Zheng Youzhi, an early China’s Communist Party Member in Sichuan province and excellent revolutionist, was born in Yibin in 1891 with Youchi as his pseudonym. He went to Sichuan Higher Agricultural School (the predecessor of Sichuan Agricultural University from 1912 to 1914) in 1912 and majored in the construction of the frontier. He acquired agricultural knowledge and Tibetan culture at school with the intention of striving for the development of the agricultural production in the frontier of his motherland after his graduation. However, he had to drop out in 1914 for he could not come up with his tuition.
In 1922, Zheng Youzhi went to Chengdu to join the Socialist Youth League, recommended by Yun Daiying, Principal of South Sichuan Normal School, later joined CPC and became a publicist of Marxism in South Sichuan. Under his influence, Zhao Yiman(his younger sister-in-law), an excellent communist party member and a firm revolutionary fighter, broke away from her feudal family and joined the CPC. Mr. Zheng was called Sichan Karl or the second Marx for his impact on the publicity of the Communist theory.
Zheng Youzhi served as Acting Secretary of the Special Branch of the Chinese Communist League in Yibin in 1925 and as Secretary of the Special Branch of the Chinese Communist Party in Yibin in 1926, who was in charge of the peasantmovements and mobilized the masses to establish the peasant associations. Zheng Youzhi organized 5000 peasants to stage an anti-warlord protest in Yongxian and led the armed forces of thousands of peasants, the Peasants' Revolutionary Army in South Sichuan to fight against Warlord Garrisons in Wubao Town successively. He became the head of the Executive Committee of Peasants' Association in Yibin County in 1927 and was elected as a member of the Special Committee of South Sichuan and Secretary of the Yibin County Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1928. He, as the successor to the Special Branch Secretary of Zigong, led the Labour movement of Zigong Salt Factory and Fushun Coal Plant and organized a peasant uprising in Weiyuan and Rong County. Later on as secretary of Hechuan County Party Committee, he led the people in Mafang Street to fight against the garrison who forcibly demolished the houses of the civilians, fight against hunger by demanding the food from the despotic gentry and the landlords, and boycott the tax and grain collected by the government. As a result, he was acknowledged as Peasants’King in South Sichuan, for he excelled at mobilizing the masses to fight.
He went to Chongqing to work in 1930. He served as a leader of the CPC East Sichuan Special Committee, a leader of Hechuan County Central Committee and a leader of Jiangba County Central Committee successively. Unfortunately, he was arrested because the traitor sold him out. In prison, he faced death unyieldingly and unflinchingly. Ultimately, he sacrificed his life in Chongqing on December 31.
