Zhu Zhixin

Also known as Ming Dafu · Zi Zhixin · Pan Yuren

Zhu Zhixin, personal name Dafu, used his courtesy name Zhixin and came from Panyu in Guangdong. Sent to Japan on a government scholarship in 1904, he took the short course at Hosei University and joined the Revolutionary Alliance the next year, serving on its council and as a secretary. Under pen names he wrote for the People's Journal (Minbao), where in 1906 he published brief lives of German social revolutionaries that introduced Marx, Engels and the main points of the Communist Manifesto. Back in Guangzhou he taught and helped plan the New Army rising of 1910 and the uprising of April 1911, escaping wounded. In 1911 he raised irregular forces in Guangdong, then followed Sun Yat-sen against Yuan Shikai, and in 1919 helped edit the journal Construction (Jianshe) in Shanghai. On 21 September 1920, while mediating between Guangxi troops and local militia at Humen, he was shot dead at thirty-five. The next year Sun founded the Zhixin School in Guangzhou in his memory.