Yuan Wencai

Chinese Communist revolutionary forces (before 1949) Marxism–Leninism 1898–1930 ✕ Murdered

Jinggangshan bandit chief turned Red Army regimental commander, Mao's first ally, killed in an inner-party struggle

Born into a Hakka family at Maoping at the foot of the Jinggang Mountains, he left school when his father died and, as a spokesman of peasants resisting landlord exactions, led a bandit band. In contact with the Communists from 1925, his force was reorganised as the Ninggang Security Regiment, counted the first armed force in China under Communist control. He stayed with the Communists after the April 12 Incident and welcomed Mao to Jinggangshan in autumn 1927, helping him build the base. In 1928 his men and Wang Zuo's became the Red Army's 32nd Regiment, and he introduced He Zizhen to Mao. Opposed to the adventurism of the Li Lisan line, he was killed with Wang Zuo by local cadres in February 1930 on a fabricated charge of plotting to defect. He was rehabilitated as a revolutionary martyr after 1949.

Also known as: Yuan Xuansan