Teng Yen-ta (1895-29 November 1931), director of the general political department of the National Revolutionary Army during the Northern Expedition. Beginning in 1927 he opposed Chiang Kai-shek's leadership, and in 1930 he organized the Provisional Action Committee of the Kuomintang, known as the Third Party. He was executed by the Nationalists as a traitor in 1931.

Huichou (Waichow), Kwangtung, was the birthplace of Teng Yen-ta. At the age of 12 sui he enrolled at the Whampoa Military Primary School in Canton, where such other future leaders as Hsueh Yueh and Yeh T'ing (qq.v.) also received their first military training. Teng was the youngest cadet in his class, but his prowess as a student soon brought him to the attention of the school's dean, Teng K'eng (q.v.). In 1911, with the outbreak of the republican revolution, Teng Yen-ta interrupted his military studies to join the revolutionary forces of Yao Yü-p'ing. After the establishment of the republic in 1912, he returned to Canton to continue his military education. He entered the Kwangtung Short-Term Military School, from which he was graduated in 1914. After studying at the Second Military Preparatory School in Wuchang from 1914 to 1916, he spent the years from 1916 to 1919 at the Paoting Military Academy. In 1919 he was assigned to field duty as a junior officer in the Northwest Frontier Defense Army of Hsu Shu-cheng (q.v.). By this time, Teng K'eng had risen to the position of chief of staff, under Ch'en Chiungming (q.v.), of the Kwangtung Army, which in 1918 had established its headquarters at Changchow in southern Fukien. In 1920 Teng K'eng summoned his former pupil to Changchow and placed him in command of a unit there. Following the reoccupation of Canton by the Kwangtung Army in October 1920, Teng K'eng was made commander of the 1st Division of the reorganized Kwangtung Army, with Teng Yen-ta as a staff officer and commander of an infantry battalion. Teng Yen-ta and his battalion were assigned in late 1 92 1 to serve as a garrison unit guarding Sun Yat-sen's field headquarters at Kweilin. After the assassination of Teng K'eng at Canton in March 1922, the subsequent attempt of Ch'en Chiung-ming to gain sole control of the province, and the flight of Sun Yat-sen to Shanghai, Teng Yen-ta and such other officers as Chang Fa-k'uei and Ch'en Chi-t'ang (qq.v.) worked to preserve the integrity of the 1st Division as an effective military force in support of Sun Yat-sen against Ch'en Chiung-ming. In the winter of 1922, the 1st Division joined with armies from Yunnan and Kwangsi in driving Ch'en Chiung-ming out of Canton. During this period, Li Chi-shen (q.v.) became the commander of the 1st Division, and Teng Yen-ta was named commander of its 3rd Regiment. Early in 1923 Sun Yat-sen returned to Canton, determined to reorganize the Kuomintang. Teng Yen-ta strongly supported the policies of collaboration with the Communists and establishment of a Kuomintang military training school. In January 1924 he was appointed by Sun to a seven-man preparatory committee for the projected military academy at Whampoa, and with the inauguration of the Whampoa Military Academy in May, he was named assistant director, under Li Chi-shen, of its training department. Teng thus played an important part in the academy's initial training programs, designed to imbue the cadets with patriotism and political discipline. Although his energy and enthusiasm for the revolutionary cause made him a popular figure among the Whampoa cadets, he incurred the enmity of such leaders as Wang Po-ling, head of the academy's department of instruction. In late 1924 or early 1925 Teng suddenly resigned his posts and went to Germany.

In Berlin, Teng Yen-ta became acquainted with Chu Teh (q.v.) and with Kao Yü-han and other Chinese Communists there who held regular meetings to study and discuss the doctrines of Marxism. He returned to China, by way of the Soviet Union, in time to attend the Second National Congress ofthe Kuomintang in January 1926, at which he was elected to alternate membership in the Central Executive Committee. At Chiang Kai-shek's request, he returned to Whampoa to serve as dean of the academy. During Chiang's 20 March coup at Canton, however, he was arrested along with a number of Chinese Communist representatives. He was released soon afterwards and was transferred to Ch'aochou in Kwangtung, where he was placed in charge of the local branch of the party military school.

Within a few months, however, Teng was recalled to Canton to assume the most important position of his career: director of the general political department of the National Revolutionary Army. When the Northern Expedition was launched in the summer of 1926, Teng dispatched teams of propagandists in advance of the armies to mobilize the support of the peasants and to investigate peasant conditions as a preliminary step toward agrarian reforms in accordance with Sun Yat-sen's economic doctrine of equalization of land holdings. Teng demonstrated great skill in mass agitation and political organization, and he played a prominent part in the political warfare that contributed to the rapid succession of military victories won by the Northern Expedition in Hunan and Hupeh. With the assistance of Teruni, a Russian adviser attached to the general political department, Teng also acted as chief liaison officer between Chiang Kai-shek and his field commanders, especially T'angSheng-chih (q.v.), the commander of the Eighth Army. As the National Revolutionary Army advanced steadily against the opposing forces of Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.) in Hunan and Hupeh, Teng was virtually the deputy of Chiang Kai-shek in directing military operations, and during the siege of Wuchang, he personally supervised the assault upon the walls of the city. While the offensive against Wuchang was still under way, Chiang appointed Teng chairman of the Hupeh political affairs committee, sharing authority in that province with Ch'en Kung-po (q.v.). After the capture of Wuchang on 10 October, Chiang sent Teng a telegram urging the speedy establishment of the political administration of Hupeh province in consultation with T'ang Sheng-chih.

Up to the conclusion of the military campaigns in Hupeh late in 1926, it appears that close, even cordial, relations were maintained between Chiang Kai-shek and Teng Yen-ta. Teng was able to keep Chiang informed of the activities of T'ang Sheng-chih, who had become the most powerful Nationalist commander on the central front and whom Chiang suspected of independent political ambitions. Toward the end of 1926, however, relations between Chiang and Teng became more strained as growing tension arose between the Kuomintang leaders at Nanchang, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, and those members of the Kuomintang, including Teng Yen-ta, who had set up their headquarters at Wuhan.

Three initial points of disagreement between these two factions were collaboration with Communists, the location of the new capital, and the future military strategy of the Northern Expedition. Following the capture of Wuchang, Teng Yen-ta had flown to Canton to press for the immediate transfer of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee to Wuhan. Teng was a member of the joint session, chaired by Hsu Ch'ien (q.v.), of the Central Executive Committee and the National Government Council, established on 13 December 1926 to function as a temporary government until the National Government and Kuomintang organs were transferred from Canton to Wuhan. However, after the party and government staff arrived at Nanchang on 31 December, Chiang Kai-shek decided that the temporary capital should be located at Nanchang. This political disagreement was heightened by conflict over the military strategy proposed by the party leaders at Nanchang. At a conference ofmilitary commanders held at Nanchang on 1 January 1927 Teng Yen-ta, speaking for the Wuhan leaders, vigorously opposed Chiang's plan to move the Nationalist forces against Nanking and Shanghai instead of pushing directly north toward Peking.

As the Nanchang-Wuhan controversy deepened during the early months of 1927, Teng Yen-ta emerged as one of the most influential leaders of the Kuomintang-Communist coalition at Wuhan. After the third plenary session of the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee, held in Hankow on 10-17 March 1927, the left wing gained ascendancy over Chiang Kai-shek's faction. Teng, retaining his post as head of the general political department, was elected to full membership on the Central Executive Committee and was appointed head of the peasant department of the Kuomintang and a member of the presidium of the reconstituted Military Council. At the end of March, he also was named head of the new Wuhan branch of the Central Political-Military Academy.

As the split between Chiang Kai-shek and the Wuhan regime developed into an open test of strength, Chiang summoned an emergency meeting of the Kuomintang Central Supervisory Committee in Shanghai on 2 April, which decided to launch a "party purification movement" against the Communist and other left-wing leaders of the Kuomintang. Teng Yen-ta was singled out for criticism by Chiang, who, in a "proclamation closing the general political department," accused Teng of packing the department with men who wished to destroy the national revolution. In the following months, documents issued by the government established by Chiang at Nanking in April charged Teng with subverting the Wuhan regime under the Russian adviser Borodin's direction and referred to Teng as the leading exponent of Lenin's policy of armed insurrection by the workers and peasants.

Early in July 1927 the Chung-yang jih-pao [central daily news] at Wuhan carried an article by Teng Yen-ta in which he branded Chiang Kai-shek and Tai Chi-t'ao (q.v.) as traitors to Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles and called for a punitive expedition against Chiang and "all reactionary elements." By this time, however, many members of the Kuomintang left wing in Wuhan, then headed by Wang Ching-wei (q.v.), had begun to seek a rapprochement with the Nanking regime. One reason for this action was that Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.), who held the balance of power in China, had decided to support Chiang. At an informal meeting of the presidium of the Military Council in Wuhan, it was decided to expel the Communists from the Kuomintang. Vigorously protesting this decision, Teng Yen-ta resigned immediately from his posts as head of the general political department and the peasant department. He publicly denounced the Wuhan leaders for compromising with Chiang Kaishek and for distorting the Three People's Principles.

Throughout this period, Teng Yen-ta had supported Sun Yat-sen's policies of cooperation with the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists. He had worked closely with his Russian adviser, Teruni, and many of his colleagues and proteges had been Communists. He appears to have adopted Communist techniques and policies of indoctrination and mass organization of peasants. Moreover, his political pronouncements of mid- 192 7 —calling for social revolution against "exploiters and the ruling class" and urging the founding of a socialist state—revealed the influence on him of Marxism-Leninism. Despite his close connections with Communist personnel and doctrine, however, Teng Yen-ta's principal allegiance was to Sun Yat-sen's ideal of national revolution and the Three People's Principles. He regarded Chiang Kai-shek's policies as a betrayal of what he believed to be Sun's political and social ideals, but he also came to view with disfavor certain activities of the Communists at Wuhan. He came to suspect that the Communist policies of political agitation, which threatened to disrupt the vital economic life of the Wuhan cities, were determined less by the national interests of China than by the interests of the Comintern and the Soviet Union. Confronted with the open break between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party, and the impending collapse of an independent left wing of the Kuomintang, Teng began to consider a new possibility: the creation of a third party which would integrate the economic and social ideals of the two existing major parties within the context of Sun Yatsen's theories. Teng Yen-ta left Wuhan in the early summer of 1927. Disguised as a laborer, he proceeded on foot along the Peking-Hankow rail line to Chengchow and then moved westward into Shensi. After reaching T'ungkuan, he joined the automobile caravan which was taking Borodin and other Soviet advisers back to Moscow. Teng arrived at Moscow on 15 August 1927. He was welcomed by delegates of the Third International, and on 1 7 August he was invited to lecture on the "Origins of the Recent Grave Situation in the Chinese Revolution." Teng stated that although the Chinese people welcomed the friendly assistance of the Third International, the Chinese revolution was an entirely Chinese affair and should not be shaped to serve the purposes of the Comintern. The Communist revolution, he argued, applied only to the capitalist nations of Western Europe. In China, a feudal, semi-colonial country, the revolution would be prolonged indefinitely unless the problems of agrarian reform were solved. These views found little favor with Stalin, and Teng secretly left the Soviet Union for Berlin after making a brief visit to the Caucasus.

Despite his disagreements with Nanking, Teng Yen-ta regarded himself as an orthodox member of the Kuomintang. On 1 November 1927 he issued a formal manifesto urging his colleagues in China to organize a provisional action committee of the Kuomintang to function as the legitimate heir to Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary mission and to expose the political heresies of the "spurious" Kuomintang organization at Nanking. In the summer of 1928 he made a trip to Spitsbergen and there turned to a more prosaic itinerary, embarking on a tour to study social and economic conditions in a variety of countries. Between 1928 and 1930 he visited Scandinavia, England, France, Austria, and Italy, as well as Poland, Lithuania and Hungary. In February 1930 he visited Bulgaria, and he later reported that the period he spent there was the happiest of his European sojourn. He considered Bulgaria a worthy model for the future development of China and urged Chinese students to spend time there. After visiting Turkey, Iraq, and India, he arrived at Shanghai in May 1930.

Teng Yen-ta immediately began to work with the so-called Kuomintang provisional central action committee, which had been established at Shanghai in 1928 by a small group of Teng's former associates at Shanghai. Although the affairs of this group had been managed by Chi Fang and others at Shanghai, Teng Yen-ta had been considered its leader since its inception. After T'an P'ing-shan (q.v.) and other former Communists had attempted to reorganize the group into a new party, some of Teng's followers had sent telegrams to Germany urging him to return to China and assume personal direction of the movement. Upon his return to China in 1930, Teng reorganized his forces and drafted a new political program. An organizational conference on 1 September adopted the program, elected a 25-member central executive committee, and issued a manifesto announcing the formation of a new party called the Provisional Action Committee of the Kuomintang. Two weeks later, Teng issued a public statement accusing the Kuomintang at Nanking of betraying the people of China and of becoming the tool of the militarists, bureaucrats, landlords, and financiers. In the same document he criticized the Chinese Communist party for subservience to the Comintern, citing the Canton Commune of December 1927 and the attack on Changsha of July 1930 as instances in which the Chinese Communists had sacrificed the success of the Chinese revolution to the interests of the Soviet Union. He reiterated these charges in an introduction to the new party organ, Ko-ming hsing-tung [revolutionary action].

As the leader of the Third party, as the Provisional Action Committee generally was called, Teng Yen-ta devoted much of his time to writing political essays. The purpose of the Third party, according to Teng, was to carry forward the revolution begun by Sun Yat-sen so that it would become a truly national revolution. It should be a thoroughgoing social upheaval supported by all the "common citizens" [p'ing-min] of China, including the oppressed and exploited elements of the lower middle class. The goal of the revolution was the creation of a socialist state which, through a planned national economy and a policy of land nationalization, would strive to solve the agrarian problem. Although Teng shared some of these aims with the Chinese Communist party, he strongly opposed the concepts of class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because of his outspoken criticism of Chiang Kai-shek and his political activities, Teng Yenta incurred the bitter animosity of the Nationalist authorities in Nanking. In 1931 he further angered them by supporting the secessionist movement at Canton. On 1 7 August 1931 Teng was arrested in the International Settlement at Shanghai and was extradited to Nanking. After some months of imprisonment, he was tried by a military tribunal on charges of treason. On 29 November 1931 he was executed near Nanking. Teng Yen-ta left a political legacy of essays and pronouncements which were collected by his followers and published in a memorial volume entitled Teng Tse-sheng hsien-sheng chi-nien chi. Chang Po-chun (q.v.) succeeded him as head of the Third party, which in 1947 became the China Peasants and Workers Democratic party. It was one ofthe minor parties which participated in the establishment of the Central People's Government at Peking in the autumn of 1949. A special meeting to commemorate the "thirtieth anniversary of the murder" of Teng Yen-ta was held at Peking on the evening of 28 November 1961, with such notables as Chou En-lai and Soong Ch'ing-ling in attendence. Peking's official appraisal of Teng Yen-ta said: "A supporter of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's program of the bourgeois democratic revolution, Teng Yen-ta made certain contributions to the cause of the Chinese People's Revolution." Teng Ying-ch'ao