Who led the December 9th Movement?

Peng Tao, the main leader of the December 9th Movement

Revisit history and look back on the past. Whenever people think of the all-powerful leaders of the December 9th Movement, they will have particularly heavy feelings for Peng Tao, who died young. On November 4, 1961, lung cancer claimed the life of Peng Tao at the age of 48. Three days later, Zhou Enlai presided over a public memorial ceremony for Peng Tao from all walks of life in the capital. The eulogy of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China fully affirmed this period of his history: he said that he "became one of the organizers and leaders of this movement."

In 1979, historians in Peng Tao's hometown I went to Beijing to interview Gu Jingsheng, Guo Mingqiu, Li Xuefeng and other people who participated in leading this movement or did related work. Finally, I went to Zhongnanhai to interview the young backbone of the 129th Movement - the then Vice President Yao Yilin. Yao Yilin said to the visitors in a positive tone: "Peng Tao is actually the main leader of the December 9th Movement."

A passionate student who devoted himself to the revolutionary wave

Peng Tao, formerly known as Set dry. Born in November 1913, a native of Poyang County, Jiangxi Province. In 1925, he entered the county higher primary school. The following year, Li Hanxin, a Communist Party member with a teaching career as a cover, served as Peng Tao's grade-level teacher. Peng Tao saw a lot of revolutionary and progressive books and periodicals from Li Hanxin, which greatly touched his thoughts.

With the arrival of the climax of the Great Revolution, in February 1927, 14-year-old Peng Tao served as the head of the Poyang County Children’s League Headquarters and a representative of the Student Federation, and later joined the Communist Youth League. He actively organized his classmates to take to the streets to post slogans, distribute leaflets, sing revolutionary songs such as "Down with the Evil Gentlemen and Remove the Warlords", and participated in social propaganda for liberating women and boycotting Japanese goods. He did an outstanding job. After practical training, he gradually grew up He stood up and was elected as the director of the Propaganda Department of the *** Youth League County Committee.

In the autumn of 1927, Peng Tao was admitted to Poyang Middle School. At this time, Li Hanxin took advantage of his position as head of the county guard regiment to raise guns to support the peasant uprising in northeastern Jiangxi launched by Fang Zhimin and other organizations. All this inspired Peng Tao's courage to fight. He took the lead on several occasions to post slogans such as "Long Live the Communist Party" in the heavily guarded Kuomintang county house.

One night, the entrance of Poyang Middle School was suddenly blocked by the Kuomintang security team. The security captain claimed that the county magistrate wanted to "invite" Peng Tao to talk. Peng Tao, who was awakened, saw that the situation was not good, so he hurriedly escaped from the school with the help of his classmates...

After Peng Tao left Poyang, he attended Nanchang Hongsheng Middle School and Kuanglu Middle School. Full of revolutionary passion, he felt lonely because he had never found a party organization. At the beginning of 1931, he decided to leave Jiangxi and go north to Peiping, the center of the national student movement. Peng Tao was admitted to the High School Affiliated to Peking University in Peking. Here, he felt at home like a fish in water and quickly integrated into the torrent of the patriotic revolutionary movement. In 1932, Peng Tao joined the "Left-Left Alliance" revolutionary group in the north. In the same year, he joined the Communist Party of China and served as secretary of the Communist Youth League branch of the High School Affiliated to Peking University. Because he actively took the lead in participating in revolutionary activities, he was considered "deviant" by the school and expelled. Subsequently, the party organization assigned him to serve as a member of the Beiping South District Committee of the Communist Youth League, where he devoted himself to the student movement and began his career as a professional revolutionary.

The organizer of the "student movement" who marched forward

In March 1933, the news that the 29th Army of the Kuomintang fought against the Japanese invading troops at Xifengkou reached Peiping. Tao immediately applied to the party organization to go to the anti-Japanese front line, and the party organization sent him to the Song Zheyuan Department of the 29th Army to engage in military movement. In the summer of the same year, the famous anti-Japanese general and Communist Party member Ji Hongchang and the Kuomintang patriotic generals Feng Yuxiang and Fang Zhenwu formed the Chahar Anti-Japanese Allied Force in Zhangjiakou. Peng Tao was ordered to work in the Allied Army and served as secretary of the Zhangjiakou Communist Youth League Committee. In September, the Allied forces were defeated by the Japanese army and the Kuomintang reactionaries. Peng Tao returned to Peiping. At this time, the reactionaries were hunting down communists and people who had returned from the Allied Forces, and the party organization was severely damaged.

In 1934, Peng Tao was admitted to Fu Jen Catholic University. In order to avoid persecution, he changed his original name from "Peng Dingqian" to "Peng Tao".

April and May 1933 During the period, the Peking Working Committee was established, and Peng Tao served as the Minister of Propaganda. He founded the three-day "Anti-Japanese News" to spread the anti-Japanese situation and the party's struggle tasks and strategies in a timely manner, attracting patriotic young people to the party.

On July 6, 1935, after the signing of the Ho-Mei Agreement, which was humiliating and humiliating the country, it aroused great anger among the patriotic students. Peng Tao actively organized and launched a petition to He Yingqin, mainly from patriotic students in church schools, and drafted a "Declaration" with six demands including "Opposition to the betrayal of North China" and "Open Speech Rally", and published leaflets, which were widely publicized. Distribute.

In the summer of this year, heavy rains caused disasters in Hebei and Shandong, the Yellow River burst, and hundreds of thousands of victims were displaced. Peng Tao, together with members of the Peking Working Committee Gu Jingsheng, Zhou Xiaozhou and others decided to establish a social relief organization in the name of launching social relief. An organization that operates publicly. Through hard work, the "Yellow River Flood Relief Association" was established. In this way, we not only organized relief activities from all walks of life, including young students, and expanded the influence of the Communist Party, but also successfully restored and established student organizations in more than 20 universities and middle schools, promoting the anti-Japanese and national salvation movement. development.

After the relief work of the Relief Society, in order to better organize the students in Peking, Peng Tao found Huang Jing (former Secretary of the Qingdao Municipal Party Committee of the Communist Party of China) and Tsinghua University who were studying at Peking University as a student. Yao Yilin and others from the university, and Gu Jingsheng invited Guo Mingqiu and others, the backbone of the student movement from the No. 1 Girls' Middle School. Everyone discussed organizing an open and legal mass anti-Japanese organization, the "Beiping Students Anti-Japanese National Salvation Federation", to expand the organizational strength of the original relief society and make it easier to carry out political activities.

While Peng Tao, Gu Jingsheng, Zhou Xiaozhou and others were relying on the relationships they had established with major middle schools in Peiping to promote the anti-Japanese and national salvation movement in a step-by-step and strategic manner, serious cognitive changes occurred within the municipal party committee. Disagreement. Peng, Gu, Zhou and others pointed out that based on the objective reality of the rise of ethnic conflicts at the current stage, the party's principles and policies have changed, so the principles and strategies of the Peking work should also be adjusted accordingly. At the meeting of the Peking Municipal Working Committee, Peng Tao and others proposed the idea of ??uniting all forces to fight against Japan and strive to use all open and legal methods to launch a national salvation movement. This was strongly opposed by some people. They believe that dispersing party members into legal organizations reduces the organizational nature of the party. Slogans such as "Stop the Civil War and Unite to Resist Japan" proposed by Peng Tao and others were criticized by them as "right deviation". Several years later, Zhou Xiaozhou's autobiography written in June 1944 can be found in the archives, which involves the debate at the meeting. Content: "During the meeting, Peng, Gu and I insisted on raising the demand for anti-Japanese democracy and freedom, believing that this could unite the broad masses of students. Wang and Zhu firmly opposed raising democratic demands and demanding democracy and freedom from the Kuomintang, believing that they were not asking for democracy from the Kuomintang. The two opinions were at odds with each other, but insisted on overthrowing the Kuomintang. "For this reason, Peng Tao was also dismissed from his position as the Propaganda Director of the Municipal Working Committee.