Hu Feng

Independent activity Marxism–Leninism 1902–1985 ○ Natural causes

Marxist literary theorist of the Left-Wing Writers, jailed for 24 years after the 1955 “Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique” case

Born to a tofu-maker’s family in Qichun, Hubei, he studied at Keio University in Japan until expelled for anti-Japanese activity. In Shanghai in 1933 he became head of publicity and executive secretary of the League of Left-Wing Writers and a close associate of Lu Xun, and in the war against Japan his magazines July and Hope nurtured the “July school” of poets. He clashed for years with party literary leaders such as Zhou Yang over national form and the subordination of literature to politics. After 1949 he was a deputy to the first NPC, but having submitted a 300,000-word report to the Politburo in 1954 he was arrested in May 1955 as head of a “counter-revolutionary clique”; the case implicated some 2,100 people and led into the Sufan campaign. Sentenced to fourteen years in 1965 and to life in 1970, he was released in 1979 and fully rehabilitated in 1988, three years after his death.

Also known as: Hu Fêng · Zhang Guangren