Chen Bilan

Chen Bilan (also spelled Ch'en Pi-Lan; ) was a Chinese communist. Chen was one of the founders of the Chinese Trotskyist movement and was exiled in 1948. For the rest of her life, she was a leader of the exiled Chinese Trotskyists and a member of the Fourth International.

Biography Chen was born in Huangpo, Hubei province in 1902 to an affluent family. To escape from a forced marriage, she fled to Shanghai. In 1923, Chen became a communist and joined the Chinese Communist Party. She lived in Shanghai with Cai Hesen and Xiang Jingyu. In 1924, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party sent Chen, Li Dazhao, and Zhang Tailei to Moscow. She was sent to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. While studying there, she was able to meet with many other members of the Chinese Communist Party and hear speeches from the leader of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and Comintern. In the spring of 1925, 13 labour demonstrators in Shanghai were killed by police, leading to a series of strikes and protests throughout China, and Chen subsequently travelled back to China. Back in Shanghai she became an editor under the Communist Party's propaganda department, which was headed by Peng Shuzhi. During this time, Peng and Chen began living together. Peng and Chen became major opponents of the party's continued entryism in the Kuomintang.

In November 1929, Chen Bilan was expelled from the CCP for supporting Trotsky's views regarding the CCP and the Chinese Communist Revolution. She continued working with other Chinese Trotskyists. To avoid the arrests of Trotskyists, she and her husband Peng Shuzhi and their three children left Shanghai in December 1948. They first lived in Hong Kong, then moved to Vietnam in January 1949. A year and a half later, in May 1951, after the arrest of a prominent Chinese Trotskyist in Vietnam, the family moved again to France. In 1973, the couple moved to the U.S. Chen Bilan died on September 7, 1987.

Childhood

Women in Chen Bilan's family Chen Bilan was born in 1902 in Taohua Villae in Huangpi County, Hubei. Bilan's mother, Jiang Qiuxian, lost her mother and was abused badly by her stepmother. Bilan thought the abuse made her mother an obedient person. Although Bilan's mother, Qiuxian, did not receive an education, Bilan thought her mother set an example by being an extraordinarily kind person. Bilan recalled that her mother always said yes to whoever asked to borrow money. If Bilan's mother didn't have money, she would lend her gold earrings.

Bilan's grandmother from her father's side was from a wealthy family; although she did not receive an education, she was eloquent in her speeches and emphasized traditional ethics and rituals when educating her children. Bilan's grandmother once told Bilan that, after she had two daughters, she drowned three of her other daughters because she was dreadful of bounding their feet and was worried about the dowries she had to provide.

Bilan's two aunts---her father's sisters---both lost their husbands when they were in their twenties and thirties. They observed the traditional ethical code for widowed women and remained unmarried. After the husband died, Bilan's younger aunt and the aunt's young son became poor and went to live with Bilan's family and her grandparents. This aunt was skilled at embroidery and sold her works to many wealthy families when they wanted embroidered flowers for their daughters' dowries.

When Bilan turned four, a typical age for girls to start the foot-binding practice, her father Dezhao repeatedly wrote home letters from Japan, forbidding other family members to bind Bilan's feet. Although no one in the family agreed with Bilan's father, Dezhao was resolute. He wrote in one letter: "If anyone dares to bind my daughter's feet, after I return, I will fight you with my life." Because of her father's intervention, Bilan's feet were not bound. In her memoir, Bilan considered this the first critical event setting her life for the future.

Bilan's father Dezhao returned from Japan when Bilan was six. Upon returning, Dezhao told the rest of Bilan's family members that he had decided to send Bilan to school. Dezhao said, according to Bilan's memoir, "My daughter will receive an education just as the boys. She will not learn about sewing and needlework. She will focus on her education. When she gets married, there won't be a dowry. The dowry money will be used for her education." In her memoir, Bilan wrote this decision from her father was the second most critical event that shaped her life.

Political career

Becoming a Chinese Trotskyist In 1924, the CCP, acting against Comintern's guidelines and Chen Duxiu, formed the First United Front Alliance with the Guomindang. The Alliance was ended in April 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek decided to end it and killed many Communists. Before Chiang ended the Alliance, Trotsky advised the CCP to leave the Alliance. But even after Chiang ended the Alliance and started to kill many Communists, Stalin told the CCP to ally with the Wang Jingwei faction based in Wuhan, which the Soviet leaders called "revolutionary Guomindang." Trotsky disagreed with Stalin and called for the CCP to regain "complete independence" from the Guomindang's Wang Jingwei faction. In July 1927, Wang Jingwei bailed on the CCP, slaughtered thousands, and ultimately agreed to unite with Chiang and serve under Chiang's Nanjing government.

In the summer of 1929, Chen Duxiu, carrying the two documents Trotsky wrote concerning the CCP's defeat in 1927, visited Chen Bilan and her husband Peng Shuzhi. Chen Duxiu and Peng Shuzhi said they agreed with Trotsky's assessment of the defeat of the CCP. They wanted to gather other Communist members who also disagreed with CCP decisions and organize the Left Opposition. Chen Duxiu and Shuzhi later wrote to the CCP's central leaders separately, requesting that the CCP recognize that its previous policies of the Alliance were wrong and that the CCP should make public Trotsky's documents commenting on the CCP and China's revolution.

At the time, Bilan firmly believed that, as a Communist Party member, even if one was critical of and disagreed with the Party, one should only voice criticisms within the Party but not set up another organization. Bilan believed so because, according to her memoir, she thought there was only one truth, and the Party was the truth. If one set up another organization to confront the Party, then it meant one denied the Party, and such actions would be against the Party's rules. As such, Bilan dismissed and disagreed with her husband Shuzhi's plan to organize the Left Opposition.

Comrade Chen Bilan or the wife of Peng Shuzhi? After Chen Duxiu and Shuzhi's letters were sent to CCP's central leadership, Bilan learned from others that the CCP intended to expel the two men. She wrote in her memoir that she was "agonized" because she knew that if the Party expelled her husband, Shuzhi, the Party would also expel her unless she divorced Shuzhi. In the past, Bilan's status in the CCP was affected by her husband's position in the Party. Based on these prior experiences, Bilan wrote that she was deeply agonized.

Meanwhile, Chinese Trotskyists in Moscow were also rounded up by political police in the Soviet. A few were deported, some killed, and many more were transported to Siberia's labor camps.

Work on female laborer issues In 1932, Bilan was introduced to Cai Kui, editor of the Female Youth Monthly 女青年月刊, published by the All-China Young Women's Christian Association. Bilan started to write articles for the magazine discussing women's issues. Cai Kui commissioned Bilan to write a pamphlet for the Association's Labor Department. The pamphlet aimed to help female workers understand how capitalism created unequal conditions and how capitalists exploited and suppressed workers. It hoped to equip the female workers with plans and strategies for fighting against the capitalist system.

Several months after Bilan's husband Shuzhi was arrested, in April 1933, Bilan gave birth to the couple's second child. To help with the family's financial situation now that Shuzhi was in prison, Bilan took up a teacher's position Cai Kui introduced her. The job was at a school for female workers that the Shanghai Young Women's Christian Association had set up.

After teaching in the day, Bilan also visited female workers in their dorms. In her memoir, Bilan wrote that these visits to their dwellings were meaningful because, in the past, she only spoke to them in protests and at meetings but had never gone to their dorms to talk to them. She described that the female workers living conditions were crowded, unsanitary, and often horrendous. The female workers mostly ate only pickles, fermented bean curd, and porridge. And most worked for about 10 to 12 hours per day.

Bilan wrote that the most miserable were the female apprentices, most of whom were aged 15 to 19 and were hired from rural villages to Shanghai. Because these female apprentices were first hired by people who manage them and then hired out to factories, Bilan explained that these young girls suffered "double exploitation." The bosses who hired the teenage girls from the villages and managed them provided them with food and rooms for sleeping. The food and sleeping conditions were often poor. One girl Bilan spoke with said more than a dozen slept on the floor. "One by one. With no space. The room was tiny, hot, and stuffy," the girl told Bilan. These bosses also took away a large portion of the meager wages these girls received from factories. In her memoir, Bilan described the family's life in Vietnam as like "hell" because of a lack of financial support. After a year and a half of living in Vietnam, the Chinese Trotskyist Liu Jialiang was arrested, and Bilan and Shuzhi decided to move the family again. With help from other Chinese Trotskyists and friends, on May 26, 1951, the couple were able to take their daughter and younger son with them to flee to France. They had to leave their older son in Vietnam.

National Liberation War and Women 民族解放戰爭與婦女 (1938) Also using her pen name, Chen Biyun, she wrote an article titled "National Liberation War and Women." The publishing house Yadong Library 亞東圖書館 published it as a pamphlet. In the article, Bilan wrote about her views on wars in general and how she thought Chinese women should act in China's war, resisting Japan's invasion.

Magazine writings (1946–1948) After the Sino-Japanese war, Bilan penned about 40 articles for Chinese Trotskyist magazines Youth and Women 青年与妇女, New Voice 新声and Seeking Truth 求真杂志commenting on domestic and international affairs, and women's issues.

The Chinese Revolution (1972) The National Education Department of the Socialist Workers Party in New York in 1972 published three pamphlets consisting of translated articles penned by Chen Bilan under the name Peng Bilan (Peng Pi-lan) and her husband Peng Shuzhi (Peng Shu-tse). Bilan's translated article "Looking Back Over My Years with Peng Shu-Tse" was published in the first pamphlet, The Chinese Revolution Part 1.

Views

War In the article "National Liberation War and Women" Bilan wrote in 1938, she summarized wars that broke out in modern times into the following categories. First, "reactionary" wars that were fought amongst imperialist empires, feudal nation-states, and warlords inside China. The revolutionary wars fought in Russia, Bilan wrote, were wars in which socialism was fighting against capitalism. The third type of war was for the liberation and independence of a nation, such as the Revolutionary War in the U.S., Belgium, and Turkey. She said:When the proletariat takes power in a country, its greatest task is to overthrow the remaining capitalists in the world and complete the socialist revolution. Before the world capitalist class has been destroyed, it is impossible to construct a real proletarian culture. However, after the world socialist revolution has been completed, the proletariat itself will begin to disappear; that is, classes and, of course, class antagonisms will begin to disappear. It is at this point, then, that socialist culture will begin naturally to establish itself. Therefore, it is in no way necessary to establish a proletarian culture. However, Mao's policies made the working masses work longer hours without increasing benefits. She concluded that telling from Mao's campaign against "economism" and his policies' effects on the working masses, the working-class people only served as "instruments of production in the interests of the bureaucracy."