Xiang Jingyu (1895-1928)

Chinese proletarian revolutionary; leader of the women's movement of the CPC in the early period and one of the earliest female members of the CPC, widely regarded as "the pioneer of the women's movement in China". Female, Tujia ethnicity, original name Xiang Junxian, native of Xupu, Hunan Province. In 1912, she was admitted to the First Provincial Women's Normal School of Hunan and transferred to Zhou Nan Women's School. She was renamed Xiang Jingyu. During her stay in school, she actively participated in publicity activities against Yuan Shikai's signing of the “21 Treaty of Tradition”, exposed the crimes of treason committed by reactionary governments, and aroused the sense of responsibility of the masses towards the nation. In the summer of 1916, she returned to her hometown and founded Xupu Primary School. She went to France for a work-study program in December 1919. In February 1920, at Montargis Women's University near Paris, she studied hard and read systematically Marxist works such as the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital in French.

In May, she published "Discussions on Women's Liberation and Reform" in New Youth magazine. This is her early work which began to study women's issues from the perspective of Marxism and closely linked women's liberation with social transformation. In early 1922, she returned to Shanghai and joined the Communist Party of China. She worked for women in the central organs of the Party and trained a large number of women's movement cadres. Later, she attended the Second National Congress of the CPC and was elected as a member of the Central Committee. After the Congress, she became the first minister of the Women's Ministry of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. After the Fourth Party Congress she served as the first secretary of the Women’s Movement Committee. From 1922 to 1925, she wrote various articles on the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal struggle and women's liberation movement which were published in Guide, Forward, Women's Weekly and Women's Magazine, etc., and she expounded Chinese women's problems systematically with Marxist theory. She went to Moscow to study in the Oriental Communist Labor University in October 1925. In March 1927, she returned to Guangzhou from the Soviet Union and attended the Fifth National Congress of the Communist Party of China. She fought against Chen Duxiu's right opportunism. After the failure of the Great Revolution, she worked in the Publicity Department of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee of the CPC in Wuhan. She was the chief writer of the Dajiang Newspaper of the Provincial Party Committee, and the editor of the Changjiang Newspaper. She continued to insist on the underground revolutionary struggle. On March 20, 1928, she was arrested in the French Concession of Hankou for betrayal by traitors and remained unyielding under the severe torture of the enemy. On May 1, she was brutally murdered by reactionaries in Hankou. She was only 33 years old. Her works were collected in Collected Works of Xiang Jingyu.