Wang Jiaxiang

Early Years and Study in Moscow

Wang Jiaxiang was born on 15 August 1906 in Hou'an village, Jing County, Anhui. He entered Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow in October 1925, joined the CCP in February 1928, and later studied at the Institute of Red Professors with Zhang Wentian and others. Returning in 1930, he worked in the CCP's Central Propaganda Department, as secretary-general of the Central Party Newspaper Committee and as chief editor of Red Flag and Truth.

The Central Soviet Area

In March 1931 Wang went to the Central Revolutionary Base Area, where he became a member of the Soviet Area Central Bureau, director of the Red Army's General Political Department and vice chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission. When the Ningdu meeting of October 1932 called for Mao Zedong's removal from the front, Wang spoke in Mao's support. In 1934 he was elected to the Central Committee and as an alternate member of the Politburo.

The Long March and the Zunyi Conference

Still not recovered from a wound, Wang travelled on the Long March with Mao Zedong and Zhang Wentian, came to share their views on military questions, and backed Mao's proposals at the Liping and other meetings. At the Zunyi Conference he clearly supported Mao; afterwards he was promoted to full Politburo membership, and in mid-March 1935 formed a three-man military command group with Mao and Zhou Enlai. When Central Committee members were elected at the Seventh Party Congress in 1945, Mao spoke up for him, saying that "without Comrades Luo Fu and Wang Jiaxiang breaking away from the third 'leftist' line, the Zunyi Conference could not have succeeded".

Moscow and the Sixth Plenum

In 1937–38 Wang was the CCP's representative to the Comintern. Returning to Yan'an in August 1938, in September he relayed to a Politburo meeting and then to the Sixth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee the views of Comintern general secretary Georgi Dimitrov: that the CCP's political line was correct and that Mao Zedong should be supported as the Party's leader.

After 1949

In October 1949 Wang became the PRC's first ambassador to the Soviet Union and a vice minister of foreign affairs; from 1951 to 1966 he headed the CCP International Liaison Department, and in 1956 he was elected to the Central Committee and the Central Secretariat at the Eighth Party Congress. He suffered severely during the Cultural Revolution, was elected to the Central Committee again at the Tenth Party Congress in 1973, and died in Beijing on 25 January 1974.