Liu Changsheng

Liu was born in 1903 in Haiyang, Shandong Province. In 1922, he accompanied his uncle to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union, where he worked as a newsboy, shoemaker, and dockworker. He joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1927 and became chairman of the Vladivostok Dockworkers' Union. In 1931, he worked as an instructor at the Far Eastern Regional Committee in Khabarovsk and also headed the New Script Committee. In 1933, he studied at the International Lenin School in Moscow.^[2]

In 1934, after the Comintern lost telegraphic contact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai, arrangements were made to reestablish communication with the Red Army in China. Liu Changsheng was dispatched from the Soviet Union carrying secret codes. He traveled via Mongolia and Xinjiang, eventually reaching northern Shaanxi in May 1936, where he reestablished contact with the CCP leadership.^[3]

Following his return, Liu was appointed head of the Northwest Executive Bureau of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. In September 1937, the CCP sent him to Shanghai to help rebuild the underground party organization under the leadership of Liu Xiao.^[4] He successively held positions as a member of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, its organization minister, deputy secretary, and secretary of the Shanghai Workers’ Movement Committee.^[5] Over twelve years of clandestine struggle under harsh conditions, Liu mobilized workers and the poor to join the New Fourth Army and the CCP's resistance forces. He also encouraged workers to form brotherhoods, cooperatives, and associations, promoting anti-Japanese activities. His writings, including On Soviet Trade Unions, and his editorial work on journals such as Friends, Labor, and Knowledge of Life, as well as the compilation Industry and Workers in Shanghai, played a key role in advancing the labor movement.^[6]

In October 1942, Liu reached the anti-Japanese base in Huainan, where he served as deputy head and later head of the Urban Work Department of the CCP Central China Bureau.^[7] At the 7th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1945, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee. After the war, he returned to Shanghai in 1946 as secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and in 1947 became deputy secretary of the CCP Shanghai Bureau. From 1946 to 1949, his residence at 81 Yuyuan Road served as one of the secret bases of the CCP Central Shanghai Bureau and the CCP Shanghai Committee.^[8]

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Liu served as the third secretary of the CCP Shanghai Committee, chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, a member of the East China Bureau  [zh], and head of the East China Military and Political Committee's Labor Department. In 1953, he was elected vice chairman and secretary of the Secretariat of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. At the 8th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1956, he was elected to the Central Committee.^[9][10]

During the Cultural Revolution, Liu suffered persecution. He died in Beijing on 20 January 1967.^[11] In 1979, he was posthumously rehabilitated.^[12]