Cheng Fangwu
Cheng Fangwu (; August 24, 1897 – 17 May 1984) was a top level politician in the Communist Party of China (CCP). Before joining the party, he was active as an author of the new literature and a translator. After joining the CCP, he quickly rose through the ranks to become in charge of the party's political education apparatus. After participating in the Long March, he established a mobile university to instruct Communist soldiers and party members as they waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, Cheng became President of Shandong University and helped establish Renmin University. He was purged in 1974 during the Cultural Revolution but given a sinecure translating Marx and Engels' texts into Chinese. Cheng was rehabilitated in 1978, and spent the final years of his life as President of Renmin University. Biography Cheng Fangwu was born in Xinhua County, Hunan in 1897. He went to Japan in 1910 as a student of Military Science at the Tokyo Imperial University. He returned to China in 1921 and joined the Creation Society circle of scholars with Yu Dafu and other Chinese intellectuals, publishing numerous articles promulgating the new literature. He was appointed to the faculty of Sun Yat-sen University in Canton in 1924 and also to the Physics faculty at Whampoa Military Academy. He joined the Kuomintang Party in 1925. Despite the establishment jobs he soon became close to Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong and joined a failed Communist coup d'état. On the government arrest list, Cheng then went in exile to Japan and later Europe, specifically Germany. He mastered the German language and years later authored the direct translation from German to Chinese of Marx and Engels "The Communist Manifesto" which became texts for the Chinese Communist Party. 1928 he joined the Chinese Communist Party in Paris and published their house journal. Cheng returned to China in September 1931 and soon went to the Eyuwan Soviet (鄂豫皖), a Communist base that straddled 3 provinces (Hubei, Anhui and Henan). In this mountainous region Cheng became the senior commissar responsible for most of the administrative activity, including the economy, education, taxation and transportation. At the second Chinese Soviet Congress in 1934, he was elected to various positions including head of the Party Education Committee and member of the Central Committee. From then on, Cheng was responsible for the Party education system as it evolved. Long March and Beyond In October 1934, the CCP decided to abandon its bases in southern China and embarked on the Long March towards the more remote northwest. Cheng accompanied the Chinese Red Army on the march. One year later, they arrived in the Yan'an caves of northern Shaanxi. There the CCP established a new base area that they successfully defended against Nationalist suppression campaigns. In 1937, the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War led thousands of Chinese students to flee the cities of northern China, many ending up in Shaanxi.