Yün Tai-ying (1895-April 1931), Marxist intellectual and leader of the Young China Association, the Socialist Youth League, and the Hupeh branch of the Chinese Communist party. A noted propagandist, he edited the Hsin Shu Pao [new Szechwan daily], the Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien [China youth], and the Hung-ch'i-pao [red flag]. Yün was executed at Nanking in 1931.

Although his family's native place was Wuchin, Kiangsu, Yün Tai-ying was born in Wuchang, Hupeh. Several of his forebears had been scholar-officials. While Yün was a student at Chung-hua University in Wuchang, his family's finances became straitened, and he began to earn his living as a writer. He developed an interest in the work-study movement which was prevalent in student circles in China during the years after the First World War, and he organized the Li-ch'ün Society, sometimes translated as the Social Welfare Society, after his graduation from Chung-hua University in 1919. That society sponsored a bookstore as a channel for distributing materials on Marxism to students and established a small textile factory so that members of the society could earn a living while studying. Although the factory soon went bankrupt because of the relative inefficiency of its operations, the Lich'ün Bookstore became a center of radical intellectual activity in the central Yangtze valley. As students who had been exposed to Marxist ideas through the bookstore moved on to become teachers in the area, Yün's reputation grew.

Yün himself found a post as instructor and dean at the normal school in the T'ungch'eng district of Anhwei of which Chang Po-chün (q.v.) was principal. As dean, he organized the students into study groups to discuss Marxist ideas. After these activities came to the attention of the Anhwei provincial authorities, who were generally unsympathetic to radical ideas, Yün returned to Wuchang, where he taught at Chung-hua University.

In the early summer of 1921, Yün Tai-ying convened a meeting of young people who had taken part in the Li-ch'ün movement. Also present at this meeting, held at Huangkang, Hupeh, were representatives of the Wen-hua Bookstore at Changsha in Hunan province, which had been established in the autumn of 1920 through the work of Mao Tse-tung and other Hunanese radicals. Under Yün's leadership, the Hupeh meeting voted to organize the Kung-ts'un-she [mutual preservation society] and drafted a constitution which approved of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the principles of the new regime in Russia. Yün himself, however, was still not completely committed to the concept of proletarian revolution, for he was also an active leader of the Shao-nien Chung-kuo hsueh-hui (Young China Association), organized by Li Ta-chao and Tseng Ch'i (qq.v.) at Peking in 1918 and dedicated to the rejuvenation of China with "scientific spirit." When the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist party met at Shanghai in July 1921, Yün was at Nanking, chairing the opening session of the first conference of the Young China Association. After the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, Yün dissolved the Kung-ts'un-she and led most of its members to join the Hupeh branch of the Chinese Communist party and the Socialist Youth League. He then went to Szechwan and became dean of the Lu-chou Normal School. In Szechwan, he and Hsiao Ch'u-nu (1894-1927), another young Communist from Hupeh, edited the Hsin Shu Pao [new Szechwan daily], which propagated radical ideas. In a retrospective estimate made in 1950 of Yün Tai-ying's influence upon the youth of Szechwan in the early 1920's, Kuo Mo-jo (q.v.), who became a close associate of Yün during the Northern Expedition of 1926-27, stated that nine out of ten young Sechwanese who left their native towns to enroll in the Whampoa Military Academy in Kwangtung had probably been inspired by Yün's revolutionary propaganda. In Szechwan, Yün also became acquainted with Wu Yüchang (q.v.), then an influential intellectual in the province who was able to assist in obtaining Yün's release from prison in Szechwan after Yün was arrested in 1922.

In August 1923, when Chang T'ai-lei (q.v.), general secretary of the Socialist Youth League, left for the Soviet Union with Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Communist party ordered Yün Tai-ying to Shanghai to assist in youth work. He attended the second congress of the Socialist Youth League and was elected to its central committee. After that meeting, he took charge of Youth League propaganda work. Together with Hsiao Ch'u-nü, he edited its official journal, Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien [China youth], the first issue of which appeared in October 1923. While in Shanghai, Yün also taught at Shanghai University, an institution which, during its brief existence, inspired many young Chinese to join the Northern Expedition and trained many cadres for the Chinese Communist party. After the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party began their period of collaboration in 1923, Yün joined the Kuomintang and became secretary of the department of workers and peasants at its Shanghai executive headquarters. He was in Shanghai at the time of the May Thirtieth Incident in 1925 and became a prominent leader of anti-British activities after that affair. Threats from Sun Ch'uan-fang (q.v.), who was then in control of Shanghai, subsequently forced Yün to flee. He went to Canton to attend the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang in January 1926, where he was one of the Communists elected to the Central Executive Committee of that party. After Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Communist coup in March 1926, the Chinese Communist party ordered Yün to the Whampoa Military Academy, where he became a political instructor with the mission of attempting to counterbalance the influence of Chiang Kai-shek.

With the rapid military success of the Northern Expedition during the summer of 1926, Yün moved to Wuhan, where he worked with other Communists in the Hupeh provincial government. Yün's most important post, however, was at the Wuhan branch of the Central Military Academy, of which Chiang Kai-shek was ex officio commandant and Teng Yen-ta (q.v.) was acting commandant. Because both Chiang and Teng were occupied with other matters, the actual administration of the Wuhan academy fell largely to Chou Fo-hai (q.v.). When Teng Yen-ta named Yün Taiying chief political instructor, Yün took over practical control of the institution's political department. In that capacity he played an important role in mobilizing the academy cadets to support Yeh T'ing (q.v.), the garrison commander at Wuchang, in suppressing the rebellion of Hsia Tou-yin.

In the spring of 1927 Yün Tai-ying was elected to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party at its Fifth National Congress, held at Hankow. Following the split between the Wuhan faction of the Kuomintang and the Communists in July, Yün was one of the organizers of the Nanchang Uprising {see Yeh T'ing) of 1 August 1927. He then accompanied Yeh T'ing and Ho Lung (q.v.) on their flight southward from Nanchang. After their defeat at Swatow, Yün went to Hong Kong, which he used as a base for attempts to reorganize the battered Communist forces. He was one of the planners of the Canton Commune of December 1927 [see Chang T'ai-lei) and was secretary general of the short-lived Canton soviet government. When the Canton Commune was suppressed, he returned to the British colony of Hong Kong, where he edited the Hung-ch' i-pao [red flag], an underground Communist publication.

In mid- 1928, when the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Communist party met in Moscow, Yün went to Shanghai to work in the propaganda department of the Central Committee. His well-known polemical essay, "On Shih Ts'un-t'ung's Theory of the Chinese Revolution," soon was published in Bolshevik. In this essay, Yün stated that the reason the Chinese Communist party had not encouraged workers and peasants to enter the Kuomintang —the accusation made by Shih—was because the Communists feared that the workers and peasants might be influenced by the bourgeoisie. In the autumn of 1929 a rumor reached Shanghai to the eff"ect that Mao Tse-tung had died in the countryside. The central authorities of the party dispatched Yün to the Kiangsi- Fukien soviet areas to investigate. Mao, of course, had not died, and Yün returned to become secretary of a district party committee in Shanghai. He was arrested in April 1930. Some reports suggest that Li Li-san (q.v.), annoyed both by Yün's criticism and by his popularity within the party, had intended that Yün be arrested when he assigned him to this position, which entailed great risk for a Communist of Yün's prominence. At the trial, Yün posed as a worker by the name of Wang Tso-lin. His identity was not discovered, and he was sentenced to five years in a Nanking prison rather than to death. When Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai and Chou En-lai (qq.v.) returned from Moscow in August 1930, they immediately set to work to arrange Yün's escape. In April 1931, however, after Ku Shun-chang defected to the Kuomintang, Yün's identity became known. He was executed in Nanking in April 1931, only a few days before the intended escape was scheduled to take place. He died at the age of 36 sui.

Yün Tai-ying married twice. His first wife died before 1927. He married his wife's younger sister, Shen Pao-ying, in 1927. They had a son in 1928. Yün Tzu-ch'iang, in later years a prominent scientist in China, was Yün Tai-ying's younger brother.

Yün Tai-ying reportedly led a simple and frugal life. Some individuals in the Communist party called him the "saint of the proletariat" and regarded him as the embodiment of the true Communist spirit. An articulate speaker, Yün showed great skill in arousing his audiences. At the same time, he was a prolific and effective writer. Many of his articles appeared in the Tung-fang tsa-chih and the Hsueh-sheng tsa-chih. He was also a contributor to Hsin ch'ing-nien edited by Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.) and others, which published his essays "On the Reality of Matter" and "On Belief" Yün translated from English many articles on social questions and published them in Chinese journals. Most of his original writings were on contemporary Chinese problems and were published in Chungkuo ch'ing-nien under the pen names Tan I and Tai Ying. It is because of the widespread influence which this journal exercised over the youth of China in the years just before the Northern Expedition that Yün Tai-ying and his close friend, Hsiao Ch'u-nü, gained a place in the history of the Chinese Communist party.