Jen Cho-hsuan (4 April 1896-), Chinese Communist youth leader who severed relations with the Chinese Communist party in 1928 to launch a new career as a publisher and writer of philosophical and polemical works. After 1937 he worked to further understanding of and adherence to Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles. After 1950, he taught at the Political Cadres College in Taiwan, directed the Pamir Bookstore, and published the magazine Cheng-chih p'ing-lun [political review]. A native of Nanch'ung, Szechwan, Jen Chohsuan was the eldest of five children in a poor peasant family. After studying the Chinese classics at a village school, he attended the Nanch'ung District Middle School. At that time, the principal of the school was Chang Lan (q.v.). After gradüation, Jen taught at a primary school for about six months. Then, on the recommendation of Chang Lan, he was admitted to the French language school at Peking to prepare for participation in the work-study program {see Li Shih-tsengj in France. He also audited some courses at Peking University. Jen organized the Work-Study Mutual Assistance Society, which operated a small restaurant to support its members. It was during his stay in Peking, Jen later reminisced, that he first was exposed to socialist ideas. In 1920, a special grant from the Szechw^an government enabled Jen Cho-hsuan to sail for France. He worked as an apprentice in an iron factory near Lyon and then as a technician in a factory near Paris. He came to know some French Communists and began to learn about Marxism. About 1921 he joined both the French Communist party and the Chinese Socialist Youth Corps. He became a member of the Kuomintang in 1922 because the Chinese Communist party, on Comintern instructions, had allied itself with the Kuomintang in Europe as well as in China. Jen also served as one of four permanent secretaries of the General Association of the Students on the Work-Study Program, an organization of Chinese students in France which had been established at the end of 1921 with the financial support of the Peking government. Jen proved to be an eflficient organizer, and he became the most important officer of the association, partly because he was the only secretary who lived in Paris. Together with Chao Shih-yen and Ch'en Yen-nien, a son of Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.), he engaged in an animated controversy with the anarchists and state socialists. Some of his polemical essays were published in Shao-nien [youth], a mimeographed periodical of the Chinese Socialist Youth Corps. Jen's political activities left little time for study. His formal education during his five years in France consisted of six-months study as a language student at a school in Paris. In early 1923 Jen Cho-hsuan emerged as the Chinese Communist party's chief secretary in France. Chao Shih-yen and Ch'en Yen-nien had left France for Moscow at the end of 1922. When the Kuomintang established a European headquarters at Paris in March 1924, Jen became head of the propaganda bureau. Chou En-lai (q.v.) took charge of the bureau of organization. Working closely with Chou and Li Fu-ch'un fq.v.), Jen skilfully conducted campaigns of persuasion and agitation among Chinese students and workers in France. In the summer of 1925, after hearing of the Iay Thirtieth Incident, Jen attempted to organize Chinese nationals to stage "a demonstration against imperialism" as a response to the movement in China, but his plan was thwarted by the French police. On 21 June, he led a group of some 100 men into the Chinese legation in Paris; the group compelled Ch'en Lu (q.v.), the Chinese minister to France, to sign a document demanding that the French government renounce its privileges in China. As a result of this incident, more than 30 Chinese students were deported immediately and another 20, including Jen Cho-hsuan, were arrested by the French authorities. Jen was released four months later, but was ordered to leave France. He went to Russia, where he studied briefly at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow.

Toward the end of 1926 Jen Cho-hsuan returned to China. He was assigned to work in the Kwangtung regional committee of the Chinese Communist party. In 1927, having become a member of the Hunan regional committee, he led underground party activities in Changsha. That winter, he was arrested by the provincial authorities, imprisoned in Changsha, and sentenced to death. He somehow emerged alive from the execution, and he continued to direct Communist activities while recuperating in Hsiang-ya Hospital in Changsha. These activities produced many small-scale uprisings in 1928 in Changsha, P'ingchiang, Liuyang, and Liling. The provincial authorities soon realized that Jen was alive. After being arrested again, he renounced his affiliation with the Chinese Communist party and worked briefly as a political instructor for the Kuomintang, training anti-Communist cadres in Hunan. In the latter part of 1928 Jen Cho-hsuan went to Chengtu, where he established and edited a magazine called K'o-hsueh ssu-hsiang [scientific thought]. He found it difficult to stay in Szechwan because of his Communist background, and in the autumn of 1929 he went to Shanghai. There he reportedly shared a small room with T'ao Hsi-sheng and Chu Ch'i-hua (qq.v.), and the three were in close touch with Chou Fo-hai, Kuo Mo-jo, Liu Ya-tzu, Lu Hsün, and Mao Tun. Probably through the assistance of these friends, Jen established a bookstore, the Hsin-k'en shu-tien, the name of which was derived from the English word "think." The name of the bookstore as well as the books it published reflect Jen's strong interest in philosophy during that period. Among the philosophical treatises published by the bookstore were works by French materialists of the eighteenth century, including la Mattrie, d'Holback, Helvetius, Condillac, and Diderot; by the Greek philosophers Heraclitus, Democritus, and Epicurus; by the Marxists Plekhanov, Deborin, Bogdanov, and la Fargue; and by the scientific synthesists Planck, Jeans, Eddington, Huxley, Pearson, and Einstein.

Jen Cho-hsuan was also an active polemicist. In such journals as Erh-shih shih-chi [the twentieth century] and Yen-chiu jü p'i-p'an [research and criticism], which he founded and edited, he wrote voluminously under various pen names, notably Yeh Ch'ing. As a Marxist, he strongly criticized such anti-Marxist intellectuals as Hu Shih and Chang Tung-sun (qq.v.) in Hu Shih p'i-p'an [criticism of Hu Shih], Tung-sun che-hsueh p'i-p^an [criticisms of Chang Tung-sun's philosophy], and Che-hsueh lun-chan [philosophical controversy]. The first two works were published in 1934, and the third appeared in 1935. Jen also attacked such Chinese Communists as Ch'en Po-ta and Ai Ssu-ch'i, who, in turn, bitterly denounced him as an heretical Marxist. Because of the antagonisms aroused by the controversies, Jen was compelled to leave the Hsin-k'en shu-tien in 1936. The following year, he organized the Chen-li ch'u-pan she [truth publishing house] to carry on the debates. Jen's anti-Communist essays of 1936 and 1937 are contained in Hsin che-hsueh lun-chan chi [the controversies of the new philosophy] and Wei fa-chan hsin che-hsueh erh-chan [struggle for the development of the new philosophy]. Ironically, his books attacking the Communists were banned by the Kuomintang authorities. Jen Cho-hsuan's own philosophical position at this time was set forth in two of his books: Che-hsueh tao ho ch'u-ch'U [whither philosophy], published in 1934; and Che-hsueh wen-Ci [problems of philosophy], published in 1936. In the first book, taking up the thesis of two obscure Russian philosophers, Minin and Enchumen, he announced the forthcoming extinction of philosophy. Jen asserted that philosophy had brought about the disappearance of religion by disclaiming it. Therefore, science, because it had broken with philosophy to become an independent field of study, would bring about the decline of philosophy. In the second book, Jen declared that because idealism and materialism each contain a part of the truth, they must be amalgamated. Marx himself effected a synthesis of Hegelian idealism with the materialism of Feuerbach. In consequence of this higher synthesis, the eternal conflict between idealism and materialism vanished. "Since the opposition is resolved, and opposition was the motivating force of its development, the history of philosophy stops. Is this the end of philosophy? Obviously. That is a natural and inevitable conclusion." The system that resulted from this definitive synthesis has changed its nature, and now there is only the "science of thought," concluded Jen.

The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 caused a dramatic change in Jen Chohsuan's thinking and career. According to his own account, his political outlook prior to the war had been that of an internationalistsocialist, but in facing the vital question of national survival, he realized that what China needed most was nationalism. Consequently, he began to study the Three People's Principles, and he arrived at the conclusion that Sun Yat-sen's doctrine was the key to solving China's problems.

In September 1937 Jen Cho-hsuan left Shanghai for Wanhsien, Szechwan, where he became a senior instructor of the special training class of the Central Military Academy. In 1938 he spent three months in Sian lecturing to the Shensi wartime administrative personnel training class. Together with ^Vu Man-chim and others, he founded a magazine called K'ang-chan hsiang-tao [guide to the war of resistance], which stressed adherence to the Three People's Principles. In 1939, through the introduction of P'an Kung-chan and Yeh Ch'u-ts'ang ^^qq.v.), Jen rejoined the Kuomintang, from which he had been estranged since the mid-1920's. He also founded Shih-tai ssu-ch' ao [thought currents], a magazine which was devoted exclusively to the study of Kuomintang ideology. In 1940, at the invitation of Hsiung Shih-hui (q.v.), then acting governor of Kiangsi province, he w^ent to Kiangsi, where he worked with Chiang Ching-kuo (q.v.) to promote the study of the Three People's Principles by soldiers and students. He also lectured at Chung-cheng University. In the spring of 1942 he left Kiangsi to teach at Ch'ao-yang College in Chungking. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed head of the research section of the organization department of the Kuomintang.

At the first congress of the San Min Chu I Youth Corps in March 1943, Jen was elected an executive secretary of the organization. He also was appointed a professor at the Central Cadres School established under the auspices of the corps. In September 1944 he became a member of the organization's central standing committee. He was a delegate from the corps to the Sixth National Congress of the Kuomintang, held in April 1945, at which he was elected an alternate member of the party's Central Executive Committee. In 1945 he was awarded a medal by the National Government in recognition of his zealous efforts in promoting the study of the Three People's Principles during the war.

In late 1945, Jen Cho-hsuan and T'ang Ju-yen founded Cheng-chih hsiang-tao [political guide], a magazine published every ten days. The first issue of the journal appeared in Chungking on 1 1 December. Jen also took an active part in the reform movement led by Liang Han-ts'ao and helped edit the movement's Ko-hsin chou-k'an [reform weekly]. In July 1946 Jen went to Nanking, where he wrote articles for several newspapers and lectured at Cheng-chih University. He was a delegate to the National Assembly in November 1946.

In 1948 Jen unsuccessfully campaigned for a seat in the Legislative Yuan. He then founded the Pamir Bookstore, which published his IVu-ch'uan hsien-fa yü min-chu cheng-chih [the constitution of five powers and democratic polity] and Kuo-fu i-chiao ta-kang [basic principles of the inherited teachings of Sun Yat-sen]. When the Chinese Communists pushed southward in late 1948, Jen went to Shanghai, where he stayed until April 1949. The Kuomintang appointed him vice chairman of its propaganda department in July, and he soon became acting chairman. In this capacity, he delivered a series of anti-Communist speeches at major cities in southwestern China.

In 1950 Jen Cho-hsuan went to live in Taipei, Taiwan, and resigned from the propaganda department. He taught at the Political Cadres College, directed the Pamir Bookstore, and published the bi-monthly Cheng-chih p'ing-lun [political review]. He also continued to write voluminously and to lecture on the Three People's Principles. In 1957 and 1965 he received awards from the National Government in Taiwan for his efforts to promote adherence to the Three People's Principles.

Jen Cho-hsuan married Wei Su-ch'iu, a teacher of Chinese literature, in Shanghai in 1935.