A “28 Bolsheviks” returnee who became general secretary after Zunyi and sided with Peng Dehuai at Lushan in 1959
One of the “28 Bolsheviks” who replaced Bo Gu as general secretary after Zunyi, he backed Peng Dehuai at Lushan in 1959 and died in Wuxi in 1976.
A Sun Yat-sen University graduate counted among the “28 Bolsheviks”, he backed Mao against Bo Gu at the Zunyi Conference in 1935 and became the party’s general secretary. He led propaganda and theory at Yan’an and ceded real power to Mao after the rectification movement. After 1949 he was ambassador to Moscow and vice-minister of foreign affairs; at the 1959 Lushan Conference he criticised the Great Leap and was purged with Peng Dehuai as an “anti-party clique”. Exiled during the Cultural Revolution, he died of heart disease in 1976 and was rehabilitated in 1979.
Also known as: Luo Fu · Chang Wen-tien
Activities and affiliations
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1925–1976
Political and party leadership
- Chairman, People's Committee of the Chinese Soviet RepublicHeads of state, government and party of China1934–1935Government and administration
- Chairman of the Council of People’s CommissarsHeads of state, government and party of China1934–1937
- General Secretary of the CCPHeads of state, government and party of China1935–1943
- Head of the Central Publicity Department1938–1942Ideology and propaganda
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1951–1960
People’s Republic of China state institutionsAmbassador to the USSR; First Vice Foreign Minister
Diplomacy and international organization -
1960–
People’s Republic of China state institutionsResearcher, CAS Institute of Economics
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1925.06Joined the CCP; from October studied at Sun Yat-sen University, Moscow (one of the "28 Bolsheviks")
- 1931.02Returned; head of the Propaganda Department and Standing Committee member of the provisional Politburo
- 1934.02–1937.09.22Chairman of the People's Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic
- 1935.01At the Zunyi Conference reported against the purely defensive military line
- 1935.01.17–1943.03.20General Secretary of the CCP
- 1938–1942Head of the Central Publicity Department, in charge of propaganda and cadre education
- 1945.12–1948Secretary of the Hejiang provincial party committee in Manchuria; curbed violent land reform
- 1948.05Head of the Northeast Bureau Organisation Department; drafted the outline on the Northeast economy
- 1951.04–1955.01Ambassador to the Soviet Union
- 1955.01–1960First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1959.07Criticised the Great Leap at the Lushan Conference; branded part of the "Peng Dehuai anti-party clique"
- 1960.11Researcher at the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Related historical events
- 1927–1936From Jinggangshan to Yan’an: the soviet bases and the Long MarchGeneral secretary after ZunyiReplaced Bo Gu as general secretary and supported Mao’s military leadership.
- 1937–1945The war with Japan and the second united frontLeader made to criticise himself in the rectificationAs the party’s head before Mao’s ascendancy he had to make self-criticisms in the rectification.
- 1958–1962The Great Leap Forward and the Great FamineVice-foreign minister who backed Peng at LushanA speech on the Leap’s economic errors put him in the anti-party clique.
- 1966–1976The Cultural RevolutionHeld under guard at homeDuring the Cultural Revolution, he was first held under guard in his own home.
Economic thought and the "Zhaoqing Manuscript"
Zhang Wentian was not only a political leader but an economic theorist who studied economic questions his whole life. While studying and teaching in Moscow between 1925 and 1930 he absorbed Nikolai Bukharin's theory of allowing a private rural economy through supply and marketing cooperatives, which would deeply shape his own policy perspectives; his line of supporting those cooperatives put him at odds with Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi, who saw collective farms as the correct form of rural socialism.
When radical land reform and excessive violence swept the Northeast in 1947-1948, Zhang ordered newspapers in the Hejiang area not to reproduce such experiences and to protect commerce and industry, drafting the "Directive on the Protection of Business and Industry in the Land Distribution Movement". He strongly objected to forceful collectivisation and proposed that the Party emphasise rural production rather than class struggle. As a Standing Committee member and Organisation Department head of the Northeast Bureau in 1948 he drafted the "Outline on the Basic Principles of Economic Structure and Economic Development in Northeast China", putting forward the idea of the "five economic components"; Mao affirmed the outline and forwarded it to the whole Party as a guideline for economic construction in all liberated areas. In a 1953 conversation with Wu Lengxi of Xinhua he discussed the weaknesses and failures of the Soviet collectivisation system and warned that China should not blindly copy the Soviet model.
During the Cultural Revolution he was first held under guard in his own residence, and in 1969 he was sent down with his family to Zhaoqing, Guangdong, using the alias Zhang Pu. After the 1971 Lin Biao incident he wrote the series of theoretical essays later called the "Zhaoqing Manuscript", criticising the ultra-leftist line and the errors of the Cultural Revolution and setting out his views on basic questions of China's socialist construction: that the foremost task of socialist society is to develop the productive forces, that cursing the principle of struggling for the people's material interests as revisionist is "unacceptable confusion and deceit," and that exaggerating contradictions among the people into contradictions between the enemy and ourselves "caused great harm to the Party." He repeatedly asked to return to Beijing and was refused. On 25 August 1979 the CCP Central Committee held a memorial service for him in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.