Liao Huanxing [1895-1964] – China | Germany | Russia
Life stories
Laura Frey, 2024
The Chinese communist Liao Huanxing was born in 1895 in Hengyang in Hunan Province and joined the newly founded Communist Party of China (CPC) at the age of 27. From 1922 to 1928, he lived in Berlin, where he worked as secretary of the representative office of the National People's Party of China - Kuomintang (KMT). Thanks to his proficiency in German, he quickly made contact with German communists. Liao became a central figure in the Brussels Congress of the League Against Colonial Oppression and subsequently worked as head of the Chinese News Agency.
After a dispute with the communist publisher Willi Münzenberg escalated, he and his family moved to Moscow. There, Liao and his wife, the German worker Dora Liao-Dombrowski, were arrested in 1938 during the Stalinist persecution and murder of people deemed politically "unreliable" and sentenced to penal labor in Siberian camps. Liao died in 1964 after returning to China.
As a "professional revolutionary," he dedicated his life to the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle in the service of the Communist International (Comintern). Liao's biography is paradigmatic of the rise and fall of the international anti-colonial networks in Berlin in the 1920s.
Contact: laura.frey(at)posteo.de
Weblinks: Instagram: @_laurafrey_
Special Thanks: In Erinnerung an Dagmar Yu-Dembski (1943-2023).
References:
Belogurova, Anna: China, Anti-imperialist Leagues, and the Comintern (1926–1937): Visions, Networks, and Cadres, in: Stolte, Carolien / Louro, Michele / Streets-Salter, Heather u. a. (Ed.): The League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives, 2020, p. 135–158.
Kampen, Thomas: Chinesen in Europa – Europäer in China: Journalisten, Spione, Studenten, 2010.
Krüger, Joachim: A regular Chinese Voice from Berlin to Moscow. The China-information of Liao Huanxing, 1924-1927, in: Leutner, Mechthild / Felber, Roland / Titarenko, M.L. u. a. (Ed.): The Chinese Revolution in the 1920s. Between triumph and desaster, 2002, p. 177–183.
Li, Weijia: China und China-Erfahrung in Leben und Werk von Anna Seghers, 2011.
Petersson, Frederik: The League Against Imperialism and the Comintern, 1925-1933, 2013.
Studer, Brigitte: Die Reisenden der Weltrevolution. Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale, 2020.
Stationen
Wake up
Studying in Wuhan and joining the Communist Party of China
Berlin years
Representative of the National People's Party of China - Kuomintang (KMT)
“Hands off China” and the threat of expulsion
The founding of the League against Colonial Oppression
International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism
Chinese News Agency
A dispute escalates - a new beginning in Moscow
“Liau Han-tschi” as a literary figure