Wang Ming (1904-1974)

Original name Chen Shaoyu, courtesy name Lu Qing, native of Jinzhai, Lu'an (now part of Jinzhai County), Anhui Province. He enrolled in the National Wuchang Business University in 1924. In June 1925, he actively participated in supporting the May Thirtieth Movement in Wuchang and was elected secretary of the Wuchang Student Union and the executive member of the Hubei Youth Association. In November, he went to the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University to study. He joined the CPC in 1925. After returning to China in October 1929, he served as editor of Red Flag, during which he wrote “Two Lines”, and put forward the “Left” deviation political program under the new situation. At the end of 1930, he served as secretary of the Jiangnan Provincial Party Committee of the CPC. At the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC in 1931, he entered the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, soon joined the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and gained the leadership of the Central Committee. The period of “Left” deviation dogmatic errors dominating the CPC Central Committee has begun. In September of the same year, the central organs of the party were destroyed. In October, Wang Ming went to the Soviet Union to be the head of the CPC delegation to the Communist International. Returning to China in November 1937, during his tenure as secretary of the Yangtze River Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, he committed a right-deviation error, denied the principle of independence and autonomy in the anti-Japanese united front and gave up the Party's leadership over the united front. After the Yangtze River Bureau was abolished at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC Central Committee in 1938, he served successively as director of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, President of the Chinese Women's University, and director of the CCP Central Women's Movement Committee. He took a long-term rest due to illness after 1941. He was severely criticized during the Yan'an Rectification Movement in 1942. “The Resolution on Certain Historical Issues” adopted at the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC in 1945, thoroughly criticized Wang Ming's erroneous “Left” deviation line. At the Seventh National Congress of the CPC, Mao Zedong personally proposed that Wang Ming should continue to serve as member of the Central Committee. In 1956, he went to the Soviet Union for medical treatment and was elected member of the Central Committee at the Eighth National Congress of the CPC in the same year. After residing in the Soviet Union for a long time, on March 27, 1974, he died of illness in Moscow at the age of 70.