Cai Hesen

Cai Hesen (March 30, 1895 – August 4, 1931) was an early leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and a friend and comrade of Mao Zedong. Cai was born in Shanghai but grew up in Shuangfeng County in Hunan Province of China. He helped Mao organize the Changsha New People's Study Society. In 1919 he went to France on the Work-Study program, and his letters of advocacy were important in convincing Mao of the Bolshevik revolutionary approach. On his return to China, he was an important leader and organizer for the young Communist Party, spent several years in Moscow, and returned to China again in 1931. While organizing revolutionary activity in Hong Kong, he was arrested and given over to Canton authorities, who executed him in August 1931.

Youth and education Cai's family included both merchants and scholar-officials, but his father had not done well in the family business and instead obtained a job in the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai, where Cai was born, March 30, 1895, the fifth of six children. Cai's mother, left her husband, apparently angered at his taking a "secondary wife." She returned to Hunan in the spring of 1899, taking Cai and his younger sister, Cai Chang , and refusing to live with her husband even when he too returned. The family had little money but Cai found his apprenticeship in his father's business to be unbearable. Cai's mother sold her personal possessions to enable Cai to attend a village school at the age of sixteen. He then studied at Hunan First Normal School and at the Hunan First Normal University in Changsha. Cai studied under Yang Changji, and joined student movements with his fellow student Mao Zedong. In June 1917, he graduated.

In April 1918, Cai, Mao Zedong, and a dozen others organized the New People's Study Society (Xin Min Xue Hui) in Changsha. It was said that "Hesen is the theorist and Mao the realist". Yang Changji had urged his students to stay away from holding public office and to serve society by maintaining independence and moral purity. Cai rejected this Neo-Confucian position. He declared that "what I advocate is to commit wrongs in order to achieve a greater good." When he heard that the anarchists and educators Cai Yuanpei and Li Shizeng had organized a Work-Study Program to send students to France who would finance their study by working in French factories, he and other members of the Society went to Beijing to seek their help.

In France In 1919, he traveled to France for the Work-Study Program with his mother and his sister Cai Chang . On the ship he met and fell in love with Xiang Jingyu. At a time when "free love," that is, individual choice, was considered indecent, the two discussed political problems and theories, leading to a romantic relationship. In Paris, Cai organized the Work and Study Cooperative Society (Gongxue huzhu she) and advocated Marxist communism. In May 1920, Cai and Xiang Jingyu married. Their marriage became known as the "Xiang Cai Alliance" or the "looking upward alliance" as a model for marriage based on principles of individual freedom and shared revolutionary beliefs. This resulted in the founding of The Guide Weekly in Shanghai, the first openly-published newspaper of the central organ of the Communist Party.

Family Cai Hesen's father was Cai Rongfeng , and his mother was Ge Jianhao . His first wife was Xiang Jingyu, second wife was Li Yichun . His younger sister Cai Chang was the wife of Li Fuchun.

Cai had four children: Cai Ni and Cai Bo by Xiang Jingyu, and Cai Zhuan and Cai Lin by Li Yichun.