ABSTRACT
Writing to his son upon the death of his wife, less than a decade before his own demise, the founder of the Chinese Youth Party (CYP), Zeng Qi (1892-1951), lamented that in thirty years of marriage he had spent limited time with his family. There was no home-style felicity, no family, no self, but just striving for the benefit of the nation. 1 Full of bitter self-reproach, the passage also reflects a lifelong concern with personal destiny and national leadership. With some justification, he felt himself part of an incorruptible intellectual elite. Except under the extreme conditions of foreign invasion, neither the Communist Party (CCP) nor the Guomindang (GMD) could entice him into their ranks. In contrast with many Chinese politicians and reformers, who changed their agendas to include new strategies and fluid objectives, he held fast to his original vision of the CYP. It was this inflexible sense of destiny that provides the keenest insight into the true tragedy of Zeng and the CYP. While the ideology of the CYP was coherent and modern, in terms of Chinese revolutionary realpolitik, Zeng and his compatriots could not totally break with their heritage as intellectuals. Instead, they pursued a revolution which was frozen in the ethos of May Fourth youth activism.
