Teng Fa (1906-8 April 1946), Chinese Communist political worker and labor organizer. He was senior Communist official in Sinkiang in 1937— 38 and head of the central party school in 193942. He also served at Yenan as chief of the workers' committee.

Yünfou, the native place of Teng Fa in Kwangtung, is just west of Canton in an area where seafaring vessels long have plied the lower reaches of the Pearl River. Teng, who was born into an obscure peasant family and who received no formal education, went to work on British ships owned and operated by Butterfield and Swire Company. By 1922 he had become a Western-style cook on river steamers operating between Canton and Hong Kong. The Cantonese seamen's strike directed by Su Chao-cheng (q.v.) in 1922 made a strong impression on Teng Fa, who joined the Chinese Seamen's Union and became known to its leaders. When the major anti-British strike of 1925-26 in the Canton-Hong Kong area began, he was placed in charge of propaganda work for the strike committee headed by Su Chao-cheng. His performance won him entrance into the Whampoa Military Academy, where many volunteers from the ranks of the striking workers were rallying to the cause of nationalism and anti-imperialist revolution in south China. In the winter of 1925 Teng joined the Chinese Communist party.

When the Northern Expedition began in July 1926, Teng Fa remained in south China, where he was assigned to youth work and later, toward the end of 1927, to organizing laborers in the vegetable oil industry in Kwangtung. He participated in the Canton Commune of December 1927 (see Chang T'ai-lei), but received no special notice. After its suppression, he continued to work as a Communist labor organizer. He held various party posts in the Canton-Hong Kong area and gradually established himself as a reliable party worker. His name began to appear in Hung-ch'i [red flag], the organ of the party's Central Committee. The party rewarded him for his services in south China during this period of anti- Communist suppression by sending him to study in the Soviet Union in 1929. At Moscow, Teng had the opportunity to study Russian and to become familiar with the basic doctrines of Marxism-Leninism.

Teng Fa returned to China in the summer of 1930. At the enlarged third plenum of the sixth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party in August-September 1930 at Lushan, Kiangsi, he was elected to the Central Committee. That autumn, he became secretary of the party's Fukien-Kwangtung-Kwangsi committee and chairman of its military subcommittee. From 1931 to 1934 he worked in the Communist-held areas of Kiangsi. When the central soviet government was established at Juichin in November 1931, he was elected to its executive council. About that time, he became chief of the Chinese Communist party's political security bureau, a position he retained throughout the Long March period in 1934-35. After making the Long March, Teng Fa served as a political worker and organizer in northwest China. He was at Sian for a time before the Sian Incident of December 1936 (see Chang Hsueh-liang; Chiang Kai-shek). In 1937 after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in July and the signature of the Sino-Soviet non-aggression pact in August, arrangements were made with Sheng Shih-ts'ai (q.v.) of Sinkiang to send a group of Chinese Communist cadres to that province. The Communist top command at Yenan assigned Teng Fa to duty in Sinkiang, with concurrent responsibilities as the Urumchi representative of the Eighth Route Army and of the party Central Committee. Teng served as the senior Chinese Communist official in Sinkiang until 1939, when he was replaced by Ch'en T'an-ch'iu (q.v.). Teng returned to Yenan to become head of the central party school and chief of the party's workers committee. He thus was responsible for the publication of the Chung-kuo kung-jen [Chinese worker] . After leaving his school post about 1943, he worked to organize handicraft and industrial workers in the Communist-controlled areas in north China. In the spring of 1945 he headed the preparatory committee of the Communist-led Industrial Workers Association. Teng won membership in the party's Political Bureau during the war years, but for reasons that are not clear, he failed to be reelected to the Central Committee at the party's Seventh National Congress at Yenan in 1945. In August 1945 Teng Fa went to Chungking as representative of labor unions in Communist areas to the China Association of Labor, headed by Chu Hsueh-fan (q.v.). Shortly thereafter, he and Chu went to Paris to attend the September-October organization meetings of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), at which they were elected to the new body's executive committee. After touring Western Europe, Teng returned to Chungking in January 1946 by way of Southeast Asia. On 8 April, he left Chungking on a plane bound for Yenan. The plane, apparently off course, crashed in northwestern Shansi, killing Teng Fa and such other prominent Communists as Ch'in Pang-hsien, Wang Jo-fei, and Yeh T'ing (qq.v.). Teng Hsi-hou T. Chin-k'ang n®%