Ho Meng-hsiung Ho Meng-hsiung (1903-7 February 1931), Chinese Communist labor organizer who opposed Li Li-san's policies. He was expelled from the Chinese Communist party in 1931 after opposing the leadership of Chen Shao-yü. He was executed by the Nationalists. Mao Tse-tung later praised him as a "noble martyr." Little is known of Ho Meng-hsiung's early life except that he^was born in Hunan province in Hsiangt'an hsien, Mao Tse-tung's native district, and was graduated from a higher primary school there at the age of 16. He then went to Peking to live with an uncle who was a member of the Parliament. Ho audited classes at Peking University and became active in the Marxist study group formed by Li Tachao (q.v.). He also participated in early attempts to carry the message of Marxism to the railroad workers in north China.

In 1922 the Comintern decided that the Chinese Communists should join the Kuomintang in pursuing the anti-imperialist revolution. The Comintern policy provoked divergent reactions within the Chinese Communist party regarding the extent of cooperation with non- Communist groups and individuals. Ho Menghsiung agreed with Chang Kuo-t'ao (q.v.) who, although favoring the establishment of a united front with the Kuomintang, opposed the idea of having members of the Chinese Communist party join the Kuomintang and work on its behalf Ho Meng-hsiung continued to work as a Communist organizer, but the nature of his activities is not known.

In 1927 Ho was a member of the Kiangsu provincial committee of the Chinese Communist party and a leader of the Communistcontrolled general labor union at Shanghai. By 1930 he had become secretary of the Kiangsu provincial committee and an alternate member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party. From 1928 to 1930 Li Li-san (q.v.) was the most influential man in the central apparatus of the Chinese Communist party, then based at Shanghai. Together with Lo Chang-lung, Ho Meng-hsiung led a faction, composed largely of labor organizers, which opposed Li's leadership. This so-called labor union faction believed that Li Li-san disregarded the practical interests of the workers and that official Communist political policies had a damaging eff"ect on the Communist-led unions. In opposing Li Li-san, the labor union group in the Chinese Communist party organization at Shanghai found itself in temporary alUance with the so-called 28 Bolsheviks {see Ch'en Shao-yü), who had returned in the summer of 1930 from study in Moscow together with Pavel Mif, the Comintern representative assigned to China. At the third plenum of the sixth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party in September 1930, Chou En-lai, who then supported the Li Li-san position, castigated Ho Meng-hsiung and Lo Chang-lung as right deviationists. Chou accused the labor union faction of being opportunistic in pressing for greater emphasis on improving working conditions at the expense of more important political programs. Ho Meng-hsiung wrote a series of letters to the Political Bureau to justify his position. After affirming that he was a loyal Communist and that he accepted the perspective of armed uprisings set by the Comintern in Moscow, Ho stated that relations between the Communist party and the Chinese masses were tenuous and argued that the party should strive to establish a solid proletarian base. To gain this objective, Ho concluded, emphasis should be placed on strikes designed to improve the economic position of urban industrial workers.

At a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist party on 25 November 1930 Pavel Mif attacked both the so-called Li Li-san line and the views of Ho Meng-hsiung and his supporters. In particular, he accused Ho and Lo Chang-lung of a tendency to compromise the goals of the revolutionary movement because of their lack of enthusiasm for politically inspired strikes. Li Li-san was forced to resign from the Political Bureau, but friction soon developed between the two groups that had joined in opposition to Li. Because the labor union faction viewed the 28 Bolsheviks as Moscow-trained intellectuals who had not been hardened by practical organizational activity in China, it was determined to prevent them from dominating the central apparatus of the party. However, at the fourth plenum of the sixth Central Committee in January 1931, Ch'en Shao-yü and his associates gained control of the Political Bureau.

Ho Meng-hsiung and Lo Chang-lung refused to accept the decisions of that plenum. They withdrew and formed a so-called emergency committee to make plans for a separatist movement. Accordingly, the central apparatus of the Chinese Communist party expelled Ho and his associates from the party. On 17 January 1931 a meeting of the emergency committee was raided by the British police, and Ho Meng-hsiung and the other participants were arrested. They were extradited by the Chinese authorities at Shanghai and were executed at Lunghua on 7 February 1931. In editions of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung published after 1949, Ho Menghsiung, Lin Yu-nan, and Li Ch'iu-shih were praised as Communists who did useful work for the Communist party and the Chinese people, maintained close connections with the masses, and, when arrested, "stood up firmly to the enemy and became noble martyrs." A summary of the letters to the Political Bureau written by Ho Meng-hsiung in September-October 1930 was released by the central party authorities in January 1931 under the title Ho Meng-hsiung i-chien shu [a statement of the views of Ho Meng-hsiung] .