Su Chao-Cheng

Born 1885; died 1929 in Shanghai. Figure in the Chinese workers’ movement.

A seaman by trade, Su Chao-cheng led the Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike of 1922. In 1924 he joined the Communist Party of China (CPC). In May 1925 he was elected a member of the executive committee of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and in May 1926 he became chairman of the executive committee. Su Chao-cheng was one of the leaders of the Hong Kong-Canton Strike of 1925–26. At the Fifth Congress of the CPC (1927), he was elected to the party’s Central Committee.

Su Chao-cheng represented the CPC in the National Government in Wuhan from March to June 1927 and was minister of labor. At an extraordinary session of the Central Committee of the CPC on Aug. 7, 1927, he was elected a member of the committee’s Politburo. During the Kuang-chou (Canton) uprising of 1927 he was elected in absentia chairman of the Soviet of People’s Commissars (the Canton Commune). In 1928 he was elected a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and a member of the Executive Bureau of the Proflntern. He died of appendicitis.