China Democratic League
중국민주동맹
China’s “third force” party, founded at Chongqing in 1941 as the China Democratic Political League and renamed in 1944; abbreviated Minmeng. Claiming a middle way between the Kuomintang and the Communists, it gathered intellectuals such as Zhang Bojun, Luo Longji, Liang Shuming, Huang Yanpei, Chu Anping and Fei Xiaotong. Outlawed by the Nationalist government in 1947, it allied with the Communists, and after 1949 became one of the eight democratic parties led by the Communist Party. In 1957 its leadership was branded rightist as the “Zhang–Luo alliance”.
In depth
The League was launched secretly at Chongqing on 19 March 1941 as a coalition of three parties, among them the Young China Party, the National Socialist (later Democratic Socialist) Party and Zhang Bojun’s Chinese National Liberation Action Committee (later the Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party), and three groups. Its aims were to support the war against Japan and to be a centrist “third force” between the Kuomintang and the Communists. A report of October 1945 declared it neither left nor right and proposed combining Western “political democracy” with Soviet “economic democracy”. At the Political Consultative Conference of January 1946 it held 9 of the 38 seats, more than any other single party, but the Young China and Democratic Socialist parties broke away over attending the Kuomintang’s constituent National Assembly, and in October 1947 the Nationalist government declared the League illegal. In January 1948 it publicly announced its cooperation with the Communists.
In 1949 Zhang Lan, Shen Junru, Zhang Bojun, Luo Longji, Shi Liang, Fei Xiaotong and others attended the Political Consultative Conference; Zhang Lan became vice-chairman of the Central People’s Government, Shen Junru president of the Supreme People’s Court, and Zhang Bojun and Shi Liang ministers. The League defined its relationship with the Communists as “long-term coexistence and mutual supervision”, a principle the Eighth Congress confirmed in 1956. Its paper, the Guangming Daily, was the newspaper for intellectuals.
In the great blooming of 1957 the League’s leaders stood at the centre of the criticism with Zhang Bojun’s “political design institute”, Luo Longji’s “redress committee” and the Guangming Daily editor Chu Anping’s “party’s empire”. Mao’s People’s Daily editorial of 1 July charged that the League had acted against Communism and socialism “with organisation, plan, programme and line”, and traced it to the “Zhang–Luo alliance”. In January 1958 Zhang and Luo were removed as League vice-chairmen, and neither was corrected in the rehabilitation of the 1980s. The League survives as a democratic party upholding Communist leadership, its members mostly mid- and senior-level intellectuals in education, culture and science.