Wang Ming (; May 23, 1904 – March 27, 1974) was a Chinese politician and senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He led the CCP delegation to the Communist International (Comintern) from 1931 to 1937. After returning to China, he came into conflict with Mao Zedong.
From 1925 to 1929, Wang studied at the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, where he was a supporter of Joseph Stalin's during the Soviet Union's leadership struggles. After returning to China, he was briefly purged by Li Lisan's faction before being fully reinstated in late 1930. In January 1931, he was promoted to the Politburo and rose rapidly in importance during a time of high attrition in the CCP's top leadership due to purges, arrests, and flights into hiding.
Wang became the CCP's leading representative to the Comintern and left for Moscow in October 1931. In that role, he helped promote the idea of an alliance between the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT) to resist Japanese imperialism, which eventually came to fruition as the Second United Front. After he returned to China in 1937, Wang vocally opposed what he saw as Mao's "nationalist deviation" from orthodox Marxism–Leninism. According to Mao, Wang epitomized the intellectualism and foreign dogmatism that Mao criticized in his essays On Practice and On Contradiction.
Early life
On May 23, 1904, Wang Ming was born in Jinzhai, Anhui, as Chen Shaoyu () to a poor peasant family. In 1920, he entered the Zhicheng Elementary School in Gushi County. Wang then entered the Third Agricultural School of the Anhui Province, which was founded by the revolutionary Zhu Yunshan. Zhu had a strong influence on the school's students, introducing many progressive journals and books such as New Youth and Communism ABC. In the school, Wang would encounter another strong influential figure in his life, A Ying, his teacher. A Ying would teach Wang about Vladimir Lenin and Chen Duxiu.
During his school years, Wang was also active in the political movement. He led boycotts of Japanese products and corrupt elections. After his graduation in 1924, Wang enrolled in the Wuchang Business School, where he studied for a year. There he published several articles on revolution and communism. That same year he joined the May 30 Movement, which involved strikes and protests against imperialism during the Northern Expedition in Wuchang. In the summer of 1924, Wang joined the CCP.
From Moscow to Shanghai
In November 1925, the CCP sent Wang to Moscow Sun Yat-sen University in Russia.Karl-Heinz Pohl, Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches, BRILL, 1999 p.338 During this time, Wang mastered both the Russian language and Marxist–Leninist theory, becoming known by the Russian name Ivan Andreevich Golubev () or simply Golubev. It was also during this time that Wang encountered his first major political adversary, Ren Zhuoxuan. Ren was appointed as the secretary of the university's student CCP branch. Eventually Wang's eloquence won over Ren's authoritarian style in various debates. Consequently, in April 1926, Wang was elected as chairman of the university's CCP branch. After the election, Pavel Mif, the university's vice president, became fond of Wang. In January 1927, when Mif came to China as the head of a Soviet delegation, Wang was his interpreter.
After the CCP's split with the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1927, Wang and Mif attended the CCP's 5th National Congress in Wuhan, after which Wang became Secretary for the CCP's Propaganda Department for two months. Wang was also a part-time editor of the Guidance journal where he published a few articles. After the July 15 coup in Wuhan, Wang returned to Moscow with Mif.
After the purge of Karl Radek by Joseph Stalin, Mif was appointed as president of Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, and then Vice Minister of the Eastern Department of Comintern. For his service and loyalty, Wang became Mif's protégé. The circle of Chinese students centered around Mif, which included Wang as well as Zhang Wentian, Bo Gu and Wang Jiaxiang, became known as the "28 Bolsheviks" because of their strict adherence to the official party line. There was an ongoing struggle between Trotskyists and Stalinists among the Chinese students, and Wang was involved in suppressing the Trotskyists.Benton, G. (1996). China's Urban Revolutionaries: Explorations in the History of Chinese Trotskyism. Humanities Press International, p.24.
In early 1929, Wang left Sun Yat-sen University to return to China. Wang began dating Meng Qingshu, who later became his wife. Wang was then transferred to the Propaganda Department of CCP, where Li Lisan was the incumbent minister. During a half year from 1929 to 1930, Wang published many articles in the party newspaper Red Flag and magazine Bolshevik, which supported the leftism embraced by Li. In 1930, when Wang attended a secret meeting in Shanghai, he was promptly arrested. But Wang was lucky enough to be ignored by the KMT secret police, who had no idea what value this young man might be to them. Wang was soon released after bribing the guard. Wang was transferred to CCP's Central Labor Union after his release. Although Wang was a leftist and abided by Communist dogma strictly in essence, his beliefs were different from those of Li. Wang was more strict about adhering to the policies of the Comintern. He quickly found a temporary alliance with old CCP members, labor activists such as He Mengxiong (), Lin Yunan (, a relative of Lin Biao) against Li. In a meeting, Wang argued with Li and offended him. As a price for his being impulsive and immature, Wang was discharged from his position and demoted to the Jiangsu division of CCP.
In August 1930, the Comintern sent Zhou Enlai and Qu Qiubai back to China to reign in Li Lisan's aggressive policy. However, the CCP did not adopt any meaningful policy changes at the 3rd Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee in September. This led the Comintern to order Li Lisan himself to come to Moscow, and Pavel Mif was sent to China ensure a new policy was implemented. Mif arrived in December. The CCP issued a resolution renouncing Li Lisan's extremist policies from the previous year, and on December 16, they reversed Wang Ming's punishment.
At the Fourth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee in January 1931, Wang's was promoted to a position on the CCP's Politburo, although he was not given a seat on the Standing Committee. He was not a Commissioner of the Central Committee of CCP yet, this being a prerequisite for being a politburo member under the system proposed by Wang himself.
The first half of 1931 saw a number of senior Communists in Shanghai expelled from the party for supporting Li Lisan's policies or captured by the Kuomintang thanks to the defection of Gu Shunzhang. According to Ben Macintyre, Wang Ming may also have been responsible for some of the arrests. On January 17, 36 Communists, including five leaders of the League of Left-Wing Writers, were arrested by the KMT. Macintyre writes that Wang "regarded the League as a cover for 'dissenting comrades' and wanted them killed. 23 were executed the next month. By April, part of party leadership left the cities for security. These arrests, expulsions, and departures left the Politburo members who remained in Shanghai in a position to dominate the party. On June 22, the General Secretary himself, Xiang Zhongfa, was arrested and quickly executed by the KMT. After Xiang's death, Wang Ming, Zhou Enlai, and became the most important CCP leaders left in the city. However, they would not remain there long. In October, Wang Ming left Shanghai for Moscow as the CCP's representative to the Comintern, a position he would retain for the next six years.
CCP's representative to the Comintern From November 1931 to November 1937, Wang worked and lived in Moscow as director of the CCP's delegation to the Comintern. During that period, he was elected as Executive Commissioner, member of the Presidium, and Alternate General of the Comintern. This indicated his prominence and popularity in the Comintern. During this period, the CCP suffered major defeats in both urban and rural areas against the KMT and made a strategic retreat in the Long March. At the Zunyi Conference, Wang and the 28 Bolsheviks lost the support of key party and Red Army leaders; Bo Gu, Zhou Enlai and Otto Braun were criticized for their poor strategy. Zhang Wentian succeeded Bo Gu as provisional party leader. Mao emerged from Zunyi as the politburo's dominant member with the support of the army and his opponents discredited.
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in November 1931 posed a clear threat to both sides of the Chinese Civil War (as well as to the Soviet Union), but it did not lead to an immediate cessation of hostilities. The failure of the First United Front four years previously had created deep, lasting distrust. Chiang Kai-shek articulated his policy as "first internal pacification, then external resistance." The CCP called for simultaneously "Resisting Japan and Opposing Chiang".
But by 1935, the Comintern had decided that the threat posed by Japan in Asia and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Europe called for a less dogmatic response. The 7th World Congress of the Comintern called for Communist parties to participate in "anti-fascist united fronts" across the globe. In July 1935, Wang had begun work on a document that explained how the new policy would apply to China. This was published in October, but was dated August 1, and subsequently became known as the "1 August Declaration". It called on all parties in China to form a united front against Japanese Imperialism and proposed creating a united government of national defense. Importantly, though, the offer did not extend to Chiang himself; Wang and the rest of the CCP delegation still considered him and his central government the "running dog" of the Japanese.
However, the attitude of Wang Ming and the Comintern towards Chiang began to shift when the full details of the Long March and the CCP's devastating defeats in south China reached Moscow. Wang Ming even published a series of articles where he called for Chiang to either join an anti-Japanese united front or be overthrown by KMT patriots. But historians disagree on how seriously to take this change in tone: Michael Sheng dismisses the articles as propaganda intended to encourage anti-Chiang dissent in the KMT, whereas Gao Hua argues that Wang sincerely believed that Chiang could and should be brought into a united front. In either case, this propaganda line was abandoned after Chiang suppressed the December 9th Movement.
The CCP itself (cut off from radio communication with Moscow) learned of the 1 August Declaration in November 1935. Party leaders held a conference at Wayaobu in December to discuss the implications of this new policy. Their Wayaobu Manifesto marked an important retreat from the hardline positions they had held during the early civil war. It called for "the most broad national united front" to resist Japan, and announced that the CCP would suspend class conflict in the interests of cross-class collaboration. However, it also made clear that they did not want to give up their military strength. As a basis from which to resist the Japanese, the Manifesto called for the Red Army to be expanded to 1 million men and for the Chinese Soviet to dramatically increase its land area.