Political commissar of Zhang Guotao's Fourth Front Army and one of the Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks, defeated with the West Route Army
From Hanyang, Wuhan, he studied at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University from 1927 with Wang Ming and Bo Gu. Returning in November 1930 with the Comintern's October letter, he took part in ousting Li Lisan, and in 1931 was sent with Zhang Guotao to the Eyuwan Soviet, where as political commissar of the Fourth Red Army he carried out a major purge. On the Long March, after meeting Mao's First Front Army in 1935, he followed Zhang south, then urged the march north in 1936 and joined the centre at Huining. As chairman of the West Route Army's military committee he tried with Xu Xiangqian to break through the Hexi Corridor but was crushed by the Ma clique, and returned to Yan'an in March 1937. After years in the Soviet Union he returned in 1952 to the Compilation and Translation Bureau, and took poison under persecution in the Cultural Revolution in 1967.
Also known as: Chen Chang-hao
Activities and affiliations
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1930–1967
Military command
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1931–1937
Chinese Communist revolutionary forces (before 1949)Political commissar, Fourth Red ArmyMain
Military command -
1952–1967
People’s Republic of China state institutionsVice director, Compilation and Translation Bureau
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1927Studies at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University
- 1930Returns; helps oust Li Lisan
- 1931Sent to Eyuwan; political commissar of the Fourth Red Army
- 1935–1936Long March; goes south with Zhang Guotao, then north
- 1936–1937Chairman of the West Route Army military committee; defeated
- 1939–1952In the Soviet Union; translation work
- 1953Vice director of the Compilation and Translation Bureau