Li Zaiwen
Li Zaiwen, born in Pingshan County, Hebei, was a politician of the People's Republic of China. He came from a peasant family and began schooling at an early age, later entering Beiping Datong Middle School in 1924. After the May Thirtieth Movement in 1925, he took part in demonstrations led by Li Dazhao. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1927. Li was the granduncle of senior CCP leader Li Zhanshu.
Biography
In his youth, Li studied at Beiping Datong Middle School and later at the Sino-French University. During this period, he served as secretary of the Party branch at Kongde Academy and took part in student movements. In 1927, shortly after joining the CCP, he organized classmates to resist reactionary school authorities. He subsequently became Party branch secretary at the Sino-French University, where he also organized night schools and led the Anti-Imperialist League.By 1930, Li served as secretary of the CCP Beiping Municipal Committee and later as secretary-general of the Hebei Provincial Committee. In 1932 he was sent to Shanxi, where he established progressive organizations such as the Revolutionary Mutual Aid Society and the Left-Wing Writers’ Union. Arrested in 1934 after betrayal, he was released and returned to Pingshan to engage in grassroots organizing.
During the mid-1930s, Li played a key role in establishing local guerrilla units in Hebei, serving as political commissar of the Pingshan Red Army guerrillas and later as propaganda and organizational secretary of regional Party committees. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, he worked in Jizhong and Ji-Lu-Yu border areas, expanding Party influence and peasant resistance forces. In 1938 he became secretary of the Jixi Special Committee.
After 1945, Li held leadership positions in the trade and labor sector of the liberated areas, including head of the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region Trading Company and commissar of the Shijiazhuang Railway Bureau. In 1948, he became director of the North China Federation of Trade Unions and concurrently head of the Labor Bureau of the North China People's Government.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Li was appointed head of the Organization Department of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and later secretary of its Secretariat.
In the early 1950s, he oversaw the establishment of numerous national industrial unions. In 1960 he was transferred to Shandong Province, where he served as a member of the Provincial Party Committee, vice governor, and secretary-general of the provincial government. He was involved in major flood control efforts in 1963.
Li was elected as a delegate to the First National People’s Congress in 1954, and also served as a member of the First Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, later being re-elected to the CPPCC in subsequent terms. During the Cultural Revolution, he was persecuted and died in February 1967. He was posthumously rehabilitated, and in 1979 recognized as a revolutionary martyr.