Long March and Beyond

In October 1934, the CCP decided to abandon its bases in southern China and embarked on the Long March towards the more remote northwest. Cheng accompanied the Chinese Red Army on the march. One year later, they arrived in the Yan'an caves of northern Shaanxi. There the CCP established a new base area that they successfully defended against Nationalist suppression campaigns. In 1937, the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War led thousands of Chinese students to flee the cities of northern China, many ending up in Shaanxi. The CCP was unprepared to meet this sudden influx, but Cheng established the Shaanbei Public Academy in July 1937 to give them a political education. The school faced severe financial difficulties given the poverty of the students and survived on subsidies from the CCP Central Committee.^[5] Cheng was at first the only faculty member, and had to rely on other party leaders to give guest lectures. He organized the students into a command structure with "brigades", "brigade branches", and "platoons", wach with elected officers. The better-educated students in these groups would teach the others.^[6] In 1939, the Shaanbei Public Academy was combined with three other institutions to create the Huabei United University, of which Cheng became the President.^[1] Huabei was a mobile university that followed the Communists as the waged a guerilla war against the Japanese.^[1] At one time due to certain special conditions, 1,500 students were sent behind the Japanese enemy lines. Cheng went with them and organized their continuing education which required scheduling surreptitious class gatherings.

The People's Republic of China was established in 1949, and the following year Cheng established Renmin University in Beijing. In 1952, he became President of Northeast Normal University in Changchun.^[7] He was then President of Shandong University in Jinan from August 1958 until January 1974.^[1] Shandong is a regular university, part of the Education Ministry. Cheng brought a fresh breeze and re-invigorated the University with his focus on grass roots reality and personal knowledge of the subject matter. He set a personal example by always writing his own memo's, reports and text notes.

Cheng Fangwu was a fervent dedicated Marxist to the core, and had the same commitment to cadre education. He required his education system to conform to reality, of which he experienced in abundance. One reality which he never anticipated was being attacked personally (two broken bones) with the University disbanded during the Cultural Revolution. Mao finally protected him in 1974 by setting up a special office for Cheng to translate Marx and Engels. He was rehabilitated in 1978 and became president of Renmin University.^[1]

Quotes and Vignettes

There are many colorful stories about Cheng Fangwu. During a criticism session, the lead persecutor was reciting a poem by Mao Zedong to threaten Cheng. The poem was saying that a hunter of tigers and leopards should not be afraid of bears. The speaker mispronounced the last word in the poem as "ba". Cheng replied, "You said it wrong, instead of 'ba' you want 'pi'!" The entire hall applauded ... pi also means fart.

• Mao said of Cheng Fangwu...
  • "Shaanbei Public School will certainly do well because of having Cheng Fangwu in the field of Education and Chau Choun Chueng in the field of Military Technology." on November 1937 in Northern China
  • "Shaanbei Public School reflects the image of united revolution and China's development. China will not be destroyed with the existence of Shaanbei Public School." on March 3, 1938 in Northern China
  • "There are two precious lessons I give for the students of Shaanbei Public School: The first, insist on the direction of politics; The second, is to work hard and stride to the end. During the past seventeen years, when the communist group met extraordinary hardship and still insisted on their political direction, the struggling hardship became the whole communist tradition, and Cheng Fangwu is just this kind of man." on April 1, 1938 at Opening Ceremony speech of the 2nd graduating year
• On May 21, 1976, one of the Communist Leader, Marshal Zhu De, age 90, visited Cheng Fangwu at Central Communist School and said to him, "It is important to understand Marxism. For this purpose we need a good translated book and your translated book (Cheng's 1976 translated book Communist Manifesto) is easy to understand. This good job has a worldwide meaning."
• Chinese leader, Chan Wing said in 1986: "Cheng Fangwu is our civil revolutionist, loyal warrior, educator, and social scientist."

Background Note

Cheng Fangwu is a unique Chinese Communist Party Elder. He was among the earliest well-known intellectual to overtly ally with Mao Zedong, well before many other political and military leaders. Mao gave him the job of educating the party cadre at the beginning of the Long March even though he was trained in military science in Tokyo. Under the Chinese Communist system, there is a party cadre (commissar) at every level next to a military commander or a civilian manager. This is the party secretary who has power over personnel decision on the basis of party loyalty and "ideological purity".

The consequence is of course rampant pure politics without regard to job skills. During the Long March and in earlier years, many talented military officers were basically illiterate or barely literate. Cheng's schools and university on the march produced literate cadres who were next to the commanders. Under common duress, they provided practical written communications for widely dispersed military forces. Also by all accounts Cheng's personal example was to focus on reality and not on personnel politics even though he was a committed Marxist. Consequently, the cadre schools and university undoubted fulfilled an important function. Once the People's Republic was established in 1949, the party gained control of the entire education system and everything else. With no existential threat and only internal political strife, the worst aspects of the cadre system gained ascendancy from the early 1960s to 1978. With the "open policies" of Deng Xiaoping, there is no formal cadre system in the private sector of the economy, and the cadres began to take a back seat in the public sector. The universities under the Ministry of Education were modeled primarily after the American system with Schools and Departments. These were established under the Republic of China dating from 1911. They vigorously reaffirmed their original approach to education after 1978. And in fact Cheng's Remin University itself expanded broadly along the same academic lines. The very strong Marxist curriculum is now only part of the entire much broader curriculum.

In this respect Cheng Fangwu is a unique figure fulfilling a unique requirement at a unique time; a situation unlikely to be repeated with the present trajectory of China.