Tu Chung-yuan (1895-1943), liberal journalist associated in Shanghai with Tsou T'ao-fen (q.v.) in dissemination ofanti-Japanese materials before 1937, for which action he was arrested by the National Government. He later went to Sinkiang, where he served under his fellow- Manchurian Sheng Shih-ts'ai (q.v.), who in 1943 had him executed as a "leftist." The Kaiyuan district of Liaoning in southern Manchuria was the native place of Tu Chungyuan. After receiving his early education at local schools in Manchuria, he went to Japan where he came to know Sheng Shih-ts'ai, also a native of Kaiyuan. Little is known about Tu's career during the 1920's except that he established himself in business at Mukden, where he operated a plant that manufactured chinaware.

The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 brought an abrupt change in Tu Chung-yuan's life. Rather than remaining in Mukden under Japanese rule, he abandoned his business and moved to Shanghai. He soon established contact with Tsou T'ao-fen (q.v.), editor of a popular liberal Chinese journal called Sheng-huo chou-kan [life weekly]. In October 1933, while Tsou was abroad, the magazine was suppressed by the Nationalist authorities. Shortly thereafter, Tu Chung-yuan resumed publication under a slightly different name, Hsin-sheng chou-k'an [new life weekly]. With Tu as editor and publisher, the new journal gave emphatic expression to anti-Japanese views. In the inaugural issue of February 1934, Tu remarked that the fervent anti-Japanese sentiment of 1931-32 had subsided; and he said that his periodical would articulate a new call to arms. The Chinese phrase used, na-han [call to arms], evoked memories of the famous collection of short stories under that title written by Lu Hsün (Chou Shu-jen, q.v.) a decade earlier. On 2 July 1935 Tu Chung-yuan was arrested and called before the high court of Kiangsu province. On 8 July, after having been denied the right of appeal, he was sentenced to 14 months in prison on charges that the Hsinsheng chou-k'an, in its issue of 4 May 1935, had published an article derogatory to the Japanese emperor. The article under attack had stated, with reference to emperors in general, that the institution had become meaningless, and it had concluded that the most pitiable of emperors was P'u-yi (q.v.), the putative emperor of Manchoukuo. The Japanese authorities, then pressing hard to extend control over the five provinces of north China, inflated the charge into an international issue, made official representations at Nanking, and moved the flagship of their eleventh destroyer flotilla from Hankow to Nanking. In fact, the article that aroused Japanese attention was probably another one entirely: an editorial by Tu Chung-yuan that appeared in the 22 June 1934 issue of the journal. In that editorial Tu had spoken out strongly against growing Japanese imperialism in China since 1931 and had sternly criticized the official "forbearance" policy of the Chinese government. The Chinese, Tu stated, "have nothing to lose but the chains of imperialism." Nanking, again bowing to Japanese pressure, had responded by suspending the Hsin-sheng chou-kan, jailing Tu Chung-yuan in a manner that violated normal legal procedures, dismissing seven members of the Kuomintang censorship committee at Shanghai, and issuing new warnings to the Chinese press to adhere to earlier regulations that prohibited acts "obstructing friendly relations" between China and foreign powers. In November 1935 Tsou T'ao-fen, after his return to China, launched another new journal, the Ta-chung sheng-huo [life of the masses] to replace the Hsin-sheng chou-kan. Tu remained in prison at least until September 1936; and Tsou T'ao-fen and other members of the National Salvation Association were arrested in November of that year.

In September 1937, after the Sino-Japanese war began, he journeyed overland to Sinkiang province, where Sheng Shih-ts'ai had gained power. Tu spent several months in Sinkiang gathering materials on political and economic developments. After Tu returned to Hankow, Tsou T'ao-fen urged him to publish his findings. The result was a volume, Sheng Shih-ts'ai yü hsin Hsin-chiang [Sheng Shih-ts'ai and the new Sinkiang], with a preface written by Tsou T'ao-fen which lauded Tu as "a most loyal comrade" in the national salvation movement. Tu's book, originally published in 1938, went through several editions and provided useful information on developments in Sinkiang, where Sheng Shih-ts'ai, with Soviet assistance, was then introducing significant changes in the economic and social life of the province. Two of Sheng Shih-ts'ai's major political precepts at that time were anti-imperialism and friendship with the Soviet Union. As a frustrated patriot disillusioned with the National Government, Tu Chung-yuan believed that he could better serve China in Sinkiang than in China proper. Accordingly, late in 1938 he returned to Sinkiang, where Sheng Shih-ts'ai had appointed a number of Chinese Communists from Yenan as officials and advisers {see Ch'en T'an-ch'iu, Mao Tse-min) in the provincial government. At Urumchi he was named chancellor of Sinkiang Academy, where the prominent novelist Mao Tun (Shen Yen-ping, q.v.) was serving as dean of studies. Tu attempted to develop an institution that would reflect the complex racial and linguistic composition of the population of Sinkiang and offer new facilities for non-Chinese previously denied equal educational opportunities.

Sheng Shih-ts'ai later moved away from his pro-Soviet orientation and began to apply stringent political controls throughout Sinkiang. Two of Tu Chung-yuan's colleagues at the Sinkiang Academy, Liu Kuei-pin and Hsing Kuo-wen, were arrested; and Mao Tun left in the spring of 1940 for Yenan. Tu and some other associates also requested permission to leave, but Sheng Shih-ts'ai denied the request. During 1940, according to Sheng Shih-ts'ai's account, his security police unearthed an extensive conspiracy in which Tu Chung-yuan, as well as Soviet advisers and technicians, were implicated. Despite this development, Tu Chung-yuan continued for a time to hold his post at Urumchi as chancellor of the Sinkiang Academy. Late in 1941, however, Tu and others were arrested on charges of plotting Sheng Shih-ts'ai's downfall. This action was taken partly in response to the changed international situation after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, an attack which led Sheng to reconsider the logic of maintaining a pro-Russian orientation. He soon began to arrest Communists and fellowtravelers within his domain to justify a shift of allegiance to the Chinese National Government. Many of the human pawns held in Sheng's Sinkiang prisons later died. Among them was Tu Chung-yuan, who apparently perished in 1943. Sheng Shih-ts'ai's version of the case was that Tu had poisoned himself in fear of Chinese Communist reprisals. Another estimate is that Tu was poisoned by Sheng's military medical service.

Paradoxically, Tu Chung-yuan had some posthumous influence outside China. Sheng Shih-ts'ai yü hsin Hsin-chiang was one of the Chinese sources used by Martin R. Norins in his book Gateway to Asia: Sinkiang, Frontier of the Chinese Far West, published in New York in 1944. The Norins book provides a useful selection of English paraphrases translated from Tu Chung-yuan's earlier volume on Sheng Shih-ts'ai's Sinkiang of the 1937 period. Tu Yü-ming T. Kuang-t'ing it *?