Chang T'ai-lei ( 1 898-December 1927), Communist martyr, was known principally for organizing the Canton Commune of December 1927; he was killed in the fighting. A native of Wuchin, Kiangsu, Chang T'ai-lei attended the Ch'angchou Middle School, where he was a classmate of Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai (q.v.), but, like Ch'ü, he left school before graduation. In the years following he learned to speak English, probably at Soochow University. By 1920 he had become active in left-wing politics in Shanghai, and in August of that year when Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.), with the help of Gregory Voitinsky, organized the Socialist Youth League, Chang became one of its first members. He attended the meeting called by Ch'en Tu-hsiu in the autumn of 1920 to discuss the formation of a Communist party in China. Already fluent in English, Chang evidently began the study of Russian about that time. From 1920 to 1922 Chang T'ai-lei traveled extensively in China, Japan, and Russia. He was in Tientsin in October 1920 when Ch'u Ch'iu-pai, then not yet committed to Communism, passed through that city on his way to Russia. It is probable that Chang was helping Li Ta-chao (q.v.) to organize in north China a socialist youth league modeled after the one which had been set up in Shanghai. Chang went to Shanghai in May 1921 to participate in planning a national meeting of all Communist groups in China. Chang, however, left China before that meeting took place. He went to Irkutsk and was designated secretary of the Chinese section of the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Comintern. Accordingly, he was not present at the First National Congress of the Communist party in July 1921, as he was in Moscow attending the Third Congress of the Comintern. At the Comintern Congress, Chang, on behalfof the Chinese Communists, demanded that more attention be accorded the Chinese situation. In making this plea, he was echoing M. N. Roy's criticism of the Comintern leadership. Chang reportedly helped in the drafting of the Theses on National and Colonial Questions issued by the Comintern Congress. In October 1921, Chang reportedly was in Japan as a secret representative of the Far Eastern branch of the Comintern, and in February 1922 he went to Moscow to attend the Congress of the Toilers of the East.
Returning to China in 1923, he became general secretary of the Socialist Youth League. When, after the Sun-Joffe talks, the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists agreed to collaborate, the Kuomintang sent Chiang Kaishek to the Soviet Union as head of a delegation to survey conditions there. Chang T'ai-lei, then a member of the Kwangtung regional committee of the Chinese Communist party, was a member of the delegation, which left Shanghai in August 1923. Chiang Kai-shek returned in December of that year, but Chang T'ai-lei remained in Moscow and studied at the Communist University for Toilers of the East. After he returned to China in 1925, he was chief interpreter in Borodin's office in Canton until Borodin left for Wuhan in October 1926. Chang T'ai-lei then became secretary of the Wuhan municipal committee of the Chinese Communist party. When the Communists and the Wuhan faction of the Kuomintang finally split, Ch'en Tu-hsiu's leadership within the Communist party was challenged. Ch'u Ch'iupai, then a member of the Central Committee, called an emergency conference, which Chang T'ai-lei attended. This conference met on 7 August 1927. As a result, Ch'en Tu-hsiu was deposed, Ch'u Ch'iu-pai became general secretary of the party, and Chang T'ai-lei became secretary ofits Kwangtung provincial committee and head of the south China bureau of the Central Committee.
Chang then moved to Canton. On his way south, he met with Yeh T'ing and Ho Lung, who were leading their forces southward after the Nanchang uprising of 1 August 1927, allegedly to capture Canton. After these forces were defeated at Swatow and Ch'ao-chou, Chang assembled the disorganized remnants to strengthen the peasant militia of P'eng P'ai (q.v.) in the Hai-lu-feng area.
In November 1927, Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai and his associates in the Chinese Communist party decided that an uprising in a major Chinese city was strategically necessary and gave instructions to Chang T'ai-lei to organize a coup in Canton. Chang mobilized sufficient strength in Canton to overthrow the municipal government on the evening of 1 1 December 1927. The following day a mass meeting was called in the city, where so-called representatives of workers, peasants, and soldiers proclaimed the founding of the Canton soviet government. Su Chaocheng (q.v.) in absentia was elected chairman, and Chang T'ai-lei became commissioner of army and navy and acting chairman of the government. After the meeting broke up, Chang's forces were attacked by Kuomintang troops which had entered the city from the north gate, and Chang was shot and killed in the fighting. Originally the Communists had planned that P'eng P'ai's militia from the Hailu-feng area should come to support the Canton Commune. After Chang T'ai-lei's death, however, the Canton Commune lost its central political and military leadership and disintegrated rapidly. It was completely suppressed on 14 December 1927.
Chang T'ai-lei had an engaging personality, but he had no major political impact upon the Communist movement in China. Indeed, his contribution is now accorded little mention, his name being principally associated with the illfated Canton Commune of 1927, which the Chinese Communist party has called the "heroic battle in theretreat of a revolutionary high tide."
