Early Communist Groups Established

After the May Fourth Movement, Marxism spread widely in China and gradually merged with the Chinese labor movement, and conditions for founding a Communist Party matured. In spring 1920 the Comintern sent Voitinsky and others to China. In August 1920, with Comintern help, Chen Duxiu and others founded China's first early communist group in Shanghai, with members including Li Hanjun, Li Da, Chen Wangdao and Yu Xiusong, and Chen Duxiu as secretary. The Shanghai group coordinated and promoted party-building elsewhere. In October Li Dazhao and others founded an early communist group in Beijing. Groups were then established by Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu and others in Wuhan, Mao Zedong, He Shuheng and others in Changsha, Wang Jinmei, Deng Enming and others in Jinan, and Tan Pingshan and others in Guangzhou; groups also formed among Chinese students and overseas Chinese in Japan and France. Once founded, the groups studied and propagated Marxism in an organized way: they published periodicals such as the monthly The Communist and Marxist works such as the complete Chinese translation of The Communist Manifesto; went into factories to organize workers, ran night schools and helped set up trade unions; and founded the Socialist Youth League, training a body of revolutionary cadres. These activities promoted the merging of Marxism with the Chinese labor movement and prepared the ground ideologically and organizationally for the formal founding of the Communist Party of China. In July 1921 delegates from the groups held the First National Congress in Shanghai, proclaiming the Party's formal founding.