Labour organiser whose 1930 urban-insurrection “Li Lisan line” led the party and cost him his position
From Hunan, he joined the party while a work-study student in France and organised the Anyuan miners’ strike of 1922 and the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925. From 1928 he held effective control of the Central Committee and in 1930, declaring a revolutionary high tide, ordered attacks on Changsha, Wuhan and other cities that failed; condemned by the Comintern, he was removed and summoned to Moscow, where he stayed fifteen years and married a Soviet wife. He returned in 1946 and served as labour minister. Persecuted early in the Cultural Revolution, he killed himself in 1967 and was rehabilitated in 1980.
Career Timeline
- 1928–1930Head of propaganda and de facto party leader
- 1949–1954Minister of Labour