Chang Tai-Lei

Born 1898 in Ch’angchou; died Dec. 12, 1927, in Canton. Figure in the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The son of an office worker, Chang T’ai-lei graduated from Peiyang University in Tientsin in 1919. He took part in the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement in 1919. In 1920 he joined a Communist circle and helped found the Chinese Socialist Youth League. In 1921 he became a member of the CPC and attended the Third Congress of the Comintern as a delegate of the CPC; there he met V. I. Lenin. Chang helped organize a united anti-imperialist front based on cooperation between the CPC and the Kuomintang.

Chang became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPC in 1925 and a member of the Central Committee in May 1927. He took part in the Nanch’ang Uprising of 1927. At the extraordinary conference of the Central Committee of the CPC held on Aug. 7,1927, he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee’s Provisional Politburo and was appointed secretary of the Kwangtung provincial committee of the party. In December he was the principal organizer and leader of an armed uprising in Canton (seeKUANG-CHOU UPRISING OF 1927). Chang was assassinated by counterrevolutionaries.