Li Li-san (c.1900-), leading Chinese Communist labor organizer who became de facto head of the party in 1928. After being removed from office in 1930 and censured by the Comintern, he spent 15 years in exile in the Soviet Union. He returned to China in 1946, having been restored to membership in the Central Committee, and served under Lin Piao in the Northeast. After holding office as vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Labor (1948-53) and minister of labor in the Central People's Government (1949-54), he made a lengthy confession of his past errors at the party's Eighth National Congress in 1956.

Little is known about Li Li-san's family background or early life except that he was the son of a poor rural teacher in Liling hsien, Hunan, and that he attended the First Provincial Normal School in Changsha. The first public mention of him was in reference to a meeting with Mao Tse-tung which took place in 1917, after Mao advertised in a Changsha newspaper for patriotic young men with whom he might exchange ideas. According to Mao, there were "three-and-a-half" replies, the half reply being that of Li Li-san, who met with Mao and listened to his views, but went away without comimenting on them or otherwise committing himself. About 1919 Li went to France on the work-study program {see Li Shih-tseng) . According to one source, he attended the College de Montargis, worked in a factory to support himself, and formed a socialist study group with Chao Shih-yen. In 1921 Li and Chao went to Paris, where they joined with Chou En-lai, Ch'en Yen-nien, and Ch'en Ch'iao-nien in organizing the Chinese Communist Youth party. Li Li-san headed the propaganda department and edited the party newspaper, Shao-nien [youth]. According to Li Ang (Chu Ch'i-hua, q.v.), Li Li-san was the most active member of the organization. Although founded as an independent group, the Chinese Communist Youth party soon became a branch of the Chinese Communist party.

Li Li-san returned to China early in 1922, after being expelled from France for participating in a demonstration to protest a French loan to the Peking government in China. He began work as a labor organizer for the newly established China Trade Union Secretariat in Shanghai, headed by Chang Kuo-t'ao. Soon afterwards, he and his subordinate Liu Shaoch'i (q.v.) were sent to Anyuan, Kiangsi, to organize coal workers in the Han-yeh-p'ing mines. He started a part-time school for workmen which grew to become the Anyuan Mine Workers Club and then the Anyuan Coal Mine Labor Union. He also established the Han-yeh-p'ing Workers Union for employees of the mining company in Hanyang, Tayeh, and P'inghsiang. The three-day strike at Anyuan and the strike on the Canton-Hankow railroad in September 1922 were organized by Li and such co-workers as Liu Shao-ch'i and Mao Tse-tung. Li reportedly made a trip to Peking in 1923. That he was an effective organizer and agitator was demonstrated in 1924, when the Han-yeh-p'ing Company was forced to close because of strikes. When troops were brought into Anyuan to control the mines, Li returned to Shanghai.

Li Li-san was a leading figure in the May Thirtieth Incident of 1925. On the evening of 30 May, at a meeting of the Association of Shanghai Labor Unions, he proposed the organization of the Shanghai General Labor Union, a federation of trade unions and students, to give unified direction to the strikes. The proposal was accepted, and Li was elected president of the new union. On 1 June he ordered a general strike. In the ensuing months the Chinese Communists, through manipulation of the Shanghai General Labor Union, controlled almost all of the strikes in Shanghai, of which there were 75 in 1925 and 257 in 1926. Li also worked for the enactment of laws to protect labor unions, but he had to flee to Canton after a warrant was issued for his arrest on 19 September 1925.

In March 1926 the All-China Federation of Labor sent Li Li-san to Moscow to attend the fourth session of the Communist International Federation of Trade Unions. After returning to China, he was elected vice president of the All- China Federation of Labor at its third congress, held at Canton in May 1926. He spent most of his time doing union work in Hupeh. In May 1927 he made a report on the Chinese labor movement at the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Conference in Hankow, and he was elected to the secretariat of that body. After the Kuomintang-Communist split, Li met at Kiukiang with Tan Ping-shan, Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai (qq.v.), and others to plan a revolt by Nationalist units stationed at Xanchang. After the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party approved the plan, Li made his way to Xanchang, where he helped organize the ill-fated uprising of 1 August [see Chang Kuo-t'ao). Li had been elected to the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist party at the Fifth Xational Congress, and he participated in the emergency conference at Kiukiang on 7 August which elected Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai to replace Ch'en Tuhsiu (c..) as general secretary of the party. He then joined the forces of Ho Lung and Yeh T'ing (qq.v.), which had abandoned Xanchang on 3 August and were moving southward. In September, Li took part in the unsuccessful attempt to capture Swatow and then fled to Hong Kong with Chang Kuo-t'ao, Chou En-lai, and other Communist leaders. He succeeded Chang T'ai-lei fq.v.) as chairman of the Chinese Communist party's Kwangtung provincial committee after Chang died in the Canton Commune of December 1927. After 1928 Li Li-san rose rapidly in the Chinese Communist party. At the Sixth Xational Congress, held in Moscow in 1928, he was reelected to the Political Bureau and was made head of the propaganda department. He also was elected to the Communist International Federation of Trade Unions in April. After returning to China, he worked to extend his influence in many areas of party activity. At that time, Hsiang Chung-fa (q.v.) was the general secretary of the party, but Li Li-san soon began to dominate political policy. Beginning in 1929 Li proposed a series of policy changes which later became known as the "Li Li-san line." His plan to organize the urban proletariat to lead military uprisings, aided by the Red Army, was formulated at a time when the percentage of urban workers in the Chinese Communist party was rapidly declining because the Kuomintang authorities had driven the Communists into hiding in the cities and in rural areas. To revitalize the Chinese Communist movement the Central Committee, meeting at Shanghai in June 1929, confirmed Li's de facto leadership and advocated a revolutionary upsurge, a vigorous labor policy, and the expansion of rural Soviets imder urban leadership. In May 1930, under Li's direction, the Xational Conference of Delegates from the Soviet Areas was held in Shanghai. The conference adopted a political program, a land law, and a labor law; it called upon the masses "to win preliminary successes in one or more provinces and establish a national soviet regime as soon as possible." Li's policies were expounded further in a Political Bureau resolution of 11 June 1930. (An English translation of this document is to be found in Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz, and John K. Fairbank, A Documentary History of Chinese Communism.) In this document Li, working on the assumption that conditions were ripe for revolution in China, maintained that large-scale uprisings in key cities would lead to nation-wide revolution. These events in China would lead, in turn, to "world revolution and the final decisive class war of the world." The immediate objective of the Communists would be to take Wuhan, the strategic center of China. According to Li, the struggles of workers in urban areas, rather than peasant uprisings and Red Army assaults, would be the decisive factor in the revolutionary movement, and he condemned Mao Tse-tung's rural emphasis and "stubborn adherence to the military concept of guerrilla warfare." The extreme sinocentrism of Li's theories angered some Comintern oflficials in AIoscow, but no immediate action was taken against him.

Li Li-san was eager to put his theories into practice. He already had created a revolutionary council in Shanghai to bring together party, union, and youth corps members. The Fourth Red Army, with Chu Teh (q.v.) as commander in chief and Mao Tse-tung as political commissar, attacked Xanchang, but soon abandoned their eflforts. On 5 July 1930, P'eng Te-huai (q.v.) captured Yochow and made plans to surround Changsha. His forces captured Changsha on 27 July, established a soviet government, and proclaimed Li Li-san its chairman in absentia. The occupation of the Hunan capital, which marked the height of Li Li-san's power, lasted only until 5 August. The Communists were driven out by Xationalist forces under Ho Ying-ch'in (q.v.) . Li contended that the occupation had failed because the broad masses had not supported the uprising with large-scale demonstrations and political strikes. His hopes for realizing his revolutionary plans were dashed in Septemberwhen a second attempt to occupy Changsha failed. It had become apparent that the Communists would have to shift the focus of their work to the rural areas. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party met in September 1930 to reconsider Li Li-san's policies. Chou En-lai, presumably on Comintern instructions, criticized Li's policies, but argued that although Li had deviated from Comintern policy in tactics, he had adhered to its basic aims. Li was sent to Moscow to answer Comintern charges of deviating from its doctrines, and he made confessions of guilt on all counts. On 25 November 1930 his effective political career came to an end with his expulsion from the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist party. He spent the next 15 years in exile in the Soviet Union. In 1931 the Comintern ordered him to study at the Lenin Institute "to learn the substance of his errors." He was associated with the Communist International Federation of Trade Unions in 1933-34, and he became director of the translation department of the Moscow Foreign Languages Publishing House. Little else is known about his period of exile.

In 1945 Li Li-san was elected in absentia to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party. After returning to China early in 1946, he served under Lin Piao (q.v.) as an adviser and political commissar in Harbin, where he handled negotiations regarding the distribution in Manchuria of supplies provided by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He also became a member of the Northeast bureau of the Chinese Communist party. Soon afterwards, he went briefly to Yenan to pay a call on Mao Tse-tung and effect a reconciliation. He reported in 1956 that after their meeting he had begun to read, for the first time, "the more important works of Comrade Mao Tse-tung." Li Li-san became a member of the executive committee of the Northeast General Labor Union and a vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Labor in 1948. After the Central People's Government was inaugurated in 1949, he was appointed minister of labor. He abandoned orthodox Marxist economics and formulated a Maoist labor policy of "taking care of the interest of both labor and capital and benefiting both the public and private interest." He also held such posts and titles as member of the Central People's Government Council, member of the finance and economics committee and the labor employment committee of the Government Administration Council, member of the executive board of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association, director of the department of wages and president of the Cadre Officers School of the All-China Federation of Labor, and member of the cinema guidance committee of the ministry of culture. Li apparently came into conflict with the Peking leaders at some point, for he resigned as vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Labor in 1953 and relinquished his post as minister of labor in 1954. He was reported to be "resting" in 1955. Although he was reelected to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party at the Eighth National Congress, held in September 1956, only eight members of the committee were ranked below him. At that congress he made a lengthy confession of his past errors and endorsed the 1945 Central Committee "resolution on certain historical questions," which had condemned the Li Li-san line as a "left deviation." He attributed his mistakes in leading the party in 1 930 and the All-China Federation of Labor in 1950 to sectarianism, subjectivism, and other "foul traits of the petty bourgeoisie." After his appearance at the congress, Li disappeared from public view for six years. In 1962 he was identified as a secretary of the Central Committee's north China bureau. Li Li-san married three times; his third wife was a Russian women named Liza. He had one son, Li Jen-tsun, who was born about 1930. Although Li Li-san was best known for the ideological controversy caused by the "Li Li-san line," his most significant contributions to the Chinese Communist cause were his early accomplishments in organizing and developing the Chinese labor movement in the 1920's.