Rao Shushi - Early Years

Early Years

As a native of Lingchuan (灵川), Jiangxi, Rao was among the few senior leaders of early stage of CPC who received a higher education. He became educated at Shanghai University in his early days and later joined the Chinese Youth, and turned into a CPC member in 1925. Around 1928 Rao worked in the northeast of Jiangxi with central delegations of CPC. Then he was sent to Zhejiang to mobilize youth, and once was Secretary of Communism Youth League for that province. When the 1920s revolution was oppressed by Kuomintang, Rao went abroad for study in England, France and the Soviet Union for approximately a year. He went back to China and worked in northeast China in 1929, being appointed as the Secretary of Communism Youth League, once as Acting General Secretary of CPC of the northeast, as the superior of Liu Shaoqi, who was Propaganda Minister of the CPC northeast division. As Liu was so young and had been voted as Central Commissioner of CPC in the Sixth National Congress of CPC, he was the one who was most likely to get promoted as General Secretary of the northeast CPC, and Liu actually attained the position before long, which brought great threat to Rao and sowed the seeds of resentment and jealousy for several decades.

Between 1930 and 1931, Rao was put in jail by Kuomintang for more than a year. After that he was released in 1932 and transferred to Shanghai to work on labor union, once as Propaganda Minister and Secretary General of Chinese State Labor Union, while his rival Liu became superior again as the Chairman of China State Labor Union.

In 1935 Rao was sent to study abroad in Soviet Union again, and in 1936 to U.S. and France to do alliance work with Chinese living overseas, in which he published several newspaper such as Herald, Motherland Defence Times to publicize CPC policies on alliance against Japanese.