Peng Pai：a pi-oneer of the Chinese peasant revolutionary movement

The portrait of Peng Pai

Born in October 1896 in Haifeng County, Guangdong Province, Peng Pai is a pro-letarian revolutionary of the older generation of CPC, a pi-oneer of the Chinese peasant revolutionary movement, and the founder of the famous Hailufeng Soviet regime.

Cover of Peng Pai’s book  Haifeng Peasant Movement

Peng went to Japan to study in his early years. In 1918, he entered Waseda University in Japan to study political economy. During his stay in Japan, he actively participated in the patriotic movement of Chinese stu-dents studying abroad.

After returning to China in May 1921, Peng joined the Chinese Socialist Youth League and founded the Socialist Research Society and the Workers’ Compassion Society in Haifeng, his home-town, to spread Marxism. In the summer of 1922, he went to the countryside alone, learned about farm-ers’ sufferings, and mobilized farmers to organize and carry out peasant movement. Peng wrote Haifeng Peasant Movement. He is known as “King of Peasant Movement”. Mao Zedong pointed out in the “Investigation Report of Hunan Peasant Movement” that “county politics must be clarified by farmers, and Haifeng in Guangdong has already proved it.”

In April 1924, Peng be-came a member of the CPC, and went to Guangzhou to lead the peasant movement and set up a workshop for the peasant movement. In the later Great Revolution, he served as the commander-in-chief of Guangdong Peasant Self-Defense Force. In March,1927, he went to Wuhan, initiated and organized the Provisional Executive Committee of All-China Farmers Association with Mao, and served as member of the Executive Committee and Secretary General.

After the failure of the Great Revolution, Peng went to Nanchang to lead the Nanchang Uprising. The August 7th meeting of the CPC elected the Provisional Political Bureau of the Central Committee, and he was elected as a member of the Political Bureau and later served as a member of the Southern Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

The painting of Peng Pai

In October 1927, Peng returned to Guangdong. In November, the armed uprising broke out again in Hailufeng and the Soviet regime in Hailufeng was established. In the spring of 1928, Peng Pai led the revo-lutionary army of workers and peasants to expand the revo-lutionary base with Hailufeng as the center to the southern part of Dongjiang River.

In November 1928, Peng Pai was elected as a mem-ber of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, and was ordered to go to Shanghai, where he served as secretary of the Agriculture Committee of the CPC Central Committee, mem-ber of the Central Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee, and Secretary of the Military Commission of Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee. On August 24, 1929, Peng was arrested and imprisoned in Longhua Prison. On August 30, 1929, Peng was killed by reactionaries at only 33.

Source：The Press Office, International Department of the CPC Central Committee