Liquidationist Clique of Trotskyist Chen Duxiu

Also known as the “Left Opposition in the CPC”, namely the “Leninist Left Opposition within the CPC”.

Liquidationist Clique of Trotskyism with Chen Duxiu's right capitulationism. It was a Trotskyist faction in China that split off from the CPC and was a product of the merging of Trotskyism with Chen Duxiu's right-leaning surrenderism.

In December 1928, Liang Ganqiao who returned from the Soviet Union, and others established the first Trotskyist organization in Shanghai, the “Chinese Bolshevik Leninist Opposition”; in April 1929, this organization was called Our Words because of the publication of “Our Words Weekly”.

In May 1929, Chen Duxiu, Peng Shuzhi and others gradually formed a small anti-Party group supporting Trotsky, and in September of the same year, the so-called “Left Opposition of the CPC” was established. Later, because of that they began to publish Proletarian, it was called the “Proletarian Group”.

At the beginning of 1930, Liu Renjing and Wang Fanxi established the so-called “Left Communist Alliance of China”, which was called the “October Group” due to the name of their publication was October.

In February 1930, Zhao Ji and others set up another Trotskyist organization, publishing the newspaper Combat, known as the “Combat Group”. Although the number of these Trotskyist organizations was small, they all strived to be orthodox and fought against each other endlessly.

Later, under the direct intervention of Trotsky, Chen Duxiu presided over the “Unification Congress” in Shanghai in May 1931 and established the “Unified” Trotskyist organization named “CPC -Leninist Left-wing Opposition”, and Chen Duxiu, Peng Shuzhi, Zheng Chaolin, Chen Yimou, Wang Fanxi and other nine people were elected to form the Central Committee with Chen Duxiu as the General Secretary and their publication organ was the Spark.

The program of Chinese Trotskyists was actually a copy of Trotsky's views in respect to China. They denied the social nature of China's semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, believing that the defeat of the 1927 Chinese Revolution was the victory of the bourgeoisie, that China was already a society dominated by capitalism, and that feudal forces had become the remnants; that the main contradiction in Chinese society was no longer the contradiction between the masses and imperialism and feudalism, but the contradiction between the proletariat and the whole bourgeoisie (including the rich peasants). They also believed that the revolutionary situation in China was "declining", and they opposed the establishment of the Red Army, the armed struggle in the countryside and the establishment of the Soviet regime and advocated that leaving the center of urban labor movement to engage in the peasant movement in the countryside would lead to the degeneration of the Party. They hold that the proletariat could only carry out a legitimate movement centered on the "National Assembly" and wait for the second revolution to realize the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the future, which was actually the abolition of China's national democratic revolution.

Shortly after the convening of the Chinese Trotkyists’ Unification Congress, most of the members of the Central Committee were arrested by the KMT authorities. After this incident, Chen Duxiu had assembled another "Provisional Committee". In October 1932, all members of the Provisional Committee were arrested again, and the Trotskyists were paralyzed. Later, Liu Renjing, Peng Shuzhi, Wang Fanxi and other Trotskyist figures and organizations conducted activities, but they had little influence.

After the victory of the Chinese Revolution in the whole country, the Chinese Trotskyist faction basically collapsed, and a small number of Trotskyists fled to Hong Kong, Macao and other countries.