Chen Duxiu (redirected from Chen Tu-hsiu)

Chen Duxiu or Ch'en Tu-hsiu (both: chŭn d-shy), 1879–1942, Chinese educator and Communist party leader. He was active in the republican revolution of 1911 and was forced to flee to Japan after taking part in the abortive "second revolution" of 1913 against Yüan Shih-kai. In 1915 he founded the journal New Youth in Shanghai. Articles by Ch'en, Li Dazhao, Hu Shih, and others encouraged Chinese youth to create a new culture free from Confucianism. He was dean of the school of arts and sciences of Beijing Univ. from Jan., 1917, until forced to resign under conservative pressure in Mar., 1919. Ch'en was converted to Marxism in the period following the student-led intellectual revolution known as the May Fourth Movement (1919). He founded (1920) two Marxist groups, and in 1921 representatives of these groups met with representatives of groups organized by Li Dazhao (neither Chen nor Li were present) to found the Communist party. He was dismissed from party leadership and withdrew from the party in 1927 over his opposition to the Comintern-ordered policy of armed insurrection.

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Chen Duxiu

 or Ch'en Tu-hsiu

(born Oct. 8, 1879, Huaining county, Anhuei province, China—died May 27, 1942, Jiangjing, near Chongqing) Chinese political and intellectual leader, a founder of the Chinese Communist Party. As a young man, Chen studied in Japan. In China, he started subversive periodicals that were quickly suppressed by the government. In 1915, after the establishment of the Chinese republic, he created the monthly Qingnian zazhi (“Youth Magazine”), renamed Xin qingnian (“New Youth”), in which he proposed that the youth of China rejuvenate the nation intellectually and culturally; Lu Xun, Hu Shih, and Mao Zedong were all contributors. In 1917 Chen was appointed dean of the School of Letters at Beijing University. In 1919 he was imprisoned briefly for his role in the May Fourth Movement; on his release he became a Marxist. With Li Dazhao, Mao, and others, he founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1920/21. The Communist International had him removed as party leader when the party's alliance with the Nationalist Party fell apart, and he was expelled from the party in 1929. Arrested in 1932, he spent five years in prison.