The organiser among Yan’an’s five secretaries, dead a year after the People’s Republic was founded
Back in Yan'an from 1940, he worked in the Secretariat and Organisation Department; the 1945 Seventh Congress made him a Politburo Standing Committee member behind Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. He died of a stroke in Beijing on 27 October 1950.
From Hunan, he studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow and led the Communist Youth League. On the Long March he commanded the Second Front Army with He Long, and as the party’s delegate to the Comintern in 1938 he helped win recognition of Mao’s leadership. From 1943 he ran party organisation and finance as a Secretariat member, one of the “five secretaries” with Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. His health failed after 1949 and he died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1950 at 46.
Also known as: Jen Pi-shih
Activities and affiliations
-
1922–1950
Political and party leadership
- First Secretary of the Communist Youth League1925–1928Social movements and organizing
- Secretary of the Central Secretariat1940–1950
-
1934–1937
Chinese Communist revolutionary forces (before 1949)Political Commissar, Red Second Front Army
Military command -
1938–1940
CominternCCP representative to the Comintern
Diplomacy and international organization
Career Timeline
- 1921.08–1924.07Studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, Moscow
- 1925.05–1928First Secretary of the Communist Youth League; led youth work in the May Thirtieth Movement
- 1927CCP Central Committee member and provisional Politburo member
- 1931.01Re-elected to the Politburo at the Fourth Plenum of the Sixth CC
- 1933–1934Party secretary of the Hunan–Jiangxi Soviet
- 1934.10–1936Political commissar of the Red Second Front Army with He Long on the Long March
- 1937.10Head of the Political Department of the Eighth Route Army
- 1938–1940CCP representative to the Comintern
- 1943–1950Secretary of the Central Secretariat
- 1945.037th Politburo member and Central Secretary-General, fifth in party rank
- 1948.01Announced a correction of violent excesses in land reform
- 1950.10.27Died of a stroke in Beijing
Related historical events
- 1915–1921May Fourth and the founding of the Chinese Communist PartyYouth League member sent to MoscowSent through the Shanghai group’s foreign-language school to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.
- 1927–1936From Jinggangshan to Yan’an: the soviet bases and the Long MarchPolitical commissar of the Second Front ArmyLed the Second Front Army with He Long to the rendezvous.
- 1937–1945The war with Japan and the second united frontChaired the drafting of the history resolution; one of the five secretariesHe chaired the committee that drafted the 1945 history resolution and became one of the five great secretaries.
- 1945–1949The Chinese Civil WarCorrected land-reform excessesRedefined class categories and middle-peasant protection in January 1948.
Building the Party Machines in Yan'an, 1940–1945
Ren returned to Yan'an on 26 March 1940 and was appointed Secretary-General of the CCP Central Committee, taking charge of the Secretariat's routine work along with the Central Organisation Department, the Northwest Bureau and labour, youth and women's affairs. His first task was to set up the Central Committee General Office, which he headed himself. Under it he placed three departments, for secretarial work, administration and guards, and built systems for correspondence, receiving visitors, accounting, document management and archives, clarifying the relations between the central organs. The cadre supply system was also regularised at this time: each cadre received one summer and one winter uniform a year, and allowances were graded by rank.
From September 1940 Ren directed work in the Shaan-Gan-Ning border region, and in October he moved with Zhang Wentian and others to Yangjialing to live near Mao Zedong and assist him directly. Construction of the Central Auditorium began in 1941 as preparations for the Seventh Party Congress got under way; that July he became Secretary-General, and in August deputy director of the Central Investigation Bureau and director of the Party Affairs Research Office, promoting the "three-thirds system" in the base areas. In April 1942 he led the rectification movement of the Shaan-Gan-Ning general study committee and the work of "crack troops and simple administration".
In March 1943 he formed the Central Secretariat together with Mao and Liu Shaoqi, joined the Central Organisation Committee and took responsibility for Shaan-Gan-Ning and north-west Shanxi; from April he directly supervised the Eighth Route Army's Xi'an office, and at the end of the year became director of the Political Work Committee. In 1944 he chaired a series of economic forums, guiding economic construction, finance, trade and price stabilisation in the border region, and from May he led the drafting of the "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party", which reviewed the leadership line from the Fourth Plenary Session to the Zunyi Conference.
At the Seventh Party Congress in March 1945 Ren was a standing member of the presidium and the congress secretary-general, chaired the first session of the First Plenary of the Seventh Central Committee, and was elected a Politburo member, a secretary of the Central Secretariat and Secretary-General of the Central Committee. From then on he ranked behind only Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De among the party's five secretaries. In these years Ren worked as the organiser who institutionalised the party's administrative apparatus and cadre system, leaving regulations that became the working foundation of later party building.