Qu Yunbai

Qu Yunbai, born in 1902 in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, died in 1958. His birth name was Qu Yunbai, and he was also known as Qu Yunbai. He was an early member of the Chinese Communist Party and the second younger brother of Qu Qiubai.

In his early years he graduated from Beijing’s specialized school for Russian language, political science and law, and, influenced by his elder brother, joined the May Fourth Movement. He joined the Chinese Communist Party during the period of the Great Revolution.

During the Agrarian Revolutionary War, Qu Yunbai was arrested, and after undergoing “self-criticism” he left the Chinese Communist Party. In the Great Revolution period he studied at Shanghai University, where his elder brother Qu Qiubai taught; while at school he was reassigned to the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions to participate in revolutionary work, taking part in several important activities. In 1925 he went to Moscow Sun Yat-sen University in the Soviet Union; he performed well in his studies, and after graduation worked as a translator at the Central Publishing Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik).

During the Anti-Japanese War period, in 1930 he was ordered to return home; in Shanghai he participated in underground CPC work and was an important member of underground publishing operations. In 1931, under the pretext of running a silk and cloth shop, he secretly established an underground CPC printing plant inside Zhoujiazui Road’s Silk and Cloth Shop; in 1932, under the cover of a residential-style storefront, he set up Shanghai’s All-China Federation of Trade Unions’ secret printing office. He was subsequently arrested and imprisoned; in prison he befriended Deng Tuo and other fellow inmates, and was later moved to the Suzhou Reeducation Institute. Under the Kuomintang’s “self-criticism” policy, he and his brothers took a path opposed to the Chinese Communist Party. The Kuomintang’s secret service recruited many students who had returned from Moscow’s Sun Yat-sen University; together with these classmates they formed an anti-Communist propaganda network, in which Qu Yunbai also participated.

During the Liberation War, he served as the distributing accountant for Zhang Guotao’s Chuangjin Magazine. On the eve of the mainland’s liberation, after Zhang Guotao and other CPC traitors fled the mainland one after another, Qu Yunbai had not yet fled. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he was arranged to work at Renmin University of China as a Russian translator; however, in subsequent political campaigns he was subjected to restrictions. He died in 1958 at the age of 56.