Chen Duxiu (Ch'en To-hsiu, 1879-1942) was not only a founder of the Chinese Communist Party but he was also the main leader of the 1919 May Fourth movement, with which leaders of today's democratic movement strongly identify.
For decades the CCP had nothing good to say about Chen Duxiu, but since Mao's death he has been partly rehabilitated. He is now recognised once again as a founder of Chinese Communism. He is no longer held solely responsible for the defeat of the Revolution of 1925-27, which is now blamed partly on Moscow. But he is still described as a traitor for joining the Trotskyists, although the charge that he collaborated with the Japanese imperialists has been dropped.
The author of this article, Wang Fanxi (Wang Fan-hsi, born 1907), was a member of the generation of Chinese radicals awakened to political and intellectual life during the late 1910s and early '20s, when Chen Duxiu was still the undisputed leader of the Chinese Revolution. As a Trotskyist Wang worked with Chen in 1930-31 and again in 1938, both having spent most or all of the intervening years in gaol. Wang was more than once Chen's opponent on political and theoretical questions, but on the whole he sees himself as Chen's pupil and admirer. Wang's autobiography was published by Oxford University Press in 1980 under the title Chinese Revolutionary, Memoirs, 1919-1949.