Editing Chen Mingshu (section)

== Biography ==

Chen was born on October 15, 1889, in Xiaxiong village, Hepu County, Guangdong (a Hakka-majority area near the Guangxi border; the county was later transferred to Guangxi). His father was a Qing-dynasty licentiate who taught school, and Chen's own account of his childhood describes severe poverty, an abusive stepmother, and a near-fatal untreated eye ailment.<ref>Chen Mingshu, ''陈铭枢回忆录'' [Memoir of Chen Mingshu], ed. Zhu Zongzhen (Beijing: China Wenshi Press, 1997 [1st ed.]), ch. 1.</ref> In 1906 he entered the Guangdong Huangpu Army Elementary School and joined the Tongmenghui, adopting the sobriquet "Zhenru" (真如, "suchness") after encountering the term through Tan Sitong's ''Renxue''. He went on to the Nanjing Army Fourth Middle School and Baoding Military Academy and took part in the 1911 Wuchang Uprising as a student-soldier under Huang Xing, meeting Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing on January 1, 1912. In 1913, back in Guangzhou for the anti-Yuan Shikai "Second Revolution," he was jailed after a bomb plot against the warlord Long Jiguang was discovered; he was bailed out through a schoolmate's family pharmacy.<ref>我在辛亥前後所接觸的人和事 [People and Events I Encountered Around the 1911 Revolution], in ''陳銘樞紀念文集 1889–1989'' [Commemorative Volume for Chen Mingshu] (1989), pp. 73–91, originally published in ''文史資料選輯'' no. 75 (June 1961).</ref>

Through the 1920s Chen rose within the Guangdong armies of Chen Jiongming and then the National Revolutionary Army, commanding units that, alongside those of Deng Yanda, Ye Ting, and Zhang Fakui, helped defeat Wu Peifu's forces during the Northern Expedition, earning his corps the nickname "Iron Army." He served as Governor of Guangdong from 1928 to 1931, when he resigned amid the Chiang–Hu Hanmin crisis. In late 1931 he was named Acting President of the Executive Yuan (December 15–28, 1931), then Vice President of the Executive Yuan and Minister of Communications; as Shanghai Garrison Commander he directed, with Jiang Guangnai and Cai Tingkai, the 19th Route Army's month-long resistance to the Japanese attack on Shanghai in the January 28 Incident of 1932. Chen's own account of the crisis describes Chiang privately proposing, that autumn, that the two of them become sworn brothers in the manner of the "Peach Garden Oath" (桃園結義) of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms; Chen refused him to his face, telling Chiang that as head of state what the country needed from him was open governance and sound policy, not a private bond among a few.<ref>"寧粵合作"末歷記 ["Ningyue Cooperation": A Personal Account], in 陳銘樞紀念文集 1889–1989 [Commemorative Volume for Chen Mingshu] (1989), pp. 34–91, originally published in 文史資料選輯 no. 75 (June 1961), at p. 44.</ref>

Starting in 1930, while still Guangdong's governor, Chen personally financed the takeover of the Shanghai-based Shenzhou Guoguang Press, a cultural-publishing house founded in 1901. Under the editorial direction of Wang Lixi and, initially, Huang Jusu, the press shifted from reprinting classical painting albums toward Marxist and left-wing publishing, translating Marx, Engels, and Lenin and running the influential journal ''Dushu Zazhi'' (讀書雜誌), whose "Debate on Chinese Social History" (中國社會史論戰) became one of the major intellectual controversies of the early 1930s.<ref>Chen Mingshu, ''陈铭枢回忆录'', ch. 8, "经营神州国光社."</ref> The press was raided and its provincial branches shut down after the collapse of the Fujian Rebellion, survived in reduced form through the Sino-Japanese War, and continued publishing after 1949 with state support; in 1953, following his own study of the Party's transition-period program, Chen proactively requested its nationalization, completed in 1954.

In November 1933 Chen joined Li Jishen and the 19th Route Army leadership in founding the short-lived "Fujian People's Government" against Chiang Kai-shek, heading its Culture Committee; after its defeat in early 1934 he went into exile in Hong Kong and Europe. He was received in Moscow on a Comintern-organized visit in 1936, helped organize an overseas Chinese anti-Japanese league in Paris, and after returning to China chaired the Chinese branch of the International Anti-Aggression Congress in Hankou in 1938, sharing a platform with Soong Ching-ling, Mao Zedong, and Feng Yuxiang. In 1943 he co-founded the Three People's Principles Comrades Alliance with Tan Pingshan, which merged in 1948 with the GMD Democratic Promotion Association to form the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (民革/RCCK). Around the 1949 transition he helped persuade several Nationalist officials toward defection, attended the first CPPCC session, and was elected to the new Central People's Government Council, later holding posts including Central-South regional vice-chairman and standing member of the CPPCC and NPC.

In 1952, when Mao Zedong harshly criticized the scholar Liang Shuming in a public session, Chen defended Liang on the spot and was criticized within the RCCK for it.<ref>Zhang Lifan 章立凡 (2007), 〈《陳銘樞上毛澤東書》讀後〉 [Reading "Chen Mingshu's Letter to Chairman Mao"], ''隨筆'' (1): 74–83.</ref> In 1950 he sent Mao a set of essays proposing that dialectical materialism and Mahāyāna Buddhism were philosophically compatible. Mao's brief reply of June 12, 1950 was noncommittal: he wrote that he had only skimmed the piece and could not study it closely enough to offer an opinion, but felt some of its points needed further reconsideration, and apologized for the delay in replying.<ref>Mao Zedong, letter to Chen Mingshu, June 12, 1950, in ''毛澤東書信選集'' [Selected Letters of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1983), p. 380.</ref> During the 1957 rectification campaign Chen spoke candidly at several forums and, on May 18, privately urged Mao—who had floated retiring as state chairman—to follow through, comparing him favorably to George Washington and Bismarck, while also admonishing him for four faults: grandiosity (好大喜功), volatility (喜怒無常), over-reliance on biased reports (偏聽偏信), and contempt for classical culture (輕視古典).<ref>Zhang Lifan (2007); excerpts of the letter's more personal closing lines also appear in Ye Yonglie 葉永烈, ''反右派始末'' [The Full Story of the Anti-Rightist Campaign] (Xining: Qinghai People's Publishing House, 2000), pp. 391–396.</ref> The letter became central evidence in his subsequent denunciation; Chen was labeled a "rightist" and stripped of his posts, though he retained his CPPCC seat. Mao himself referred to Chen's criticisms twice more in public, at the January 1958 Supreme State Conference and the July 1959 Lushan Conference, without naming him the first time.<ref>Zhang Lifan (2007), citing ''毛澤東思想萬歲'' [Long Live Mao Zedong Thought] (1958–1960), p. 17, and Li Rui 李銳, ''廬山會議實錄'' [A Factual Record of the Lushan Conference], rev. ed. (Zhengzhou: Henan People's Publishing House, 1996), pp. 57–58.</ref> He was rehabilitated in 1979, after the fall of the Gang of Four.<ref>Li Jiayou 李家友, 〈陈铭枢生平事略〉 [A Brief Account of Chen Mingshu's Life].</ref> Chen suffered a fatal heart attack on May 15, 1965, during an RCCK meeting celebrating China's second nuclear test.<ref>Zhang Lifan (2007).</ref>