Ch'en Po-ta 陳伯達 Ch'en Po-ta (1905-) was known as one of the Chinese Communist party's leading spokesmen on international Communist affairs and the interpreter of the political thought of Mao Tse-tung in such works as Mao Tse-tung on the Chinese Revolution. He drafted many of the editorials in the Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily] and edited the Hung-ch'i [red flag]. He served as chief of the research section of the Central Committee's department of propaganda (1937— 49) and became an alternate member of the Political Bureau in 1956.

A native of Huian hsien, Fukien, Ch'en Po-ta was born into a poor peasant family. When the republic was established in 1912, he was a boy of school age. His family background would scarcely have given him the opportunity for a formal education. However, about that time the overseas Chinese leader Tan Kah Kee (Ch'en Chia-keng, q.v.) decided to expand educational opportunities for the poor children of his native district in Fukien; he established the Chimei Primary School in his native village of Chimei, in Tungan hsien, the mainland opposite Amoy. Although intended primarily for children of Chimei, the institution also opened its doors to some children from neighboring villages. At this school Ch'en Po-ta received his basic education. As time passed, the Chimei school expanded to include a normal school, and the young Ch'en Po-ta apparently continued his studies there.

Since a college education was out of the question, Ch'en joined the local army. He served first as a clerk, but later rose to become secretary in the army of the local warlord, Chang Chen. Because the Changchow area of southern Fukien was used as a base by the Kwangtung Army under Ch'en Chiung-ming (q.v.) during the 1918-20 period, it is probable that Ch'en. Po-ta knew of the social reform measures promoted by Ch'en Chiung-ming. However, there is no information regarding Ch'en Po-ta's activities until the year 1927, when, after the breakdown of the alliance between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists, he was reported to be in the Soviet Union. By that time he had joined the Chinese Communist party and was studying at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. Ch'en Po-ta returned to China in 1930 and secured a position on the faculty of China College at Peiping. The president of that institution was the prominent diplomat C. T. Wang (Wang Cheng-t'ing, (q.v.). China College, which reportedly had the largest number of underground Communist party members of any college or university in Peiping, was an important center of political activity at the time of the patriotic student demonstrations of 9 December 1935. Ch'en Po-ta apparently was involved in the demonstrations, but his role in them is not known. During the months before the outbreak of war with Japan, the Chinese Communist party advocated a united front with the National Government. Ch'en wrote a series of articles in magazines such as Tu-shu sheng-huo [intellectual life] and Hsin shih-chi [new century] in which he advocated a so-called new enlightenment movement. He stressed the need for all Chinese intellectuals and students to unite against foreign aggression and against the revival of Confucianism.

When the war broke out in the summer of 1937, Ch'en Po-ta went to Yenan, the new base of the Chinese Communists. There he established contact with Mao Tse-tung. From 1937 through 1942 he served as instructor at the Central Party School in Yenan and was chief of the research section in the department of propaganda of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party. Some reports state that Mao was not immediately impressed by Ch'en Po-ta because Ch'en, who was primarily a scholar and writer, was a poor speaker and did not enjoy social activities. Later, however, Mao showed increasing approval of Ch'en's writings. Ch'en was made a political secretary to Mao, and it was generally believed that he helped to draft Mao's speeches and essays.

In 1942 Ch'en Po-ta was sent to Chungking, where he served as an editor of the Chinese Communist newspaper Hsin-hua jih-pao and at the Sheng-huo Bookstore. In 1943 he returned to Yenan and resumed his connections with the propaganda department of the Central Committee, which he maintained thereafter. In 1945, at the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, held at Yenan, Ch'en Po-ta was elected to the Central Committee as an alternate member. A year later, he was elevated to full membership after the death of Wangjo-fei (q.v.).

Victory in the civil war was in sight for the Chinese Communists by 1949, and the Communist authorities, in preparation for the establishment of a new national regime, convened the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at Peking. Ch'en Po-ta attended that meeting as the senior delegate of the social science workers in the country. Although he was not on the First National Committee of the conference formed at the close of the meeting, he was elected to its Second National Committee in 1954 and remained a National Committee member thereafter.

More significant than Ch'en Po-ta's formal government posts was his position in the central apparatus of the Communist party. In 1949 he became the senior deputy director of the propaganda department of the Central Committee. In 1955-56 he was also a deputy director of the rural work department of the Central Committee, and in that capacity he delivered an important address on agricultural reform in February 1956. He was elected to alternate membership on the Political Bureau of the party in 1956. Ch'en accompanied Mao Tse-tung on Mao's visit to the Soviet Union (December 1949-February 1950) for the negotiations which established the Sino-Soviet alliance. In 1957 he accompanied Mao to Moscow to attend the celebrations marking the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.

It is generally believed that Ch'en Po-ta and Hu Ch'iao-mu shared responsibility for drafting most of the important editorials in the Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily], the organ of the Central Committee. It is noteworthy that on 1 July 1951, the thirtieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist party, two of the most important articles released from Peking were Ch'en Po-ta's "Mao Tse-tung's Theory of the Chinese Revolution Is the Combination of Marxism-Leninism with the Chinese Revolution"; and Hu Ch'iaomu's "Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China." Both of these essays were openly critical of such men as Chang Wen-t'ien, Ch'en Shao-yü, and Li Li-san (qq.v.), who were members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party. Ch'en Po-ta's article was extremely outspoken in criticism of Ch'en Shao-yü, who was accused of left deviationism in the early 1930's and of right deviationism at the time of the outbreak of the war against Japan. The importance of Ch'en J'o-ta's July 1951 essay, embodying the most extreme criticism of Ch'en Shao-yü published by the Chinese Communists up to that time, was noted by many observers : if relations between Ch'en Po-ta and Mao Tse-tung were in fact close, that essay may be taken to represent Mao's personal views on the subject.

A prolific writer, Ch'en Po-ta produced a variety of works. His series of articles on the so-called new enlightenment movement, which was carried in the magazines Tu-shu sheng-huo and Hsin shih-chi included the following essays: "Che-hsueh te kuo-fang tung-yuan" [philosophical mobilization for national defense] ; "Hsin che-hsueh-che te tzu-chi p'i-p'ing ho kuan-yü hsin-ch'i-meng yun-tung te chien-i" [self-critique of a new philosopher and a proposal concerning the new enlightenment movement] ; "Tsai-lun hsin-ch'i-meng yun-tung: ssu-hsiang te tzu-yu yü tzu-yu te ssu-hsiang" [more on the new enlightenment movement: freedom of thought and free thought] ; and "Lun hsin-ch'i-meng yun-tung" [on the new enlightenment movement]. All these articles were published in 1936. Ai Ssu-ch'i (q.v.) and Ho Kan-chih, who were both later to become influential Communist publicists, enthusiastically supported Ch'en Po-ta's views at the time. In 1938 he published Lun nung-min wen-Ci [on the peasant problem]. The next year he wrote San-min chu-i kai-lun [general comment on the Three People's Principles]. At that time the Chinese Communists were professing their acceptance of the Three People's Principles of the Kuomintang, and Ch'en's work was intended to justify this position.

In 1944 the Chinese Communists at Yenan launched a campaign for the study of party history. In connection with that drive Ch'en Po-ta produced two short books. The first, Kuan-yü shih-nien nei-chan, was later published in an English version entitled Notes on Ten Years of Civil War, 1927-1936, released by the Foreign Language Press at Peking in 1954. The other work, Tu "Hunan nung-min yun-tung k'ao-ch'a pao-kao," was published in English in Peking in 1954 under the title, Notes on Mao Tse-tung 's Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan.

In 1946 Ch'en Po-ta produced a study of Yuan Shih-k'ai entitled Ch'ieh-kuo ta-tao Yuan Shih-k'ai [Yuan Shihk-'ai, the brigand who stole the nation]. It was published by the Ch'iu-yin Publishing House, probably in one of the Communist-occupied base areas. In 1945-46 he also wrote a book on the land tax in China entitled Chin-tai Chung-kuo ti-tsu kai-shuo [general study of land rent in China], which was published in 1947 by the Hsin-hua Book Store and reprinted in Peking in 1949. A revised edition was published by the People's Publishing House in 1953.

In the course of the civil war, Ch'en Po-ta, as one of the major figures in the Chinese Communist propaganda apparatus, produced several polemical works attacking the leaders of the Kuomintang. In 1948 he wrote Jen-min kung-li Chiang Chieh-shih [the people's public enemy Chiang Kai-shek], which was circulated extensively in the Communist-controlled areas of China. The following year, 1949, saw the publication of three other volumes: P'ing "Chung-kuo chih ming-yun" [critique of China's Destiny], a harsh review of the book written by Chiang Kai-shek ; Yen Hsi-shan p'i-p'ing [critique of Yen Hsi-shan], a hostile appraisal of the political and economic policies of Yen Hsi-shan (q.v.) in Shansi province during the war against Japan; and Chung-kuo ssu-ta chia-tsu [China's four big families], an attack on Chiang Kai-shek, T. V. Soong, H. H. K'ung, Ch'en Kuo-fu, and Ch'en Li-fu (qq.v.). All these were published by the Hsin-hua Book Store in Peking. Another book, Chung-kuo ching-chi te kai-tsao [reform of China's economy] also appeared in 1949, published by the Hsin Min-chu Publishing House of Hong Kong.

In 1949, in celebration of Stalin's seventieth birthday, Ch'en Po-ta wrote Ssu-ta-lin yü Chungkuo ko-ming [Stalin and the Chinese revolution], which was published in English in 1953. Later, in 1952, he wrote an article entitled "In Commemoration of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Publication of Comrade Stalin's Great Work, Problems of the Chinese Revolution." These works led some observers to consider Ch'en the Chinese Communist party's leading spokesman on international Communist affairs. The claim for Ch'en Po-ta's role as the interpreter of the political thought of Mao Tse-tung is based in part on his articles written on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist party in 1951. In addition to the important essay "Mao Tse-tung's Theory of the Chinese Revolution Is the Combination of Marxism-Leninism with the Chinese Revolution" noted above, Ch'en Po-ta wrote Lun Mao Tse-tung ssu-hsiang, which was issued in English under the title Mao Tse-tung on the Chinese Revolution, first published by the People's Publishing House in 1951.

Ch'en Po-ta also contributed articles to several important symposia. He contributed to the collection of articles published at Hong Kong in 1947 under the title Jen-hsing, tang-hsing, ko-hsing [human nature, party character, and individual character]. In 1950 the Tung-li Bookstore at Shanghai released a symposium on Lu Hsün (Chou Shu-jen, q.v.), with Mao Tse-tung and Ch'en Po-ta among the contributors. In 1960 the San-lien Bookstore symposium, Hsueh-hsi Mao Tse-tung ssu-hsiang [study the thought of Mao Tse-tung], contained contributious by Ch'en and others.

Ch'en Po-ta's stature as a top-ranking political theoretician resulted from his personal relations with Mao Tse-tung and from his senior position in the central propaganda apparatus of the Chinese Communist party. In 1958, when the Chinese Communist party established a new theoretical journal, Hung-cKi [red flag], Ch'en Po-ta was named chief editor. Hung-cKi and the People's Daily in Peking served as the principal channels through which the top leadership of the Chinese Communist party released its major doctrinal statements in the ensuing bitter conflict with the leadership of the Soviet party. In the People's Republic of China, Ch'en Po-ta's political influence has been strong in-the realm of advanced research, particularly in philosophy and the social sciences. For some years he held the post of vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Peking. His 1952 Speech before the Study Group of Research Members of Academia Sinica was issued by the Foreign Language Press in 1953.