Li Ta (1890—), scholar and founding member of the Chinese Communist party who became known as a leading spokesman on Marxist ideology'. From 1953 until 1966, when he was criticized and removed from office, he held the presidency of Wuhan University.

The son of a tenant farmer in Lingling hsien, Hunan, Li Ta began his education in 1900 at a traditional private school and moved on to the Yungchou Middle School, a semi-modern institution, in 1905. Because he believed that education was the key to China's salvation, he decided to become a teacher. Accordingly, he entered the Peking Higher Normal School in 1909. He soon decided that industry, science, and technology were more important than education and transferred to a trade school in Hunan. In 1912 he passed the provincial scholarship examinations for study abroad and went to Japan to take courses in mining and metallurgy at Tokyo Imperial University. He soon became interested in political and social thought.

According to his own account, Li returned to China in 1918 having been influenced by the Russian Revolution and shocked by Japanese intervention in China and Siberia. He went to Peking to help organize protests by college students against Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) and his negotiations with Japanese authorities. About this time, Li began to study Marxism. He returned to Japan for a brief period, and in 1920 he went to Shanghai as the representative of the Japanese branch of the Save China Association. He helped organize the Chinese Communist party, participated in its July 1921 founding meeting, and became head of its propaganda department. He also wrote articles on socialist thought for such magazines as the Chieh-fang jü kai-tsao [liberation and reform] and the Hsin ch'ing-nien [new youth], of which he became an editor. When the Shanghai group established the theoretical journal Kungch'an-tang yueh-k'an [Communist party monthly] in November 1921 to educate party workers in the doctrines of Marxism-Leninism, Li became its editor. He also worked under Ch'en Tuhsiu (q.v.) in administering a girls school established by the Communists at Shanghai. In 1923 Li went to Changsha, where he became a lecturer at Hunan University. His lectures became the basis of his first important book, Hsien-tai she-hui-hsueh [modern sociology], a systematic exposition of Marxist theory which appeared in 1926. In the preface to the 1929 edition Li said that "the theories in this book are mostly directed at European, American, and Japanese capitalist society and cannot explain clearly much in 'semi-feudal' Chinese society." At some time during this period, Li served as a reporter for the Christian publication I-shih pao in Tientsin, and in 1926 he taught in Wuchang. After returning to Shanghai in 1928, he taught at Shanghai Law College, Chinan University, and Ta-lu University [see Ch'en Kung-po). After Ta-lu was closed by Nationalist police in May 1929, Li helped to found a publishing house, the K'un-lun shu-tien. Many of his later works, including his Chung-kuo ch'an-yeh kai-ke kai-kuan [general sur-ey of China's industrial revolution], were published by this firm. Little is known about Li Ta's activities or whereabouts during the 1930's and 1940's except that he reportedly taught at Hunan, Kwangtung, and Kwangsi universities. In 1949 he was identified as vice president of the Peking University of Political Science and Law. After the Central People's Government was established, he held posts on the Government Council committees for cultural, educational, and legal affairs and on the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee. He also was chairman of the first council of the Chinese Philosophical Society and vice chairman of the All-China Congress of Workers in the Social Sciences. After serving as president of Hunan University until 1953, he was transferred to Wuchang, where he became the president of Wuhan University. From 1961 to 1966 he also served as vice chairman of the central-south branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Li Ta's most important role after 1948 was as a spokesman on problems of Marxist ideology. His Huo-pi hsueh kai-lun [general discussion of finance] was published in 1949, and it was followed by a number of shorter accounts of the state of academic and ideological studies in the People's Republic of China. Li's later works also included interpretations of the writings of Mao Tse-tung. His party activities caused him to be criticized as a "dogmatic party leader" during the Hundred Flowers cafnpaign. In the summer of 1966, however, Li reportedly was accused of being "an anti-party, antisocialist, anti-Mao-Tse-tung-in-thought shock trooper, and a stubborn counterrevolutionary element." He allegedly had denied that the Thought of Mao Tse-tung represented* the culmination of Marxism-Leninism. Li was removed from his posts soon after these accusations were made.