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Zhang's Hat on Li's Head: A Chronic Case of Quid Pro Quo in the History Books

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Gregor Benton
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Extract

Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) and Peng Shuzhi (1896–1983) were leading members of the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP); they were both expelled from it as Trotskyists in 1929 and were arrested together in 1932. Though the two men were quite different in temperament and appearance, today book after book on the Chinese Revolution uses a photograph of Peng, looking dashed and dazed at the time of his and Chen's trial by the Guomindang in 1932, in the belief that it is of Chen. The first instance I can find of this mix-up is in the Chinese translation published in Paris in 1973 of Harold Isaacs’ Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution; it was then repeated in more widely available form in a pictorial history of modern China brought out in Hong Kong in 1976 by the pro-Communist Seventies Publishing Company.

Type
Research Notes
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 126 , June 1991 , pp. 364 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1991

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References

1. Luosheng, Yi (Harold Isaacs), trans, by Haisheng, Liu, Zhongguo gemingde beiju (Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution) (Paris: Editions Champ Libre, 1973)Google Scholar.

2. “Zhongguo jin bainian lishi tuji” weiyuanhui, bianji (eds.), Zhongguojin bainian lishi tuji (1840–1975) (A Pictorial History of Modern China) (Hong Kong: Qishi niandai zazhi chubanshe, 1976), p. 244Google Scholar.

3. Committee, Compilation (eds.), A Pictorial History of the Republic of China: Its Founding and Development, 2 vols. (Taibei: Modern China Press, 1981), Vol. 1, p. 238Google Scholar.

4. Even a specialist study on Chen repeats the error. See Zhonghua, Qianget al. (eds.), Chen Duxiu beibu ziliao huibian (A Compilation of Materials on Chen Duxiu's Arrests) (Henan renmin chubanshe, 1982)Google Scholar.