Chinese League of Left Writers

an organization of Chinese proletarian writers; a section of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers. Founded in 1930 by Lu Hsün and Ch’ü Ch’iu-po, a prominent figure in the Communist Party of China, it brought together more than 50 writers, including Mao Tun, Feng Hsüe-feng, T’ien Han, and Hsia Yen.

Functioning under the Kuomintang terror through its legal and semilegal journals (Ch’ien-shao, Wen-hsüe Yüeh-pao, Peitou), the league fought against bourgeois theories of artistic creativity and opposed imperialism and nationalism. It acquainted Chinese readers with the works of Russian and Soviet writers. Early in 1936, as a result of the disbandment of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, the Chinese League of Left Writers dissolved itself. In 1938 most of the former members of the League joined the All-China Association of Workers of Literature and Art for Repulsing the Enemy, founded in conjunction with the beginning of the war of national liberation against Japanese aggression (1937–45).