
due to his
tuberculosisTuberculosis is a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by mycobacteria...
, Qu stayed in the territory of the doomed
Jiangxi SovietThe Chinese Soviet Republic , also translated as the Soviet Republic of China or the China Soviet Republic, and often referred to in historical literature as the Jiangxi Soviet , was a state established in November 1931 by the future Communist Party of China leader Mao...
; arrested in
ChangtingChangting was a prefecture in western Fujian during the Chinese Republic . Its centre was the city on the upper Tingjiang River now called Tingzhou....
in 1934, he was put to a
KuomintangThe Kuomintang of China , translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a political party of the Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan since the 1970s. It is the founding and the ruling political party of the ROC...
firing squad there a year later. His farewell letter, leaked by elements within the Kuomintang, is part of the literary tradition of the Communist movement.
Legacy
Qu was heavily criticised as a "renegade" during the
Cultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a period of widespread social and political upheaval in the People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976, resulting in nation-wide chaos and economic disarray.It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16,...
. However, the
Central CommitteeThe Central Committee of the Communist Party of China , formerly as Central Executive Committee before 1927, is the highest authority within the Communist Party of China elected by the Party National Congresses...
absolved him in 1980 and today he is held in very high regard by the Party. A Qu Qiubai museum operates in his native town of
ChangzhouChangzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It was also known as Yanling, Lanling, Jinling, and Wujin previously...
. Tsi-an Hsia writes in
The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Literary Movement in China (published 1968) describing Qu as "the tenderhearted Communist". Qu and a Russian counterpart, V.S. Kolokolov, were responsible for the early development of the
Sin WenzLatinxua Sin Wenz is a little-used romanization system for Mandarin Chinese...
system of
MandarinStandard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
romanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization, alternately spelt as latinisation or romanisation , is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system...
. From its Russian translation, Qu also created the official Chinese translation of
The InternationaleThe Internationale is a famous socialist, communist, social-democratic and anarchist anthem and one of the most widely recognized songs in the world....
, used as the anthem of the Communist Party of China.