Chen Duxiu—the co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and one of the most prominent leaders of the New Culture Movement—witnessed the ups-and-downs of the Chinese revolution, playing a key role in the early history of the CCP. However, Chen was labeled ‘traitor’ and ‘antirevolutionary’ (among others) by the CCP in the late 1920s, and following this, scholarly discussions about him had been restricted in mainland China for decades. 


Chen Duxiu Quanzhuan (A Complete Biography of Chen Duxiu) is an illuminating study of Chen Duxiu’s rise and fall written by Tang Baolin, a former researcher with the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and executive chair of the ‘underground’ Institute of Studies on Chen Duxiu. Devoted to constructing a truthful account of this revolutionary figure and the critical issues in the early history of CCP he was intertwined with, Tang has spent nearly 30 years on this monumental undertaking, for the first time giving readers an accurate, meticulously researched account of the man who created and shaped the early years of the CCP.