Li Lisan

France and the Anyuan Strike

Li Lisan, born Li Longzhi, was born on 18 November 1899 in Liling, Hunan. He went to France on the work-study programme in 1919, organised a labour society with Zhao Shiyan and others in 1921, and was deported by the French authorities that October; arriving in Shanghai in December, he joined the CCP. Soon afterwards Mao Zedong, then secretary of the CCP's Hunan branch, sent him to organise workers at Anyuan; in 1922 he became head of the Anyuan Railway and Mine Workers' Club, and in September he and Liu Shaoqi led the Anyuan miners' strike to victory.

May Thirtieth and the Great Revolution

After the May Thirtieth Massacre of 1925, Li Lisan became chairman of the Shanghai General Labour Union and helped organise and lead the May Thirtieth Movement. In January 1927 he helped lead the campaign that recovered the British concessions in Hankou and Jiujiang; in May he was elected to the Central Committee and Politburo at the CCP's Fifth Congress, and from July he sat on the Party's provisional standing committee.

The Nanchang Uprising

In July 1927 Li Lisan went to Jiujiang with Deng Zhongxia and others, found that Zhang Fakui had swung behind Wang Jingwei, and around 20 July proposed to the Central Committee an independent military action — making him one of the first to propose the Nanchang Uprising. On 27 July he became a member of the Front Committee headed by Zhou Enlai. He marched south with the insurgents and in October submitted to the Central Committee his report "The Course and Lessons of the August First Revolution", one of the earliest systematic assessments of the uprising.

The "Li Lisan Line" and Fifteen Years in the Soviet Union

In 1928 Li Lisan attended the CCP's Sixth Congress in Moscow, was elected to the Central Committee and then served on the Politburo Standing Committee and as head of the Central Propaganda Department, taking part in the Party's top leadership. In June 1930 the Politburo, under his direction, adopted the resolution "The New Revolutionary High Tide and Preliminary Victory in One or More Provinces", calling for uprisings in the major cities centred on Wuhan and for the Red Army to concentrate on attacking cities — the "Li Lisan line", which caused the Party serious losses. At the Third Plenum that September he admitted his errors and left the central leadership; at the end of the year he went to Moscow at the Comintern's request and worked in the Soviet Union for fifteen years, returning to China in early 1946.

After 1949

After his return Li Lisan served as the CCP's chief representative on the Northeast team of the Executive Headquarters for military mediation and as vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. After the founding of the PRC he ran the federation's work and was a member of the Central People's Government Council and of the Government Administration Council, and Minister of Labour; he oversaw the Trade Union Law promulgated in June 1950 and the Labour Insurance Regulations, and later served as deputy head of the CCP's Industry Work Department and as a secretary of the North China Bureau. During the Cultural Revolution he was persecuted; detained after struggle sessions in June 1967, he died in Beijing on 22 June. According to his daughter Li Yingnan, speaking to Global People, he took his own life with an overdose of sleeping pills. The CCP Central Committee rehabilitated him in 1980.