Chou Fo-hai 周佛海 Chou Fo-hai (1897-February 1948), helped to establish the Chinese Communist party, but resigned from it in 1924. He became the most widely read theoretical writer of the Kuomintang and served Chiang Kai-shek for many years, eventually becoming acting director of the Kuomintang department of propaganda. He also edited the New Life Monthly and founded the New Life Bookstore in Shanghai. Because he helped to establish Wang Ching-wei's Japanese-sponsored regime and held high office in it, he was imprisoned after the war as a "national traitor." Yuanling in western Hunan was the birthplace of Chou Fo-hai. His father, who had served with distinction in the Hunan Army during the Taiping Rebellion, died young, leaving his widow, two sons, and a daughter to be supported by some hundred mu of poor land. From 1912 to 1917 Chou attended higher primary school and middle school at Yuanling. He apparently married young, for by 1917 he was the father of a son and a daughter. Chou was a good student. In May 1917, just before his graduation, the principal of the Yuanling Middle School and Chou's classmates, knowing Chou's poverty and his talent, decided to send Chou to Japan for advanced education by making him a small gift. With this money, supplemented by a small loan from his relatives, Chou went to Japan, arriving at Tokyo in July. While he was studying Japanese and taking other preparatory courses at a private school, he participated actively in Chinese student activities. Sometime in 1918 he left Japan in protest of the Sino-Japanese agreements signed by the government of Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) during the time of Allied intervention in Siberia. On the advice of an acquaintance, he went to Antung, on the Sino-Korean border, hoping to find work at a likin station. The station, however, was located on a desolate coast and could not possibly employ another worker. Despondent about his future, the penniless Chou even considered suicide. Finally, he borrowed some money for the trip back to Tokyo, where he studied furiously to prepare for the entrance examinations to the First Higher School. He passed the most difficult obstacle, the oral language test, by having someone proficient in Japanese prepare a report, which he memorized, on the Chihli-Fengtien war that was then going on in China. When the examiner asked him to discuss the war, as he had hoped would be the case, Chou gave an impressive performance. He was admitted to the school, which entitled him to a Chinese government grant, thus solving his educational and financial problems. After his graduation, he attended Kyoto Imperial University, where he studied economics and came under the influence of Professor Kawakami Hajime, the Marxist economist who translated Das Kapital into Japanese.

In July 1921, Chou was one of the dozen delegates to the First Congress of the Chinese Communist party, which was held in Shanghai. He represented Chinese students in Japan. Chou, who acted as secretary to the meeting, was elected vice chairman of the newly formed Chinese Communist party. During the short interval when he was in Shanghai, Chou also staged a whirlwind courtship of Yang Shu-hui, the daughter of Yang Cho-mao, a wealthy Shanghai merchant who had studied in the United States. She was a student in the Ch'iming Girls School when she fell in love with the impecunious Chou Fo-hai, who was already married. The strong-willed girl, despite her parents' precautions, eloped with Chou to Japan, where they lived in poor circumstances until Chou finished his studies in 1924. By then the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party had entered into their period of collaboration. In May 1924 Chou sailed directly from Japan to Canton, where the Kuomintang had set up a revolutionary government. There he taught at Kwangtung University and at the Whampoa Military Academy. According to Chou, he left the Communist party in the winter of 1924. In 1925 he published his Chung-shan hsien-sheng ssu-hsiang kaikuan [a general view of Sun Yat-sen's ideas], a book which attracted the attention of Chiang Kai-shek. In December 1925 Chou left Canton for Wuhan, allegedly because of his disapproval of Borodin's domination of the Canton government. He then spent several months teaching at Wuhan University and at Wuhan Commercial College. However, he was back in Canton in time to join the Northern Expedition, which set out in July 1926. After Wuhan fell to the Nationalist armies in October 1926, Chou was commissioned secretary general and, concurrently, head of the Wuhan branch of the Central Military Academy, of which Chiang Kai-shek was ex officio commandant and Teng Yen-ta (q.v.) acting commandant. Since both Chiang and Teng Yen-ta then were occupied with other matters, the actual administration of the academy at Wuhan fell to Chou Fo-hai. Later, Teng Yen-ta appointed Yun Tai-ying (q.v.), a Communist, as chiefpolitical instructor, and Yun took over practical control of the political department. Chou Fo-hai was then in a difficult position, since he was distrusted by both the Communists and the right wing of the Kuomintang. When the schism between Chiang Kaishek and the Wuhan government deepened, Chou decided to flee Hankow. In April 1927 Chiang Kai-shek established a government at Nanking in opposition to the Wuhan regime. Early in May, while the Communists were being purged in areas under the control of the Nanking government, Chou, accompanied by his family and his father-in-law, secretly left Hankow for Shanghai aboard a British vessel. His identity, however, was discovered by fellow Kuomintang passengers, who notified the Nanking government. As soon as he landed at Shanghai, Chou was arrested as a suspected Communist. Through the efforts of his wife and the mediation of influential friends, including Chang Chihchung, Quo T'ai-ch'i (Kuo T'ai-ch'i), and Tai Chi-t'ao (qq.v.), Chou was released after almost three weeks of incarceration.

Following his release, Chou was appointed by Chiang Kai-shek as chief political instructor at the newly organized Central Military Academy at Nanking. It was then that Chou began writing a book which was to become very popular in Nationalist China, the San-min-chu-i li-lun te Vi-hsi [the theoretical system of the Three People's Principles]. In August 1927 factional rivalry at Nanking led to Chiang Kai-shek's resignation. Chou Fo-hai left his post to accept a teaching position at National Chung-shan University at Canton on the invitation of Tai Chi-t'ao, who was then the chancellor. As a result of the recent Kuomintang purges, political conditions at Canton and at the university were extremely unsettled, and Chou Fo-hai left in the autumn of 1927 to go to Shanghai. There the Kuomintang launched a new political review, the New Life Monthly, which began publication in January 1928 under Chou Fo-hai's editorship. Ch'en Pu-lei, Ch'en Kuo-fu, Shao Li-tzu (qq.v.), and Tai Chi-t'ao also contributed to the magazine. Later Chou also founded the New Life Bookstore in Shanghai, which published his San-min-chu-i chih li-lun te Vi-hsi in April 1928. Chiang Kai-shek, who had returned from Japan to direct the second phase of the Northern Expedition, recalled Chou to active service, naming him director of the political department of the Central Military Academy. The Northern Expedition was successfully concluded in the summer of 1928 with the fall of Peking to the Nationalist armies. In July, Chou was a member of the entourage which accompanied Chiang Kai-shek to Peking to pay respects at the temporary resting place of Sun Yat-sen in the Western Hills. On his return, Chou resigned from the Military Academy at Nanking to resume work in Shanghai. In February 1929 Chiang Kai-shek summoned Chou Fo-hai to assist him at Nanking. When the Third National Congress of the Kuomintang was held in March 1929, Chou was made a delegate from the Philippines. He then accompanied Chiang in the brief campaign against the Kwangsi generals based at Wuhan. Chou then was appointed director of the office of political training in the department of general training of the Nationalist military establishment and, concurrently, director of the political department of the Generalissimo's headquarters.

In November 1931 Chou was elected to the Central Executive Committee at the Fourth National Congress of the Kuomintang. A month later Chiang Kai-shek was forced to resign in the wake of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Before leaving the government, Chiang put a military man, Ku Chu-t'ung (q.v.), at the head of the Kiangsu provincial government. Ku requested the appointment of Chou Fo-hai as a member of the Kiangsu provincial government council and as director of the department of education. Chou held these posts until 1933, when Ch'en Kuo-fu took over the governorship of Kiangsu. After returning to Nanking, Chou Fo-hai assumed the direction of the department of people's training of the Kuomintang and participated in the activities of the Blue Shirt Society, whose leaders were mostly former Whampoa cadets. In 1935 he was reelected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. In January 1937 Chou Fo-hai and Shao Litzu were sent by the National Government to Hong Kong, where they welcomed Wang Ching-wei back from Europe in the spirit of national unity that followed the Sian Incident of December 1936. Not long afterward, the government was reorganized, and Chou was transferred to the vice directorship of the Kuomintang department of propaganda. In 1938 he was promoted to acting director of the department. During 1938 Chou continued to serve as an aide de camp in Chiang Kai-shek's headquarters and was responsible for the drafting of important documents. In view of Chou Fo-hai's close personal association with Chiang Kai-shek, his motives in turning to support Wang Ching-wei, a longtime political antagonist of Chiang, remain obscure. According to Chou's own account, he belonged at that time to the group known as the low-tune group, which included such figures as Hu Shih (q.v.), Mei Ssu-p'ing, and T'ao Hsi-sheng (q.v.). This group allegedly decried the high tune of those who demanded immediate resistance to Japan. After the outbreak of war in July 1937, Chou Fo-hai, as a leading propaganda official of the Kuomintang, had established the I-wen yen-chiu-she [literary research society] at Hankow, for the purpose of presenting China's case to the world. Chou was general director of the organization, and T'ao Hsi-sheng was general secretary. Since T'ao Hsi-sheng was an intimate friend of Wang Ching-wei, Chou Fo-hai came to know Wang's circle during this period. After the fall of Hankow and the evacuation of the National Government to Chungking, Wang Ching-wei became extremely pessimistic about China's chances for victory and favored the conclusion of a peaceful settlement with Japan. On 18 December 1938 Wang left Chungking. When Chou Fo-hai heard the news, he went after Wang on the pretext of inspecting Kuomintang affairs. Chou found Wang's party at Kunming and accompanied the group to Hanoi in French Indo-China. On 29 December 1938 Wang Ching-wei made his position clear in a public telegram to the National Government at Chungking. Early in 1939, while Wang was still at Hanoi, Chou Fo-hai went to Hong Kong. There, with Ch'en Kung-po, Lin Po-sheng, Mei Ssu-p'ing, and T'ao Hsi-sheng, he helped to conduct a propaganda campaign for Wang Ching-wei's peace movement in the Nanhua jih-pao. On 25 April 1939 Wang Ching-wei secretly left Hanoi for Shanghai on a chartered French vessel. He transferred to a Japanese ship off the Swatow coast and arrived at his destination on 6 May. Chou preceded Wang to Shanghai. In early April he met with a Japanese agent and proposed that Japan sponsor the establishment of a rival Chinese government at Nanking under Wang's leadership for the purpose of bringing the Sino-Japanese conflict to an end. Chou argued strongly for this course of action at a conference of more than 50 of Wang's supporters held at Shanghai. The conference did not come to a decision, but Chou's proposal was accepted by Wang Chingwei himself. On 4 June 1939 Wang took Chou Fo-hai and several close advisers to Tokyo for meetings with a Japanese group headed by Hiranuma Küchiro, who was then premier. The talks dragged on, and Wang returned to Shanghai on 24 June, leaving Chou to effect an agreement with the Japanese.

After the negotiations were completed, Chou Fo-hai returned to Shanghai, where he began preparations for the establishment of a new government under Wang Ching-wei. On 1 September 1939 Wang convened the so-called sixth national congress of the Kuomintang. That gathering elected Chou chairman of the financial and secret service committee. Later in September he participated in the Nanking conference at which Wang and the heads of the Japanese-sponsored governments at Peking and Nanking attempted to come to an agreement on the establishment of a central government under Wang. In November, Wang Ching-wei and the Japanese began formal negotiations concerning the Japanese-proposed Principles for the Readjustment of New Sino-Japanese Relations. Chou Fo-hai, Kao Tsung-wu (q.v.), Mei Ssup'ing, and T'ao Hsi-sheng were Wang Chingwei's representatives at the conference table. The negotiations were concluded on 30 December 1939. Wang's movement suffered a setback in January 1940 when Kao Tsung-wu and T'ao Hsi-sheng, who had been privy to the effort from the beginning, defected to Hong Kong with copies of Wang's secret agreement with Japan. This failed to deter Wang, although publication of the terms of the secret agreement created a furor in China. On 23 January 1940 Chou Fo-hai attended the Tsingtao conference as a member of the Wang delegation. That meeting worked out procedures for the nominal amalgamation of the Peking and Nanking regimes under Wang's proposed government. The conference ended on the 26th ; Chou flew to Japan on 28 January to discuss with the Japanese possible means of getting Chungking to end the war and future relations between Wang Chingwei and Chiang Kai-shek should peace become a reality. Back in Shanghai on 26 February, Chou began organization of the new government, which came into being on 30 March 1940. In his diary Chou Fo-hai stated quite accurately that he was the central figure in that undertaking. He occupied the following posts at Nanking: vice president of the executive yuan, minister of finance, minister of police, vice chairman of the military affairs commission, and general director of the central reserve bank. Since he also controlled the secret police and acted as chief negotiator with the Japanese, he was without doubt Wang Ching-wei's most powerful and versatile lieutenant. Chou reported that he was appreciative of Wang's personal warmth and of his complete trust, which was in marked contrast to the aloofness of Chiang Kai-shek.

Since Tokyo's original intention in supporting Wang had been primarily to force Chungking into entering peace negotiations, the Japanese government delayed granting formal recognition to Wang's government until all attempts to make peace with Chungking had failed. On 30 November 1940 Japan finally signed the Sino- Japanese Basic Agreement and exchanged ambassadors with Nanking. The agreement, contrary to what Wang Ching-wei and his followers had hoped, maintained strong Japanese control over the occupied territories. In an entry in his diary on 20 December 1940, Chou confessed that he had been mistaken in his view of Japanese intentions and that the advocates of resistance were right. When the Japanese began the War in the Pacific in December 1941, the Wang regime abandoned hope of inducing Chungking to accept peace conditions imposed by the Japanese. About that time Chou Fo-hai established contact with the Chungking authorities through two secret radio stations. One was in direct communication with the military intelligence service under Tai Li (q.v.) in Chungking; and the other maintained contact with the headquarters of the Third War Area commanded by Ku Chu-t'ung, Chou's former colleague in the Kiangsu provincial government. On 9 January 1943 the Wang Ching-wei regime declared war on the Allied powers. Japan reciprocated by replacing the offensive 1940 S
no-Japanese agreement with a more favorable treaty of alliance, which was signed on 30 October 1943. On 3 March 1944 Wang Ching-wei went to Japan for medical treatment, leaving the affairs of the Nanking regime in the hands of Ch'en Kung-po and Chou Fo-hai. After Wang died on 10 November 1944 at Nagoya, Japan, Ch'en Kung-po succeeded to his posts, while Chou took over the position of mayor of Shanghai which Ch'en Kung-po had formerly held. As the War in the Pacific entered the decisive stage and Allied landings on the China coast became a distinct possibility, Chungking reportedly gave Chou Fo-hai the task of coordinating anti-Japanese uprisings behind the Japanese lines in the event of Allied attacks on the coast. The atomic bomb and the Japanese surrender deprived Chou of the chance to prove himself, if indeed he actually had been given the assignment.

At the time of the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the National Government authorities at Chungking and the Chinese Communists both apparently made overtures to Chou Fo-hai. The Communist units commanded by Ch'en Yi (q.v.) had been steadily expanding their strength in east China during the war. Tai Li, however, struck a bargain with Chou to prevent the infiltration of Communist forces. On 14 August 1945, shortly after the Japanese surrender, Chou received an appointment from Chungking as commander of Nanking-Shanghai actions, with the mission of maintaining order in the Japaneseoccupied areas until the arrival of National Government troops. After the Nationalist takeover of China's largest city had been secured, Tai Li arrested Chou Fo-hai and flew him to Chungking. There Chou was kept under house arrest with his wife and children. He was later moved to Nanking, where he was tried for treason. To a large extent Chou Fo-hai's fate was in the hands of Tai Li, who had been his most important link with Chungking during the war and who could, if he desired, secure favorable disposition of Chou's case. The death of Tai Li in a plane crash on 17 March 1946 made Chou's situation problematical, since no other senior official in the Kuomintang knew or cared enough about Chou's role in Chungking's strategy to attempt to influence the proceedings against him. Reportedly, Chou Fo-hai's wife, through the intervention of Ch'en Pu-lei, was granted an interview with Chiang Kai-shek, where she begged for her husband's life. Whatever the facts, on 26 March 1946 Chou Fo-hai's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on Chiang's order. He died in prison at Nanking in February 1948 after a prolonged illness.

Chou Fo-hai was a conscientious diarist. At the end of the war he placed seven volumes of his diary, which recorded events from 1939 to 1945, in a Shanghai bank. These volumes were confiscated by the Nationalist military intelligence and came into the hands of Teng Paokuang, director of the office of traitor's property of the government-controlled Central Trust. Teng refused the request of Chou's wife for their return, presumably because of details regarding the wartime activities of prominent figures in the Kuomintang and the National Government. Teng Pao-kuang later defected to the Communists. He visited Hong Kong in 1950, taking with him the 1940 portion of the diary. In Hong Kong that document found its way into the hands of Ch'en Pin-ho, a newsman who had been active in the Wang Ching-wei regime. It was published in Hong Kong by the Ch'uangk'en ch'u-pan-she in 1955 as Chou Fo-hai jih-chi [Chou Fo-hai's diary].

Chou's reminiscences of his school days and of his career in the Kuomintang were collected in a book entitled Wang-i chi, published at Shanghai in 1944 and reprinted at Hong Kong in 1955. His serious writings include a number of articles which appeared in Hsin ch'ing-nien in 1921 and 1922 and three books dealing with the ideas of Sun Yat-sen, notably the Three People's Principles: Chung-shan hsien-sheng ssu-hsiang kaikuan (Shanghai, 1925), San-min-chu-i chih li-lun te t'i-hsi (Shanghai, 1928), and San-min-chu-i te chi-pen wen-t'i (Shanghai, 1929). Chou Fo-hai also produced a translation of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid entitled Hu-chu-lun (Shanghai, 1922), books on economic theory and finance, and translations, mostly from Japanese, of works on international economics, economic history, and international commercial policies.

Chou Fo-hai was survived by his wife, Yang Shu-hui, and by their two children. Chou Yuhai, who was educated in Japan, went over to the Communists after his father was sentenced to death. The daughter, Chou Hui-hai, married twice.