Xu Zhizhen

Xu was born in November 1898 in Hanshou County, Hunan Province. He graduated in 1919 from the Changsha Industrial School and actively participated in the May Fourth Movement. In 1920, he studied at the Foreign Language Society in Shanghai, which was established by the local communist group to train cadres. Xu joined the Chinese Socialist Youth League in 1921, and later that year went to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.^[2] In 1922, he became a member of the Chinese Communist Party and returned to China in early 1924.^[3]

Between 1924 and 1926, Xu held various positions in the Wuhan and Hubei Party organizations, including serving as a member and director of the Organization Department of the Wuhan Local Executive Committee of the CCP, and later as a member and head of the Publicity Department of the Hubei Local Executive Committee.^[4] During this period, he was also active in the National Assembly Promotion Association movement, exposing the reactionary nature of the warlords and advocating the CCP’s anti-imperialist and anti-feudal political stance.^[5] In October 1926, he became the head of the Workers’ Movement Training Institute of the Hubei Provincial Federation of Trade Unions (Chinese: 湖北全省总工会工人运动讲习所).^[6]

After the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, Xu went to Vladivostok and Khabarovsk in the Soviet Far East under Party instruction, where he worked among Chinese workers in exile and served as editor and later deputy director and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Workers’ Road.^[7]

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Xu relocated to Yan’an. In 1939, he was appointed a member of the CCP Central Committee for Cadre Education and later served as head of the Compilation and Translation Department of the Marxism-Leninism Academy. In December 1941, he became secretary of the Central Publishing Bureau’s Publication Committee. He also attended the 7th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1945 as a delegate of the central organs.^[8]

In the Chinese Civil War period, Xu served as Secretary-General of the CCP Central Publishing Bureau, head of the Publishing Division of the Central Publicity Department, and director of its National Education Section. From 1948 onward, he held leadership positions in the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), including serving as Minister of Publicity and later Minister of Culture and Education.^[9] He was elected to the Standing Committee of the ACFTU at the Sixth National Labor Congress in 1948, and in October 1949, he attended the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.^[10]

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Xu continued to play a major role in the trade union movement. From May 1950, he served as Secretary-General and head of the Organization Department of the ACFTU, later becoming a member of its Secretariat and Vice Chairman. From 1953 until his death, he was Deputy Secretary of the CCP Party Group of the ACFTU. Xu was also a delegate to the First and Second National People’s Congresses and a representative at the 8th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. He died of illness in Beijing on October 26, 1964.^[11]