Among the 13 deputies who participated in the CPC Congress, there was the name of Bao Huisheng. Bao Huisheng also participated in the Nanchang Uprising, later defected, and served as a lieutenant general in the Kuomintang army. After the founding of New China, he wrote letters to his former comrades-in-arms Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, lost his way and returned, and left some precious memories and historical materials.
An early journalistic career amassed the first ideas for transforming society
In 1894, Bao Huisheng was born in Huanggang County, Hubei Province, to an ordinary peasant family. As a teenager, he was straightforward and impulsive in his dealings with people. In 1917, he graduated from the First Normal School of Hubei Province and taught at a primary school, but later parted because of his disagreement with the principal. Soon after, he worked as a teacher in another primary school, but was forced to leave his job because of discord with the school trustees. One day, Bao Huisheng met a fellow villager who was a tabloid reporter and was encouraged by his fellow villagers to write press releases to make a living. After publishing some manuscripts, Bao Huisheng ran to Wuhan to develop.
Soon, he was also a reporter for several newspapers such as Hankou News And Dahan Bao in Wuhan. Because Bao Huisheng's manuscript dared to disclose the social shady scenes, it offended a big warlord. Several newspapers, fearing trouble, cancelled his journalistic ID, and he had to change his pen name to continue to submit articles to survive. After the wave of the May Fourth Movement calmed down, the Wuhan bureaucratic government and newspapers colluded with each other to shield each other, and it became increasingly difficult to publish articles exposing the dark side of society, and Bao Huisheng had no choice but to return to his hometown in huanggang countryside.
He participated in the first congress of the Communist Party of China and served as the secretary of the Wuhan Communist Group
In February 1920, Bao Hui, a monk who returned to Wuhan again, was recommended by a person to become the editor of the Jianghan News Agency. At this time, Chen Duxiu went to Wuhan Wenhua School, Wuchang Higher Normal School and other schools to deliver speeches such as "Methods and Beliefs of Social Transformation" and "The Spirit of New Education". Bao Huisheng was sent to interview Chen Duxiu. The conversation with Chen Duxiu deeply influenced Bao Huisheng, causing him to have a strong interest in Marxism, and he immediately resigned.
During this period, Chen Tanqiu, then a reporter for the Hubei People's News Agency, stayed with Bao Huisheng at the Jinjia Inn. But Mr. Chen never revealed his plans to build a party in Wuhan.
In the summer of 1920, a middle-aged man named Liu Bochui came to the Jinjia Inn to find Bao Huisheng and said that he had a letter from Chen Duxiu to hand over to him. Bao Huisheng read the letter and learned that some teachers and students in Beiping were preparing for the Organization of the Communist Party, and Chen Duxiu hoped that he would contact some people and create a Communist Party organization in Wuhan. Bao Huisheng was overjoyed when he saw it, and he did not know that Chen Tanqiu and Dong Biwu had begun to do the preliminary work of party building.
As the pace of party building in Wuhan accelerated, Chen Tanqiu went to Beiping to meet Chen Duxiu, learned that Chen Duxiu and Bao Huisheng had contacts, and exchanged letters with each other, and Bao Huiqiu also expressed his willingness to participate in the organizational activities of the Wuhan Communist Party in the letter. After Chen Tanqiu returned to Wuhan, he found Bao Huisheng and invited him to join the Wuhan Communist Research Group, and Bao Huisheng agreed to come down.
In the autumn of 1920, Liu Bochui summoned Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu, Bao Huisheng, Zheng Kaiqing and others to set up a communist group in Wuhan, and everyone elected Bao Huisheng as secretary, and Chen Tanqiu was responsible for organizational work. At the turn of the spring and summer of 1921, Bao Huisheng learned that Chen Duxiu had arrived in Guangzhou, so he went to report on his work. In Guangzhou, Bao Huisheng followed Chen Duxiu to the activities of the Guangzhou Communist Group, learned about their development experience and work experience, and assisted him in doing some transactional work.
In early June, Ma Lin, a representative of the Comintern, arrived in Shanghai and consulted with Li Da, Li Hanjun, and other members of the early Communist Party organization in Shanghai, and believed that a national congress should be convened as soon as possible to formally establish the Communist Party of China. Li Da and Li Hanjun wrote letters to Chen Duxiu in Guangzhou and Li Dazhao in Beijing to determine the time and place for the first CPC congress. Before the meeting, Chen Duxiu had a conflict in time, so he assigned Bao Huisheng as his personal representative to go to Shanghai with Chen Gongbo of the Guangzhou Communist Group to attend the "Founding Meeting of the Communist Party of China."
He became friends with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and served at the Whampoa Military Academy
At the first congress of the Communist Party of China, 27-year-old Bao Huisheng and 28-year-old Mao Zedong quickly became friends with each other and became good friends. After the CCP's first meeting, the two exchanged letters.
After the end of the cpc congress, Ma Lin, a representative of the Comintern, sent Bao Huisheng to Guangzhou to mobilize Chen Duxiu to return to Shanghai to preside over the work of the CPC Central Bureau. After Bao Huisheng arrived in Guangzhou, he informed Chen Duxiu of the opinions of the representatives of the Communist International and the opinions of the delegates attending the meeting. On September 9, Chen Duxiu went to Shanghai accompanied by him and stayed at No. 2 Yuyangli. Bao Huisheng immediately returned to Wuhan and continued to do the work of party building.
On August 11, 1921, the Communist Party of China established the Secretariat of the Chinese Labor Union, the general organ leading the workers' movement, in Shanghai. Zhang Guotao was the chief director and Mao Zedong was the director of the Hunan Department. Bao Huisheng is the head of a department of the Secretariat of the Chinese Labor Union. Later, because of the shortage of manpower, Bao Huisheng was transferred to run the "Labor Weekly" together with Zhang Guotao, a member of the Central Bureau, and others. During that time, Bao Huisheng and Mao Zedong also exchanged letters.
In early 1922, when Bao Huisheng returned to Wuhan, just when Mao Zedong was wanted by the Hunan warlord government and took refuge in Wuchang's Loess Slope, Bao Huisheng invited Mao Zedong to live in his office and bedroom of the Wuhan District Committee of the Communist Party of China for more than 20 days. During this period, Bao Huisheng and Mao Zedong spent time together to discuss the problems of the Chinese revolution.
In May 1922, the party organization transferred Bao Huisheng to Beijing to do party work, introduced by Li Dazhao, and worked part-time in the Beiyang Government's Ministry of Communications as a cover. Subsequently, Bao Huisheng was elected as a member and secretary general of the Beijing District Committee of the Communist Party of China. In 1923, after the "February 7" strike on the Beijing-Hankou Railway, Bao Huisheng was wanted for the crime of "instigating a tide of work" and had to return to Wuhan to take over as chairman of the Wuhan District Committee of the Communist Party of China. During the first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation in 1924, with the consent of the party organization, he joined the Kuomintang as a member of the Communist Party of China and joined the Kuomintang in Guangzhou.
In February 1925, Zhou Enlai, director of the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy, was ordered to lead a teaching group to launch the First Crusade with the principal Chiang Kai-shek, and the school headquarters temporarily became a vacuum, and the students were unmanaged. Liao Zhongkai made an exception by appointing Bao Huisheng as the director of the political department of the military academy. In this way, the Whampoa Military Academy had two directors of the Political Department in the same period, Zhou Enlai in the front and Bao Huisheng in the rear. In June, all the students of the military academy who participated in the Crusade returned to school to resume classes, and Chiang Kai-shek also returned to Guangzhou to listen to Bao Huisheng's report on his work. Soon, Zhou Enlai was transferred to the First Division of the National Revolutionary Army as a party representative. During this period, Bao Hui monk had many contacts with Zhou Enlai.
From September to October 1926, Bao Huisheng arrived in Wuhan with the Northern Expeditionary Army and was appointed by Deng Yanda, director of the General Political Department of the National Revolutionary Army, as the chairman of the Wuhan Press Inspection Commission. After taking over, Bao Huisheng immediately began to draw up measures for press inspections and held a press conference to solve the existing problems, but the work had not yet been fully rolled out, and he was appointed director of the preparatory department of the Wuhan Central Military and Political School (Wuhan Branch of the Whampoa Military Academy). In January 1927, Bao Huisheng became the party representative and director of the political department of the independent 14th Division.
In early April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek stepped up his secret anti-communist plots. On 2 April, Chiang ordered that Zhou Fengqi of the 26th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, which had surrendered from Sun Chuanfang's side, be transferred to Shanghai to act as an executioner for the massacre of Shanghai workers. On the 9th, Chiang Kai-shek rushed to Nanjing and promulgated the Twelve Regulations on Martial Law in War, which strictly prohibited assemblies, strikes, and processions, and restricted workers' activities. Chiang Kai-shek stepped up planning for a coup d'état, while Chen Duxiu, secretary of the CPC Central Committee, remained trapped in a right-leaning paralyzed ideology. On April 5, when Wang Jingwei returned from overseas, Chen Duxiu was overjoyed, and on April 5, he and Wang Jingwei issued a "Joint Declaration" to "dispel rumors" for Chiang Kai-shek, saying that Chiang Kai-shek "has never expelled friendly parties or destroyed trade unions." On April 9, Chiang Kai-shek went from Shanghai to Ningbo and hid behind the scenes to direct the massacre of workers. In the early morning of the 12th, the Shanghai workers' pickets were disarmed, killing and injuring nearly 300 people, and the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions was forcibly occupied. On the 13th, Shanghai workers and students rallied and demonstrated, demanding the return of guns and the protection of trade unions, and were attacked by Chiang Kai-shek's army. On the 14th, the reactionary military and police jointly launched the "Qing Party Movement", hunting down Communists and revolutionaries everywhere, and shutting down revolutionary organizations and progressive groups, and the whole of Shanghai was filled with white terror. On April 15, a counter-revolutionary incident also occurred in Guangzhou, and outstanding Communist Party members Xiong Xiong and Li Qihan were killed. In addition, anti-communist "cleansing" and massacres also occurred in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Gansu, Guizhou, Sichuan and other provinces, and countless communists and revolutionary masses made heroic sacrifices. Bao Hui monk in Wuhan was completely overwhelmed when he got this news.
In "The Great Cause of Party Building", Wang Xuebing played Bao Huisheng
The bloodshed of the revolution caused him to abandon his faith and defect to the Kuomintang
After the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup, Wang Jingwei eventually merged with Chiang Kai-shek. On the evening of July 14, Wang Jingwei held a secret meeting to determine the plan of "dividing the communists" into communists. On the 15th, Wang Jingwei carried out a massacre of Communists and revolutionary masses in the Wuhan area, and the Chinese revolution suffered serious losses.
The revolution was so tragic that It was beyond the expectations of Bao Hui monk. In discussing the situation, he was sometimes impulsive, sometimes frustrated, and messed up.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided to use an armed uprising to save the party facing destruction, and the site of the uprising was chosen in Nanchang, and Zhou Enlai was appointed by the Central Committee as the secretary of the Committee of Former Enemies of the Uprising. He instructed Bao Hui to go to Nanchang to stand by. Bao Huisheng went to Nanchang with an illness and prepared to take over the work of the Military Commission of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China. On August 1, Nanchang fired the first shots of the uprising. Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei dispatched counterrevolutionary troops from Nanjing, Wuhan, and Guangzhou respectively to jointly besiege the Nanchang rebel army. In the face of the huge disparity between the enemy and our forces, the former committee decided to withdraw from Nanchang and march into Guangdong as planned, rebuild the Guangdong revolutionary base area, and choose the opportunity to carry out the Northern Expedition again. From August 3 to 6, the rebel army withdrew from Nanchang one after another, during which Zhou Enlai went to the hotel to find Bao Huisheng, who was seriously ill, and Bao Huisheng said that he could not walk, and that a relative in Nanchang had already contacted him and went to live with him.
After living with his cousins in Nanchang for more than a month, Bao Huisheng fled to Jiujiang in disguise and took a boat back to his hometown of Huanggang, Hubei Province. Later, he fled to Wuchang, Hubei and Gaoyou, Jiangsu. After staying in Gaoyou for two months, the local Kuomintang county party department and local tycoons and gentry also began to arrest Communist Party members and peasant association personnel, and Bao Huisheng had to leave Gaoyou with his family to hide in Shanghai, even though the situation in Shanghai was even more chaotic. Under the white terror of the Kuomintang, Bao Huisheng was afraid, depressed, and disappointed, and completely lost confidence in the future of the Chinese revolution. Zhou Enlai, who had come to Shanghai from Hong Kong, sent people from the Shanghai Party organization to find him and let him participate in the work, but he evaded and perfunctorily, and automatically quit the Communist Party of China. In order to live, he returned to his old business, writing articles under a pen name and making a living by selling articles. However, selling articles was too bitter, and he entrusted people to serve as senators under he Chengrui, chairman of the Kuomintang Hubei Province.
In September 1931, while Mao Zedong, Chen Tanqiu, and He Shuheng, one of the major comrades-in-arms of the Communist Party of China, were carrying out the third anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign in the Jiangxi Soviet Region, Bao Huisheng, who was a senator, was in trouble with the Kuomintang government. Feeling that his income was meager, he used his acquaintances at the Whampoa Military Academy to find Chiang Kai-shek in an attempt to find a good position for himself. In order to divide the Communist Party, Chiang Kai-shek made an exception and appointed him as a senator of the General Headquarters of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Bao Huisheng gladly took office. Bao Hui's behavior is already a clear apostasy.
After the September 18 Incident, Chiang Kai-shek became chairman of the Military Commission, appointed Bao Huisheng as secretary of the Central Military Commission and political instructor of the Central Military Academy, with the rank of lieutenant general, no real power, only equivalent to the role of a staff member, but he was once an important person of the Communist Party, and now although he defected, he is still not recognized by Kuomintang insiders, and is guarded and monitored everywhere. Bao Huisheng was very distressed in this environment, and in 1936 he proposed to withdraw from the military and become a civilian official, serving as a counselor of the Ministry of the Interior, and continuing to eat together.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Bao Huisheng moved with the Kuomintang government to Chongqing, the capital of chongqing, and Chen Duxiu, who had broken away from the Communist Party, also came to Jiangjin, Sichuan. In the spring of 1942, Bao Hui went to visit Chen Duxiu, who was poor and sick, and also brought some money to help him. The two early founders of the Communist Party talked about the past in a broken house and sighed.
At the end of 1948, the three major battles were fought one after another, Chiang Kai-shek's regime was in turmoil, the Kuomintang area was in chaos, and senior Kuomintang officials fled to Taiwan and overseas. Monk Bao Hui took his family and family members to leave and live in a secluded small building far from the center of Macau, watching the situation change.
The victories of the Communist Party have led him to a lost place
On October 1, 1949, Bao Huisheng heard the news of the establishment of the Central People's Government on the radio, and he had mixed feelings, especially many important figures in the central government had a good relationship with him. He thought left and right, and decided to send a telegram to Zhou Enlai, not only to congratulate the founding of New China, but also to use this opportunity to throw stones and ask for directions. In early October 1949, he sent a telegram to Zhou Enlai:
Brother Enlai, Premier Zhou of the Beijing People's Government:
Brothers and others have worked hard for more than twenty years today, and they are admirable and comforting, and they still hope to strive for peace with victory, start with peace and the people, hang the people and cut down their sins, and the world will return to Renye. The southern heavens lead the neck, and the victory is late, as soon as there is a boat, when it comes to the church.
Brother Bao Hui monk knocking?
Zhou Enlai received a telegram from Bao Huisheng and showed it to Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong mused and said: It is okay to come back. Zhou Enlai sent a telegram to Bao Huisheng, welcoming him back, and instructing the secret Communist Party organizations in Hong Kong to assist.
In November 1949, Bao Hui's family came to Beijing. The news of his return immediately spread among the communist top brass. The next day, Dong Biwu, a major member of the Communist Party of China who had met with Bao Huisheng in Shanghai and then vice premier of the Central People's Government's Government Council, invited him to dinner. When Bao Hui saw Dong Biwu, he was ashamed. During the meal, Dong Biwu could not help but tease him a few words: "When you were an official of the Kuomintang at that time, you did not want a friend of the Communist Party!" He also told Bao Huisheng: "Your return is a decision made by the Party Central Committee." ”
On December 25, Zhou Enlai had a long conversation with Bao Huisheng, and Zhou Enlai proposed: "You were not an ordinary Communist Party member in the past, and you must have an account for the party. After Bao Huisheng returned, he wrote a long article solemnly examining his mistake of not being firm in the great revolution, breaking away from the revolution, and turning to Chiang Kai-shek, believing that his "sins are unforgivable." After his "confession" was reported, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and others all thought it was in line with reality and agreed that he would return to the revolutionary ranks.
At the beginning of 1950, Zhou Enlai arranged for Bao Huisheng to enter the Political Research Institute of the North China Revolutionary University, and after graduation, he was assigned to the Research Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the State Council as a researcher. On 20 August 1952, he was appointed Counsellor of the Ministry of the Interior. On April 29, 1957, Bao Huisheng was appointed counselor of the State Council, and the relevant departments arranged a comfortable and quiet residence for Bao Huisheng and gave him preferential treatment in life.
In 1957, the New Observation published an article entitled "What I Saw Before and After the Founding of the Communist Party of China", signed "The Old Man in Qiwu". This is an early historical document about the founding of the Communist Party, which recounts the birth of the Communist Party of China in the tone of the person concerned. Some experts on the history of the Communist Party of China immediately regarded this article as an important new document for studying the "great congress" of the Communist Party of China. At that time, only a very few people knew that the "old man of Qiwu" was Bao Hui monk.
On July 2, 1979, Bao Huisheng completed his life at the age of 85. In 1983, the People's Publishing House edited and published a manuscript of his memoirs, which truly recorded his life course of revolution, renegade, and later lost.
——Excerpt from Yanhuang Chunqiu, Issue 04, 2018
Author: Li Jinming
Editor: Zhou Yiqian