Yang Zhihua

Yang Zhihua (Chinese: 杨之华; 1900 -1973) was a feminist voice and a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) labor organizer who is known for her role as the Director of the Women’s Bureau. With advice from her mentor Shen Dingyi, she went to Shanghai and began to write for the Weekly Review (also known as Xingqi pinglun), Shen's political journal discussing revolutionary thought. In 1920, Yang was hired as a teacher at the Yaqian Village School, a school for peasant farmers established by Shen. Later that year, she married Shen's son, Shen Jianlong, and welcomed their daughter, Qu Duyi the following year. In one instance, Yang publicly announced in The Republican Daily News in November 1924, that she was divorcing Shen and would be remarrying Qu, challenging conservative notions surrounding marriage that were pushed by more traditional perspectives. At Shanghai University, the center of this push towards labor organizing, Yang became increasingly involved in CCP efforts to organize women workers in the packing and silk worker industries across widespread labor strikes.

Yang took a more central role in female labor organizing, beginning with the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, a student and worker movement aimed at protesting British and Japanese imperialism as well as warlord rule. Yang was successful in recruiting women in BAT’s packing plant for the general strike in June 1925, bringing her public recognition.

Death and legacy Yang’s work in labor activism ceased with the onset of the Cultural Revolution, at which point she received significant criticism for her relationship with Qu Qiubai, her deceased husband, who had written negatively about Marxism prior to his execution. Thus, allegations arose that Yang had divulged CCP secrets during her previous imprisonment. She was imprisoned until three days before her death in 1973, when she died from cancer in Beijing Medical School Hospital.

She identified three main obstacles to this open socialization. First, she blamed “outside pressures,” as any friendly interaction between a man and woman was assumed to be romantic. These forced them into romantic and/or sexual relationships, but without the proper foundation, they soon separated. Second, some relationships were created through “animalistic socializing,” or seduction. This was due to the feeling of excitement when meeting someone of the opposite gender, which was then incorrectly expressed. Lastly, she mentioned “unrequited love,” in which misunderstandings about the true feelings of a person of the opposite gender could lead to suffering. Those who witnessed this would also be unwilling to socialize, afraid that they would end up in the same circumstance.

Critics observed that she was one of the few women published in the journal and that her call for unity between educated and uneducated women aligned with communist ideals, which she reinforced by arguing that office workers subordinate to male bosses were not fundamentally different from uneducated women in their lack of power.