Putian Party Building and the Great Revolution

In January 1925, the Fourth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai passed a resolution on organizational issues, deciding to "strive to start party organization" in areas where party organizations had not yet been established. In accordance with the spirit of this resolution, the Party Central Committee and the Guangdong District Cpc Committee sent a group of Communist Party members to Fujian in the winter of 1925 to carry out party building work in Fuzhou, Xiamen, and Putian. Among them, the party organizations in Xiamen were developed by the Guangdong District Party Committee, while the party organizations in Fuzhou and Putian were directly developed by the Fuzhou and Putian party members appointed by the central government to study in Shanghai. Therefore, Putian, located between the two central cities of Fuzhou and Xiamen, was one of the first three regions in Fujian to establish the party during the period of the Great Revolution.

The establishment and development of the Putian Party organization

After the "May Fourth" Movement, some high school graduates from Putian and Xianyou were successively admitted to universities in Shanghai, Beijing, Xiamen and other cities. They began to embrace Marxism in college. By 1925, Chen Guozhu, Huang Canglin, Lin Songling (Putian), Huang Jingfang, Chen Jiamo (Xianyouren), and other pu and xian college students from Beijing and Shanghai joined the Communist Party of China at the university. During their winter and summer vacations, they often brought Marxist-Leninist books and revolutionary publications back to their hometowns and circulated them among young friends. Therefore, in the land of Pu and Xian, the seeds of Marxism-Leninism began to be sown.

At the end of 1925, Chen Guozhu graduated from Shanghai Daxia University. Before leaving the school, the Party Central Committee sent Yuan Mengbing to talk to him, instructing Chen to carry out party building work in the area where he was employed after returning to Min, and to contact the central government directly (1). After Chen Guozhu returned to Pu, he was hired to teach at his alma mater, Zheli Middle School, in early 1926. Some of the ideologically progressive students of the high school were originally the targets of Chen Guozhu's propaganda of Marxism-Leninism, so these students quickly rallied around him. Subsequently, student groups such as the "Reading Club" and the "Academic Research Association" were established. At the end of February, Chen Guozhu selected Chen Tianzhang, Chen Zhaofang, Wu Mengze, Wu Chengbin, Chen Delai, etc. from the activists of each class, summoned them to his dormitory (the second floor of the school bell tower) to discuss, and decided to establish a mixed branch of the Putian Party Group. (2) After the establishment of the branch, Chen Guozhu immediately wrote a letter to report to the central government. The leading members of the first mixed party branch in Putian were: Secretary Chen Guozhu, Organization Chen Tianzhang, and Propaganda Chen Delai.

In late March 1926, Chen Guozhu went to Guangzhou to participate in the Revolution. In June of the same year, the leaders of the party organizations in guangdong sent him back to Fujian to carry out the workers' and peasants' movement and develop the grass-roots organizations of the Kuomintang, preparing to welcome the Northern Expeditionary Army into Fujian. After Chen Guozhu returned to Pu, he continued to teach at Zheli Middle School, and at the same time taught part-time at the Provincial Fourth Division, Public School Middle School and Hanjiang Middle School. Therefore, with the Philosophical Middle School as the core, he developed the party and league organizations in the middle schools in the two towns of Chengcheng and Han. At that time, Putian was the only county town in central Fujian except for Fuzhou and Quanzhou, so Qiu Guangzhao and Lin Jinru of Xianyou, Lin Huaicai and Yu Lishui of Yongchun, Wu Zhizhi and Lai Xizhu of Dehua and a number of students from other counties also joined the party in Putian, and (3) became the first batch of party members in these counties.

In August 1926, the National Revolutionary Army's Northern Expedition was frequently reported, and the rule of the Beiyang warlords in Putian was in turmoil. The Putian Branch of the CPC (4) decided to take advantage of the vigorous development of the great revolutionary situation and send Lin Songling, Chen Tianzhang, Chen Zhaofang, Wu Mengze, and others back to their hometowns to organize peasant associations and carry out the work of party building.

In December of the same year, the Northern Expeditionary Army marched from southern Fujian to Xinghua and then conquered Fuzhou, thus announcing the end of the beiyang warlords' rule in Fujian. The revolutionary situation has entered a new turning point. The Fuzhou Prefectural Committee of the CPC informed Chen Guozhu to go to the province to discuss organizational work, and after the study and determination of the leaders of the prefectural party committee, Putian established a special district committee of the party, which was subordinate to the Fuzhou Prefectural Committee. The special district committee is composed of Chen Guozhu (secretary), Chen Tianzhang (organization), Lin Songling (propaganda), Wu Mengze, Lin Qinghan, Chen Zhaofang, Chen Delai, Guo Xiaoyun (female), Wu Chengbin, etc. Members of the special district party committee went down to the grass-roots level to do people's work, and successively established peasant associations in Putian's North Road, Jiangkou, Beigao, Qianqin, Zhongmen, Guangye, Changtai, and other places, pushing the peasant movement to a new stage.

In early April 1927, the right wing of the Kuomintang launched an incident in Fujian in advance, and many Communists were slaughtered. The leading members of the Putian Special District Cpc Committee moved to the countryside in a timely manner to avoid hardship. Due to the sharp turn of the revolutionary situation, the party organization sent Chen Guozhu and others to Wuhan to ask the central authorities for instructions. Ren Bi, who was working in the Party Central Committee, received Fujian deputies Chen Ming and Chen Guozhu and instructed them to immediately return to Fujian to rectify and restore the party organization and prepare to carry out underground armed struggle. After Chen Guozhu returned to Fujian, he first participated in the preparatory work of the Fujian Provisional Provincial Party Committee in Xiamen, and returned to Putian in November of the same year. At this time, the Putian Party organization was headed by Song Yaohua, Chen Tianzhang, Wu Mengze, and others. After Chen Guozhu asked them to study and deploy the work in Putian, he considered that his reputation during the Great Revolution was too great and it was inconvenient for him to continue his activities in Putian, so he decided to go to Xianyou again to open up work.

After Chen Guozhu went to Xianyou, he connected with Huang Jingfang, who had participated in the Nanchang Uprising. The two agreed to exchange work locations, namely Chen Zaixianyou to establish the party, and Huang to Putian as the leader. In December 1927, the county committees of Pu and Xian counties were established separately. The members of the Putian County CPC Committee are Huang Jingfang (secretary), Song Yaohua (deputy secretary), Chen Tianzhang (organization), Lin Songling (propaganda), Wu Mengze, Lin Qinghan, Chen Zhaofang, Li Peilan (female), etc. The members of the Xianyou County Party Committee are Chen Guozhu (secretary), Wang Yujie (organization), Xu Shuxiu (propaganda) and so on.

The first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation and its division

Since the Xinhai Revolution, Putian has been under the rule of the Beiyang warlords. During this period, the revolutionaries were once active with the entry of the Cantonese army into Fujian, but they were soon suppressed. As a result, many gentry dissatisfied with the rule of the Beiyang warlords founded the Liberal Party and advocated "autonomy for the Fujian people." At that time, the reorganized Kuomintang did not have a grass-roots organization in Putian. According to Chen Guozhu's recollection, when he created the mixed party branch in Putian in early 1926, he began to set up the Putian Preparatory Committee of the Kuomintang, which was called a "private school" when secretly reporting to the CPC Central Committee. At the same time, Zeng Tianyi, Chen Zhen, and other Kuomintang leftists who returned to Putian from Daxia University also began to prepare for the establishment of local Kuomintang organizations around this time. Therefore, the Kuomintang organization in Putian was born at about the same time as the Communist Party organization. It was not until June 1926 that Chen Guozhu returned to Putian from Guangzhou that he cooperated with the Left wing of the Kuomintang to formally establish the Putian Preparatory Committee of the Kuomintang. Most of its grass-roots organizations were called the Divisional Departments, and most of them were established on the basis of the Communist Party and the branches of the Communist Youth League, and all Communist Party members and members of the Communist Youth League joined the Kuomintang organization and became the backbone. Therefore, the first batch of Kuomintang grass-roots organizations in Putian were formed with the help of Communists, and the backbone of the first batch of Kuomintang members were all Communists or Members of the Communist Youth League.

However, after the Beiyang warlords were overthrown, the "liberals" who used the landlord gentry clique as the social basis also turned themselves into Kuomintang; the nationalist army in their hands was also reorganized into the local kuomintang troops. But they had no mass base and had to find cooperation between the Communists and the Left Wing of the Kuomintang, and the Communist Party and the Left wing of the Kuomintang did not agree to cooperate with them, so they degenerated into a faction with organized ties with the "Sun Wen Doctrine Society" and became a right wing of the Kuomintang in the locality.

For some time before and after the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Fujian, the cooperative relationship between the Communists and the Left Wing of the Kuomintang was always good. Together, they organized trade unions, student unions and peasant associations, and together led the masses in the struggle against imperialism and warlordism. When the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Pu, the Preparatory Committee for Kuomintang-Communist Cooperation mobilized more than 100,000 people to welcome them and held a military-civilian party in Zhongshan Park. Zhang Zhen, commander of the Northern Expeditionary Army, Wen Qifan, chief of staff (a native of Putian), and Chen Guozhu and Zeng Tianyi, representatives from all walks of life in Putian, attended the meeting and gave speeches at the meeting. "Down with imperialism!" "Down with the warlords!" "Down with the gentry, the local tyrants, and the landlords!" "Implement Dr. Sun Yat-sen's founding strategy and the New Three People's Principles!" And other slogans caused a sensation throughout the city. The scene of the Kuomintang Putian Preparatory Committee organizing the masses to celebrate the victory of the Northern Expedition was the largest and the most enthusiastic atmosphere in the province at that time.

In December 1926, the Fujian Provincial Preparatory Committee of the Kuomintang was formally established, and Ma Shicai (a member of the Communist Party of China) and Li Peitong (leftist) presided over the establishment of a training center for party and government cadres to train the backbone of party affairs, and after the completion of the course, they were sent to various counties to prepare for the establishment of the Kuomintang county party department. After Chen Guozhu learned of the internal situation, he immediately selected Chen Tianzhang, Chen Zhaofang, Wang Jixiu, Chen Delai, and more than 10 other CPC members to participate.

With the in-depth development of the Great Revolution, the long-planned counter-revolutionary coup d'état of the Right Wing of the Kuomintang headed by Chiang Kai-shek finally broke out. On April 3, 1927, the right wing of the Kuomintang launched an incident in Fuzhou, holding a so-called "pro-Chiang Kai-shek and defending the party" congress, establishing a "Qing Party Committee", and wantonly killing communists and leftists. The right wing of the Kuomintang in Putian was ecstatic and immediately sent troops to raid and smash the organs of the CPC Putian Special District Committee on the evening of April 8. However, Chen Guozhu and other party organization leaders had already received the news in advance and had already withdrawn, and the reactionaries pounced, only copying the stamp of the peasant association and some ordinary documents. On the afternoon of 10 April, the rightists of the Putian Kuomintang gathered party members to carry out a so-called "pro-Chiang Kai-shek and anti-communist" march, shouting that they would "reorganize the Preparatory Committee of the Putian County Party Department," but few responded.

Because the ideas of the leftists won the support of the masses, and the cadres who returned from the provincial party department were all communists, the rightists were very isolated. After the "cleansing of the party," the provincial party department of the Kuomintang sent members to Pu to supervise the election, but the result was that the left faction was elected and the right faction was defeated. It was not until the end of 1928, when the Kuomintang further "cleaned the party" in Putian, that all the Communists withdrew. At that time, there were about 500 Kuomintang members in the county, and only more than 10 people participated in the "Qing Dang" registration. Therefore, the first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation in Putian lasted more than a year longer than in other parts of the country, which is a peculiar phenomenon in the history of Kuomintang-Communist cooperation.

The peasant movement led by the Party

Long before the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Fujian, the Putian Party organization began to lead the peasant movement. In June 1926, chen Guozhu returned from Guangzhou, and according to the practice of the Hailufeng peasant movement, he sent party members Chen Tianzhang, Wu Mengze, Lin Fengchi, Lin Qinghan and other party members back to their hometowns to secretly organize peasant associations. In December 1926, when Zhang Zhenshi of the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Pu, Hu Bingduo (a communist member of the Eastern Route Army headquarters, publicly known as He Yingqin's secretary) sent a letter informing Chen Guozhu to go to Xianyou for an interview, and Chen invited Zeng Tianyi to lead the way to Xian. Hu gave a briefing on the beginning of the "party cleansing" within the Kuomintang and instructed Chen to "mobilize opposition to the rightists, go deep into the lower strata, and devote themselves to doing people's work." After Chen returned to Pu, he immediately organized the members of the party and the regiment to go to the countryside, organized the peasants in pieces, and openly established district and township peasant associations in the name of the Kuomintang. Due to the success of the Putian Peasants' Association, the Agricultural Movement Committee of the Provincial Party Department of the Kuomintang appointed Chen Guozhu and Lin Qinghan as commissioners for the agricultural movement on December 27, responsible for the preparation of the Putian County Farmers' Association. As a result, the sign of the "Preparatory Committee of the Putian County Farmers' Association" was hung publicly on the ancient tower of Putian City.

However, from the very beginning, the peasant movement was disrupted by interference from the right wing of the Kuomintang. While secretly reporting to the provincial party department that Chen Guozhu and others were communists and "organizing peasant associations under false names," they also organized local hooligans to smash and sabotage. In the second half of January 1927, the preparatory meeting of the county agricultural cooperative held a meeting of representatives of the members of the township farmers' associations in various districts on the ancient tower to prepare for the formal establishment of the county farmers' association. The rightists immediately instigated thugs to rush into the venue and start a martial arts fight, and some of the delegates attending the meeting rose up to resist and some were forced to jump from the upper floors.

Although the county peasant cooperatives could not be established for a while, the grass-roots peasant cooperatives were all led by the leftists, so the rural revolutionary situation was still in full swing, and the landlords and gentry did not dare to show their faces. Until the Putian "April 8" incident, the rural agricultural movement continued to develop. For example, Dong Yuhui, vice chairman of the county agricultural cooperative, mobilized thousands of peasants and salt people from Zhujiang, Xiqin, and other villages to hold an anti-salt donation demonstration in Wat Shi Town, but as a result, they were suppressed by the reactionary landlords' armed forces controlled by the rightists, and the masses were killed twice; another example, the Zhongmen Peasants' Association launched a peasant rebellion to resist the donation of sticks and hired reactionary troops to go to the countryside to collect donations, resulting in several peasants being shot and killed, and dozens of houses were burned, resulting in the "Zhongmen Massacre." Under the leadership of the Party, the Putian Peasant Movement persisted in the struggle without compromise and finally embarked on the road of armed struggle.

Carry out anti-imperialist and patriotic struggles

Putian was one of the first counties in Fujian to suffer imperialist aggression and one of the first to carry out anti-imperialist and patriotic struggles. Putian culture and education are developed, the new ideological trend of the May Fourth Movement is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people among the youth, and Chen Guozhu, the founder of the Putian Party organization, is an active member who accepts the new ideological trend of the May Fourth Movement. After the establishment of the party organization in Putian, the anti-imperialist and patriotic struggle of the masses led by the party has been one wave after another. In March 1926, Zhang Wenxin, the American principal of Zheli Middle School, commemorated Easter by inverting the five-color flag (the national flag of the Beiyang warlord rule), provoking the outrage of the students. The party branch immediately launched a struggle among the students in the name of the student union and forced Zhang to admit his mistake. Through the struggle, the party branch seized the leadership of the student union controlled by the church elements, and then took over the leadership of the county student union. On the anniversary of the "May 30" massacre, the party organization mobilized students throughout the county to hold a rally through the student union, broke through the obstacles of the Beiyang warlords and imperialists, and successfully organized demonstrations. After the Northern Expeditionary Army regained Putian, the party also cooperated with Zheng Xiuyu, a leftist figure of the Kuomintang, to launch a "non-basic" movement to expose the imperialist crime of using religion to collude with warlords, landlords, and gentry to sabotage the Great Revolution, and opened a new road in the southeast of the city, named "Non-basic Road." Later, the Party organizations launched mass struggles against reactionary priests and priests in Aoshan, Yanjing, and Beigao, striking a blow at the arrogance of imperialism.

Since the founding of the Putian Party, the people of Putian have thrown themselves into the vigorous revolutionary movement under the leadership of the Party. Although this movement was suppressed and defeated by the Kuomintang reactionaries, this great practice of struggle had a tremendous and far-reaching impact on the broad masses and laid a good foundation for the Party to further carry out the armed struggle until it won the final victory.

(Source: Research Office of Party History and Local History of the Putian Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China Editor: Cai Yang)