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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 22, 8 April 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Fresh in the memory of all readers is the despicable role played by the official Stalinist press in connection with the arrest and imprisonment of our comrade Chen Du-Hsiu, leader of the Chinese Left Opposition. This founder of the Chinese Communist movement, and the leader of the party during the whole of the revolutionary period, was the special object of Stalinist hatred because he honestly acknowledged the role he had played in the Chinese revolution and revealed at the same time that this was to be attributed to the fundamentally false and Menshevik policy of the Comintern. At the time of his arrest, the Stalinist journals all over the world could scarcely contain themselves with joy. Instead of helping arouse the spirit of solidarity of he workers to save comrade Chen from the imprisonment and execution at the hands of the Kuo Min Tang butchers with which he was threatened, the Stalinists hastened to assure all and sundry that Chen was an agent of the Kuo Min Tang!
Comrade Chen is still imprisoned, and no news about him can be obtained.
But only a short while after his arrest, took place the arrest of one of the official party leaders, Huan Ping, “Commissar of Foreign Affairs” of the short-lived Canton Soviet of 1927. In this instance, the case was made the subject for an international agitation. In this protest movement, of course, the party was only doing its elementary duty, in which they were criminally remiss with regard to the arrest of comrade Chen Du-Hsiu, and are so to this day.
Now we receive the news from a Left Oppositionist in Shanghai that: while comrade Chen’s fate continues to remain unknown, Huan Ping, like so many Stalinists before him, has turned renegade and joined the Kuo Min Tang – thus escaping from the fate which the counter-revolution held in store for him!
The organ of the Left Kuo Min Tangist, Wang Chin Wei, the People’s Tribune of February 16 1933, prints a sensational article by Huan Ping – Why I Left the Communist Party. In this article, the renegade repudiates his whole Communist past, “exposes” the Communist International and the Chinese party and announces that “as a result of my conversion to the Kuo Min Tang, I was thus released, together with comrades Yu Fei and Hsu Shih-Keng, who have also come to the same conclusions”. Yu Fei was nothing less than Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Hsu a member of the presidium of the Communist International and head of the red trade unions of Shanghai.
“It is essential”, concludes the turncoat, “before anything constructive can be undertaken, that the Communist movement, which in many respects is hardly distinguishable from common banditry, be completely suppressed. It was in order to assist the National Government in this campaign, and also to rectify my past errors, that I, together with comrades Yu Fei and Hsu Shih-Keng, have left the Communist party, and will strive, under the banner of the Kuo Min Tung, for the attainment of the goal which I have always had in view – the betterment of the conditions of the Chinese workers and peasants”.
Like Bessedovsky and other creatures of Stalinism, Huan Ping was a mighty Trotsky-Killer before he jumped over the fence into the camp of the reaction. The bureaucratic regime in the Comintern trains up such types, whose only qualifications for leadership are their servility to the apparatus, a willingness to be made the scapegoat for the blunders of their superiors in the machine, a cynical ever-readiness to sign statements “to rectify my past errors” unquestioning obedience to which all careerists, adventurers and spineless place-hunters are able to adjust themselves. The genuine revolutionists, who think for themselves and have the courage to express unpopular opinions and defend them – are expelled from the party and consigned to the category of counter-revolutionists. Therein lies the essence of explanation of how the Chen Du-Hsius could be expelled from the party, baited by the bureaucracy and left in the lurch when attacked by the class enemy, while the Huan Pings could rise to leadership, be defended by the bureaucracy and, having been trained in the school of irresponsibility, betray the revolution at a crucial moment ...
The communication from our Shanghai correspondent, which contains some very interesting information, will be found below.
Shanghai – The Japanese drive into Jehol is now in full swing The Chinese defenders have recoiled before the first onslaughts although there has been some fierce fighting. A combination of circumstances has acted to compel the Nanking Government and its cohorts in the North to make at least a show of resistance to this latest Japanese advance. There is no official sincerity. Nanking has no desire to fight and is putting up nothing more than a show, wantonly sacrificing the lives of countless Chinese soldiers in a struggle it does not take seriously. This lack of seriousness is sufficiently indicated by the fact that not a single airplane has been sent into Jehol to aid the Chinese defenders, while the Japanese are reported to be using over 100 bombers. The Nanking Government reserves its airplanes for bombing recalcitrant peasants in Kiangsi, Hupeh and other provinces.
Nanking’s lack of seriousness in the present campaign was even more clearly indicated by T.V. Soong, minister of finance and acting chairman of the government. He said to a local newspaperman:
“We simply have to put up some resistance this time. The public opinion of the world has turned against Japan. The League has given China a favorable verdict. How would it look, in such circumstances, if we failed to resist Japan’s invasion of Jehol?”
It is simply a matter of “face”, to use a Chinese expression. But another important factor which has determined the government’s attitude is the popular clamor for resistance to Japanese imperialism which in recent weeks has grown more and more insistent. The government could no longer, with safety, ignore it. This clamor has come from bourgeois and petty bourgeois circles who see their interests menaced by the further unchecked advance of Japanese imperialism. They have been joined by the liberal intelligentsia. But the workers’ organizations, the trade unions (little as they really exist today), Wave been silent. The mood of lethargic despair which set in after the heavy proletarian defeat of 1927 has still not lifted. The workers are sunken in apathy and the Communist party has, as far as one can see, proved singularly incapable of penetrating their ranks and arousing them from their slumbers.
Jehol will be taken by the Japanese. Of that there can be no doubt. Only a revolutionary awakening and a determined counter-attack by the masses of the workers and peasants could prevent it. The first step would have to be the overthrow of the Nanking Government and its militarist allies in other parts of the country. For this a Communist party is required, and there is no Communist party, but only its caricature – a comparatively small group in the cities, torn by internal dissension and shot through with traitors and spies. The party, such as it is, has obviously no clear understanding of the tasks of the Chinese revolution even at this late date, and spends much of its time spreading made-to-order slanders of the Left Opposition. Leaders are arbitrarily changed on orders from Moscow and even more frequent changes in the leadership result from the constant arrests brought about by the betrayals of spies and traitors within the ranks. Under such conditions, the party cannot possibly grow.
The arrest not long ago of Chen Du-Hsiu, a leading member of the Left Opposition, was used by the C.P. as an occasion for the spreading of vicious reports. It was rumored that Chen had sold out to the Kuo Min Tang and was proceeding to Hankow for a personal interview with Chiang Kai-Shek, who was then directing a military campaign against the peasant armies in the interior. This calumny was published in the bourgeois press and sedulously spread by the C.P., which made no effort to conceal its satisfaction at Chen’s fate. The Kuo Min Tang prison in Nanking to which he was sent has literally swallowed him up. Whether he is dead or alive is not known. No one but his jailers, presumably, has seen him. No “interviews” attributed to him have been published.
Now a contrast! On December 14 Huan Ping, a prominent Stalinist “Yes-man” who was Commissar for Foreign Affairs at Canton in 1927 during the December Communist putsch, and lately was president of the All-China Trade Union federation and a member of the presidium of the China branch of the League Against Imperialism, was arrested in Tientsin.
The arrest of Huan Ping, a prominent member of CEO, aroused a storm of protest in Europe. Einstein, Russell, and others poured in protests to the Nanking Government, where they maintained silence over the arrest of Chen Du-Hsiu (Madame Sun Yat Sen alone made one feeble public protest at Chen’s arrest).
Meanwhile Huan Ping was taken to Nanking and there are reasons for believing that he has ratted to the Kuo Min Tang. It is reliably reported that he is living in a private residence in Nanking under surveillance, since the government is not satisfied as to the genuineness of his conversion to Kuo Min Tang principles. But that he is alive and not in jail is definitely known.
Whether reports of Huan Ping having become converted to Kuo Min Tang principles as a result of his arrest are reliable or not, the fact is there have been so many such “conversions” of late that one sounds quite credible. However, a statement entitled Why I Left the Communist Party, which. seems to bear the stamp of authenticity, and purportedly written by Huan Ping, appears in the February 16 issue of the People’s Tribune, organ of the Kuo Min Tang “Leftist”, Wang Chin Wei. I enclose this article for your information and use. It speaks for itself.
February 28, 1933
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