Liu Jen-ching (1899-), founding member of the Chinese Communist party who became a leading Trotskyist in <^he 1930's. He remained in China after 1949 and made a public statement regarding his earlier political errors. Little is known about Liu Jen-ching's family background or early education except that he was born in Hupeh. At the time of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 he was a student at Peking University and a member of the student organization that published the magazine Hsin-ch'ao [new tide]. As information about the Russian Revolution and Marxism became available in north China, Liu developed a keen interest in the new doctrine. In the autumn of 1920 he joined a Marxist study group in Peking which was guided by Li Ta-chao (q.v.). Despite his youth, Liu attended the founding meeting of the Chinese Communist party, held at Shanghai in July 1921, as one of the two delegates from Peking, the other being Chang Kuo-t'ao (q.v.). He also became a member of the Young China Association {see Chang Wen-t'ien) and the Peking branch of the Chinese Communist party.
In 1922 Liu accompanied Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.) to Moscow to attend the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, which met in November- December 1922. That meeting stressed the need for the Communists in such underdeveloped countries as China to cooperate with nationalist groups to further the cause of revolution. At the Comintern congress, Liu Jen-ching, speaking on behalf of the Chinese Communists, accepted the Comintern directive ordering members of his party to join the Kuomintang. He stated that if the Chinese Communists joined the Kuomintang, they would be able to direct mass mobilization and to split the Kuomintang from within, and that if they did not ally themselves with the Kuomintang, they would run the risk of being isolated from the mainstream of Chinese nationalism and political action.
In the spring of 1923 Liu reportedly visited Paris as a representative of the Chinese Communist party, which then was holding its Third National Congress at Canton. Little is known about his activities from 1923 to 1927, but some sources indicate that he lived in Moscow, where he supported Trotsky's position in Soviet politics.
After the Nationalist-Communist split and the downfall of Ch'en Tu-hsiu as general secretary of the Chinese Communist party in 1927, Liu Jen-ching became dissatisfied with Communism in China. Although he returned to China, he had serious doubts about the position then articulated by Mao Tse-tung, namely, that a major social revolution could be based on the grievances of the Chinese peasantry. Liu believed that the Chinese Communists would only be able to gain state power after China had passed through a period of capitalist development, and he argued that the party, for the time being, should concentrate on political action in the cities.
In 1929 Liu Jen-ching went to Turkey to see Leon Trotsky, who, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, was living in Istanbul. After returning to China, Liu organized a small Trotskyist group in Shanghai called the Shihyueh-she [October society]. In May 1931 Liu's group and two other small Trotskyist groups in Shanghai the Wo-men-ti-hua [our words] faction and the Chan-tou she [combat society], joined forces with the Wu-ch'an-che she [proletarian society] led by Ch'en-Tu'hsiu and P'eng Shu-chih (q.v.). Reportedly with the help of funds from Trotskyist groups in Europe, the squabbling Trotskyist groups in Shanghai then formed the Chinese Communist Party Left Opposition Faction (Chung-kuo kungch'an-tang tso-p'ai fan-tui-p'ai), also known as the Trotsky-Ch'en party (T'o-Ch'en p'ai). That year, Liu Jen-ching wrote an article advocating that the new Opposition party participate actively in the anti-Japanese patriotic movement, "Pei ya-p'o kuo ti wu-ch'an chieh-chi ying pu-ying ling-tao ai-kuo yuntung?" Ch'en Tu-hsiu attempted for a time to influence the main body of the Chinese Communist party to accept the Trotskyist line, a task complicated by the fact that the new organization continued to be rent by bitter dissension. Liu Jen-ching continued to promote the Opposition party, and in 1934 he wrote numerous articles for a Trotskyist journal, Hsiao-nei sheng-huo [school life] .
In 1937 Liu Jen-ching split with the Trotskyists for unknown reasons. He then joined the Kuomintang and went to work in the propaganda office of the San-min chu-i Youth Corps at Chungking. He later was assigned to the political department of the Tenth War Area and the special service training organization headed by Hu Tsung-nan (q.v.), who was responsible for containing the Communists in northwest China.
After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Liu Jen-ching returned to Shanghai, where he became an editor of a political journal called Min-chu yü fung-i [democracy and unity], in which he criticized and condemned the Chinese Communists. He later went to north China, where he reportedly joined the faculty of Peking Normal University under the assumed name Liu Yi-yü.
Despite his long-standing condemnation of the Communists under Mao Tse-tung, Liu Jen-ching remained in China at the time of the Communist takeover in 1949. He later made a public statement regarding his earlier political errors which was published in the Peking Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily] and reprinted in the Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao on 15 January 1951.
