Guo Moruo

People’s Republic of China state institutions Maoism 1892–1978 ○ Illness

Poet and historian of the Creation Society who became vice-premier and first president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Born in Shawan near Leshan in Sichuan, he went to study in Japan in 1914 and co-founded in Shanghai the Creation Society, which promoted modern vernacular literature, becoming a leading poet of the May Fourth era. He joined the Communist Party in 1927, took part in the Nanchang Uprising and after its failure fled to Japan, living in Ichikawa, Chiba, until 1937 and studying ancient history. He returned just after the Marco Polo Bridge incident to join the resistance. After 1949 he was a vice-premier of the Government Administration Council and, from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1978, the first president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. An early target of the Cultural Revolution, he declared in a self-criticism that all his works should be burned and lost two sons; after the fall of the Gang of Four he wrote a poem denouncing them.

Also known as: Kuo Mo-jo · Guo Kaizhen