Ch'in Pang-hsien (1907-8 April 1946), one of the Russian-trained intellectuals known as the 28 Bolsheviks, was the general secretary of the Chinese Communist party (1932-34). From 1936 to 1946 he served as a liaison officer in negotiations with the National Government. He also headed the New China News Agency (1941-45) and edited the official Communist newspaper at Yenan, the Chieh-fang jih-pao [liberation daily].

Born in Chekiang province, Ch'in Pang-hsien was the only son of a hsien magistrate. His father died before he was ten years old, and he was brought up by his mother in Wusih, Kiangsu, the family's ancestral home. After being graduated from the Kiangsu Provincial Technical School at Soochow at the age of 17, he went to study in the English department of Shanghai University in 1925. That institution had been founded two years earlier under Communist party auspices to recruit and train young cadres for organization work in factories, labor unions, universities, and other areas where the Communist party hoped to spread its political influence. Ch'in Pang-hsien's period of study at Shanghai University brought him into contact with Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai, Teng Chunghsia, Yun Tai-ying, and other Communists then teaching there.

Ch'in Pang-hsien joined the Chinese Communist party in the autumn of 1925 at the age of 18. Since this was the period of collaboration between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party, he was first assigned to the propaganda department of the Shanghai municipal headquarters of the Kuomintang. The following year he was selected by the Chinese Communist party to study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. He arrived in the Soviet Union in 1926 and remained there for four years. He soon became fluent in Russian, well acquainted with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and active in the group of Chinese students at Sun Yat-sen University known as the 28 Bolsheviks. That group, of which Ch'en Shao-yü (q.v.) was the leader, returned to China about 1930, accompanied by Pavel Mif, the president of Sun Yat-sen University. Ch'in Pang-hsien was closely associated with Ch'en Shao-yü in the ensuing intraparty struggle against the leadership of Li Li-san (q.v.), then the dominant man in the central apparatus of the party in Shanghai. During the remaining months of 1930 Ch'in worked in the propaganda department of the All-China Federation of Labor and edited two labor papers, Lao-tung pao [labor newspaper] and Kung-jen hsiao-pao. In January 1931 he became director of the propaganda department of the Communist Youth Corps, and in April of that year he became general secretary of the Youth Corps.

After the execution in June 1931 of Hsiang Chung-fa (q.v.), who had been the nominal head of the Chinese Communist party since 1928, Ch'en Shao-yü became general secretary of the party at Shanghai. Ch'in Pang-hsien became a member of the new provisional political bureau of the party in September 1931. A year later, in the autumn of 1932, Ch'en Shao-yü returned to Moscow as Chinese representative to the Comintern. Ch'in Pang-hsien succeeded him as general secretary of the Chinese Communist party. Although the details of Communist party history during the early 1930's are obscure, he apparently held that position until January 1935, when he was replaced by Chang Wen-t'ien (q.v.) at the Tsunyi conference, which was held in Kweichow during the Long March. During the remainder of the Communist retreat to the northwest Ch'in Pang-hsien served as a political officer in the Red Army.

After the Communists had established their wartime base in Shensi and Mao Tse-tung had begun to consolidate control of the central apparatus of the party, Ch'in Pang-hsien was assigned to positions in which he was concerned more with the external relations of the party than with its internal policies and organization. In December 1936 he accompanied Chou Enlai, Li K'o-nung, and Yeh Chien-ying to Sian as a member of the Communist group which handled the negotiations leading to the release of Chiang Kai-shek, who had been detained forcibly by Chang Hsueh-liang and Yang Huch'eng (qq.v.). In June 1937 Ch'in participated in the Nationalist-Communist negotiations at Lushan, Kiangsi, attempting to work out terms for the anti-Japanese united front. Ch'in then worked with Yeh Chien-ying as a Communist liaison officer assigned to the National Oovernment at Nanking. When that city fell to the Japanese, he moved with the government to Hankow.

Early in 1938 Ch'in went to Chungking, again as a member of the Chinese Communist liaison mission. He also served as a member of the Ch'ang-chiang (Yangtze) bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist party, and later he became head of the south China bureau. Between 1938 and 1945 he served as one of the Communist delegates to the People's Political Council. He returned to Yenan late in 1940 to assist in planning an improved information and propaganda program for the party. When the New China (Hsinhua) News Agency was established in 1941, he became its head. He also was chief editor of the official Communist newspaper, the Chieh-fang jih-pao [liberation daily], which began publication in Yenan in May 1941.

When the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party met in Yenan (April- June 1945), Ch'in Pang-hsien was elected to membership on the Central Committee. He went to Chungking in January 1946 to participate in the postwar negotiations with the Kuomintang. On 8 April 1946, while on his way from Chungking back to Yenan, he was killed when his plane, apparently off its course, crashed in northwestern Shansi. Teng Fa, Wang Jo-fei, and Yeh T'ing were among the others killed in the crash.

Ch'in Pang-hsien published a substantial number of translations from Russian and English under his pseudonym, Po Ku. His translations include such basic Communist texts as the Communist Manifesto, Basic Problems of Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism, and the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {Bolshevik) , Short Course, as well as Lenin's Karl Marx and Plekhanov's The Development of the Monistic Interpretation of History. In Peking's versions of party history, Ch'in has been identified as a political theorist. In the lengthy 1951 article by Ch'en Po-ta (q.v.), "Mao Tse-tung's Theory of the Chinese Revolution Is the Combination of Marxism-Leninism with the Chinese Revolution," Ch'in Pang-hsien was linked with Ch'en Shao-yü, and both men were criticized sharply for their leftist adventurism in party leadership in the early 1930's. Ch'in Pang-hsien married twice and had seven children. His first wife was Liu Ch'ünhsien, one of the 28 Bolsheviks, whom he met at Sun Yat-sen University and married in Moscow in 1930. That marriage ended in divorce. His second wife was Chang Yueh-hsia. Ch'in Te-ch'un T. Shao-wen ffi X *fi Ch'in Te-ch'un (1893-7 September 1963), military leader associated with Feng Yü-hsiang before 1930, served under Sung Che-yuan, becoming governor of Chahar, mayor of Peking, and deputy commander of the Twenty-ninth Army. He led his army in the first military action of the Sino-Japanese war. He held senior military posts in the National Government in China and in Taiwan.

Yishui, Shantung, was the birthplace of Ch'in Te-ch'un. He studied at the Shantung military elementary school and then enrolled at Paoting Military Academy. He was graduated from the infantry course with the second class in 1916. He was assigned to the Shantung 5th Division for field training, after which he held command and staff posts in the Shensi army. He entered Peking Staff College in 1920 and was graduated with the sixth class of that institution in 1922. Ch'in then was sent to Honan, where Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) served briefly as military governor, and was assigned as chief of staff of the eastern Honan defense headquarters.

Ch'in Te-ch'un thus became associated with the Feng Yü-hsiang military organization in north China. The deterioration of relations between Feng Yü-hsiang and Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.), who was then the leading military figure of the Chihli clique, led to conflict in 1924. In the autumn of that year, when the second Chihli- Fengtien war broke out, Feng, who was assigned to the Jehol front, suddenly led his men back to Peking and occupied the capital. Immediately after that coup and the downfall of Wu P'ei-fu, Feng Yü-hsiang assumed the post of commander in chief of the Kuominchun, or National Army. Ch'in Te-ch'un was assigned as chief of staff of the 24th Division under Feng. In 1925 he was promoted to command the 47th Infantry Brigade of that division. In 1926 he became commander of the 27th Division and, soon thereafter, commander of the 14th Division. However, Feng Yü-hsiang's Kuominchun was forced out of north China, and he himself left China on a trip to the Soviet Union, only to return in September 1926 and announce his suport for the Nationalist forces then advancing from south China.

Feng Yü-hsiang then began to reorganize his scattered troops into a force which could cooperate effectively with the National Revolutionary Army under Chiang Kai-shek. In the spring of 1927, when Feng's forces moved from Shensi into Honan to seize effective control of that province, Ch'in Te-ch'un became commander of the 1st Division of Feng's army and participated in the Honan fighting. He later was made commander of the 23rd Division of Feng's Northwest Army and deputy commander of the Second Area Army. During 1927 Feng's political maneuvers tipped the scale in the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek and the Wuhan government, and his forces nominally became part of the reorganized Nationalist military establishment. With the resumption in 1928 of the second stage of the Northern Expedition, aimed at Chang Tso-lin (q.v.), who held power at Peking, Ch'in Te-ch'un commanded the Fourteenth Army of Feng Yü-hsiang's Second Group Army. When the National Government was established at Nanking in October of that year, Feng Yü-hsiang and his lieutenant Lu Chung-lin (q.v.) became, respectively, minister and vice minister of war. The future seemed bright for Kuominchun officers, since Feng retained regional power through his control of Honan, Shensi, Kansu, and part of Shantung.

The tension between National Government authorities at Nanking and Feng Yti-hsiang, soon became evident. In 1930 Feng Yü-hsiang lost the power struggle with Nanking, and the units of the Kuominchun were reorganized into the National Government forces. Ch'in Tech'un, like most of Feng's senior commanders, was relieved of his posts. He went into temporary retirement. The 1930 conflict between Nanking and the northern coalition in effect had been decided through the inaction of Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v.), the Young Marshal of Manchuria, who finally sided with the central government. Ch'in Te-ch'un allied himself with Chang Hsueh-liang, who was then based at Peiping, and became a military counselor in his headquarters. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria beginning in September 1931, however, led to a swift decline in the Young Marshal's power. Ch'in Te-ch'un participated in battles against the Japanese on the Great Wall front at the beginning of 1 933. However, Chang Hsuehliang was forced to turn over control of his armed forces to Chiang Kai-shek in March of that year. Chiang's military lieutenant Ho Ying-ch'in (q.v.), was then given full authority in north China. Ch'in Te-ch'un then became commander in chief of the Third Army Corps and a member of the Peiping branch military council headed by Ho Ying-ch'in. Later in 1933 he was also made deputy commander of the Twentyninth Army under Sung Che-yuan (q.v.) and a member of the provincial government of Chahar province, which was then under Sung's direct jurisdiction.

In mid- 1935, when Sung Che-yuan was moved to Peiping with his Twenty-ninth Army to attempt to hold north China in the face of the Japanese political advance, Ch'in Te-ch'un succeeded him as governor of Chahar, also taking the post of commissioner for civil affairs in that province. Later that year Ch'in was moved to Peiping to become mayor and a member of the Hopei-Chahar political council, which was headed by Sung. He was also elected to membership on the Central Supervisory Committee of the Kuomintang at its Fifth Congress in November 1935.

TheJapanese situation in north China became increasingly tense after the implications of the commitments made by Chiang Kai-shek at Sian in December 1936 became clear. In 1937 Ch'in Te-ch'un was given the post of deputy commander of the Twenty-ninth Army of Sung Che-yuan. Caught between pressure from the Japanese and a corresponding resistance from Nanking to any political concessions, Sung Cheyuan retired to his native Shantung, leaving Ch'in Te-ch'un in charge of the north China situation. When the Japanese on 7 July 1937 demanded entry into the small town of Wanp'ing near Peiping to search for a soldier who allegedly had disappeared, it was Ch'in's order that led to resistance by the Chinese regiment of the Twenty-ninth Army. Thus, the Sino- Japanese war began.

Both the Twenty-ninth Army and Sung Cheyuan's organization were destroyed during the early stage of the conflict. Having lost his troops, Ch'in Te-ch'un was assigned to staff positions throughout the war. He became deputy director general of courts martial in 1940 and vice minister of military conscription in 1941, holding that post until 1945. After the Japanese surrender and the resumption of civil war against the Communists in 1946, Ch'in Te-ch'un was named vice minister of national defense in the National Government, with the rank of lieutenant general. Although his erstwhile chief Feng Yü-hsiang moved into a position of open opposition to Chiang Kai-shek in the late 1940's, Ch'in remained with the National Government at Nanking; he was reappointed vice minister of national defense in May 1948 after the election of Chiang Kai-shek as President. In 1948 Ch'in was named governor of his native Shantung province and mayor of Tsingtao, but both the province and the city were occupied by the Communists in 1949. Ch'in Te-ch'un then moved to Taiwan, where he was rewarded with the appropriate sinecure posts conventionally allotted to retired Nationalist generals. He died in Taipei of lung cancer in September 1963.