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À la recherche du Deng perdu: The Roots of Chinese Communism in Provincial France after World War I (1920–6)

I did all kinds of work in France but it was all unskilled labour.¹

Montargis is a small town of some 15,000 inhabitants in the Loiret region of central France; it lies to the south of Paris and east of Orléans and nestles in the valley of the River Loing, which is a left-hand tributary of the Seine. It is a rural and agricultural area, known for its honey. The town is celebrated as the place where sweet nutty pralines were invented, probably in the seventeenth century, and a shop which may have sold the confectionery since that time still stands in the centre of the town. The Canal de Briare, which connects the valleys of the Loire and Seine, was constructed between 1604 and 1642; it passes through Montargis and played an important part in the industrial development of the town and its region.

In the 1920s this quintessential French provincial town became the focus of a group of enterprising and idealistic young Chinese attracted by the opportunity to study abroad and earn their keep by working. While many local people prefer to think of their town as ‘la Venise du Gâtinais’, the Venice of its region, and praise its mediaeval atmosphere, for the newly-arrived Chinese it looked oddly familiar. On the face of it the journey from China to a small town in rural France should have resulted in an immense culture shock, but even in the twenty-first century Montargis is strangely reminiscent of the towns and villages of southern China. The town centre is ringed by canals, the old course of the River Loing and the ancient town moats; these are crossed by a total of 131 bridges, many of them gently arching in a way that in a summer haze or an autumn mist could persuade a tired labourer that he was still in China somewhere south of the Yangzi River. One prominent Montargoise who is originally from China is constantly reminded of the vista of waterways and bridges of her birthplace, Hangzhou, and the countryside that surrounds it.²

Work–Study Movement

The Work–Study Movement (qingong jianxue yundong) that drew young educated Chinese to Montargis was the brainchild of Li Shizeng (1881–1973), the scion of a wealthy and well-connected family and the son of an adviser to the Tongzhi Emperor. He was a political thinker and a writer with anarchist sympathies, but he eventually persuaded himself that he should work with the nationalist Guomindang and died in Taiwan at the age of 92. When he arrived in Paris in 1902, Li originally intended to study botany and agriculture, but he yearned for a more peaceful rural environment and felt that he had found it when he chanced upon Montargis, and enrolled in what was then known as the École Pratique d’Agriculture du Chesnoy in the Loiret.³ Li studied at Chesnoy from 1904 to 1906 and then continued his work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris where he devoted his energies to the development of soybean products, intending to transfer this knowledge to China. From this evolved the idea of a soy food manufacturing plant at Colombes to the north-west of Paris, which he opened in 1908 and staffed entirely with Chinese labourers. This was the beginning of the Work–Study Movement. Li’s base in Montargis was 31, rue Gambetta, where he was visited by, among others, Sun Yat-sen and the future Minister of Education, Cai Yuanpei; a plaque outside the house today marks his association with the town. Another address in Montargis which has close associations with the Chinese students is 15, rue Tellier (at the time known as 15, rue du Pont de l’Ouche). Several of its rooms were rented to Chinese students; these included Li Weihan, who took part in the Long March, headed the CCP’s Party School and became deputy chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; Li Fuchun, later deputy premier and chairman of the State Planning Commission; and his wife Cai Chang. For male students, the College Gambetta provided both education and an upstairs dormitory in which they lived. The school, dating back at least to the sixteenth century, when it was rebuilt after a fire, became the Town Hall in 1988. Its Chinese alumni also included Chen Yi, a future minister of foreign affairs, who signed the agreement on diplomatic relations between France and China with President de Gaulle in 1964 and Cai Hesen, a close associate of Mao Zedong, who was executed by Chinese police in Guangzhou in 1931. Most of the female Chinese students studied and lived at the College de Chinchon, the first secondary school for girls in Montargis. These included Cai Hesen’s wife, Xiang Jingyu, who was also executed in 1928.

Montargis was easily accessible from Paris by the rail network that was inaugurated when the first train on the Moret–Nevers line stopped at Montargis station on 14 August 1860. The capital could now be reached in four hours by train, whereas the old stagecoaches had taken 12 hours. On 16 November 1912 Li Shizeng had a private meeting with Thierry Falour, the mayor of Montargis, and suggested a scheme for bringing young Chinese to the town. His idea was that they would study, work in local industries and live either in the schools or with local people. This scheme was welcomed by the members of the town council who appreciated the economic benefits that it would bring to the town, as well as the educational opportunities for the young Chinese. The first Chinese students to benefit from this forerunner of the Work–Study Movement arrived in Montargis in 1913. Over 2,000 young Chinese travelled to France to study and work in the 1910s and 1920s, and at least 300 of them spent their time in Montargis. Many formed lasting links with the local community: they also found a degree of freedom which they had not enjoyed in China and used this to debate ideas of reform and revolution, the future of their motherland and their part in that future. Many of them, including Zhou Enlai (the future premier of the People’s Republic of China) and Deng Xiaoping, returned to China and were active in the Chinese revolution between 1927 and 1949.

In March 1921, a clandestine communist group was established in Paris. It included Zhang Shenfu (1893–1986), a philosopher who became China’s leading expert on the thinking of Bertrand Russell; Liu Qingyang, who may well have been the first female member of the Chinese Communist Party; and two emerging student leaders, Zhou Enlai and Zhao Shiyan (1901–27), like Deng a Sichuanese and an able organiser who was executed when the Guomindang nationalists wiped out the communists in Shanghai in 1927. This embryonic group expanded rapidly after the formal establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in China in July 1921. In June 1922, representatives of this group and others from elsewhere in France, Belgium and Germany met in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris to create the CCP’s European Branch. The moving spirit at this time was Zhao Shiyan, who acted as secretary and was based in a small hotel at 17, rue Godefroy, but Zhou Enlai became a member of the executive committee and was well established in the organisation by the summer of 1922 when Deng Xiaoping was introduced to the Communist Party, which he joined the following autumn.⁴

Deng sets sail for France

In the summer of 1919 Deng’s father had returned home after visiting Chongqing and had brought with him information about the Work–Study Movement and a course in Chongqing to prepare young Chinese who wished to participate in it. Deng Shaochang was unusual in supporting his son’s interest in an overseas education but he had benefited from a modern education in Chengdu, was dissatisfied with traditional methods of education and was deeply critical of the warlord government that ruled Sichuan. Deng, together with cousins and school friends, travelled to Chongqing to prepare for the great expedition to France. Deng returned home to Guang’an in August 1920 to take his leave of his mother, for whom it was a difficult parting as she realised that she might never again see her son who was barely 16 years old. She was resolutely opposed to his travelling to France and it took weeks for her to be persuaded that she should bless the enterprise.

Deng’s journey to France began on 27 August 1920 when, with 82 other students from eastern Sichuan, he boarded the 3pm steamer Jiqing (Auspicious) from the Yangzi River port of Wanxian, in what is now the Chongqing municipality, and sailed downriver, eastwards via Yichang, Hankou and Jiujiang to Shanghai. At 11 am on 11 September he and his fellow students, who now numbered about 90 and had never before left their homeland, set sail from Shanghai for France on the French liner André Lebon, which had been berthed on the Huangpu River. On 19 October, after 39 days at sea, the liner docked in Marseilles and Deng and 21 of his companions travelled overland by road to Paris, a journey of 16 hours. They reached Bayeux in Normandy on 21 October and were immediately impressed by the contrast between France and poor and backward China. Like many of this ‘May Fourth generation’ – those who had grown up in the nationalist upsurge that followed the 4 May 1919 demonstrations against Japan’s acquisition of Chinese territory after World War I – Deng was acutely conscious of the need for China to develop and prosper, and he had come to believe that travelling to the West to learn from their experience was essential if they were to succeed in this momentous task.

However, Deng’s experience of life in France was not entirely positive. He was exposed to a developed society and economy but his exposure was as an immigrant and a casual labourer. In later life he would recall that he could only find work as a general labourer and that, in common with the other work–study students, money was always a problem. He had to live extremely frugally and was unable to pay the tuition fees that the schools required. His studies were self-financed, whereas some better-connected students had loans or even scholarships from the Chinese government. His family circumstances were very restricted at the time that he left Sichuan and he had brought very little money with him. Some of his better-off fellow students had between 30 and 50 francs a month at their disposal but Deng started with only 18. His capital did not last long even at this rate and within a few months he was penniless. His dreams of a study programme with work to support it soon evaporated and he found himself working as a full-time labourer to support himself. This was not what he had imagined when he left China and it contributed to his moving towards the emerging young communist movement in France. It is interesting to reflect on his dissatisfaction with his treatment as an overseas student and his long-term attitude toward the West and its economic system as a model for China. In the mid-1970s, when he finally achieved a position in which he could influence China’s future direction, he pressed strongly for economic reform. However, he resolutely resisted demands from some political thinkers, including members of the CCP, for China to move away from the one-party system that had been in place since 1949 and create a multi-party democracy on the Western model. He was profoundly influenced by his early experience in France and the realities of life for the poorest of the poor in a Western democratic industrial society.

Le Creusot and the Schneider works

To resolve their financial problems, Deng and other students from Sichuan found temporary work in Le Creusot, as labourers at the industrial plant operated by the firm of Schneider and Co. in the town. The Schneider plant, which is at the top of a hill on the main road that leads into the town, looks more like an aristocratic country residence than a factory: it was originally the Chateau de la Verrerie, an eighteenth-century crystal glass factory that had developed under the patronage of Marie Antoinette. The Schneider enterprise was largely responsible for the transformation of Le Creusot from a village to an industrial town; it had been a major armaments firm before and during World War I but, by the time Deng arrived, had diversified into general steel production and electrical engineering. Schneider’s was famous for the great Creusot steam hammer that was constructed in 1877 and is now a tourist attraction at the site of the factory. Deng worked in the steel rolling mill between 2 April and 23 April 1921 with the works number of 07396; the mill where he laboured is now part of an industrial museum. The labourers toiled for long hours, over 50 a week, which often included night shifts, and worked at a temperature of 40° Celsius, which is normal for a steel mill. They constantly fed the rollers under the watchful eye of supervisors who cursed any of them found slacking. The work was dangerous with the ever-present risk of burns and broken bones and was tough for a small youth of 17, but Deng needed the wage, low as it was. It was barely enough for food and warmth as the normal wage for Chinese labourers was only 10 francs a day. For lunch they had tap water and bread. When Deng left Le Creusot not only did he not receive his final wage, he was asked to refund an overpayment of 100 francs – whether he did so is not recorded.

Although this first experience of employment was a short one, it had a profound effect on a young man more used to the schoolroom. It brought him into contact with modern industrial machinery and processes but also taught him about the lot of the poorest workers in an industrial economy. It put into perspective all that he had heard about prosperity, freedom, democracy and brotherhood in the West. It also brought him into contact with radical young Chinese, including Zhao Shiyan (the uncle of future premier Li Peng) who later took part as a labour organiser in the Northern Expedition and was executed by the nationalist Guomindang in Shanghai in 1927. The radicals offered a powerful and attractive theoretical and organisational solution to the practical problems he had encountered, in the shape of the nascent Chinese Communist Party. In later life he frequently referred to his experience of the ‘dark side of capitalism’ in his emerging political consciousness.⁵

Paris and artificial flowers

Deng left Le Creusot for Paris and after over five months without work took a job at the Chambrelen factory in the 10th arrondissement by the banks of the River Seine. This could not have been a greater contrast with the steel mill as his new employer specialised in the manufacture of fans and artificial flowers and Deng was classified as a ‘flower maker’, creating imitation blooms out of muslin and silk fabric fastened to metal wires. Once again the wages were low and many of the workers were women who were able to earn only 2 francs in a day by making 100 flowers: faster workers who could make more might take home as much as 10 francs. Deng was also concerned that the job was not secure and indeed within two weeks he and other Chinese staff were laid off, ‘once again joining the great army of the unemployed’, where he remained for another three months.

Montargis and the Hutchinson factory

On 14 February 1922 Deng finally reached Montargis where he found his third job, a relatively secure position making waterproof footwear in the shoe manufacturing workshop of the Hutchinson rubber plant at Châlette-sur-Loing. At the time the factory employed several thousand workers, mostly women and young people, and it is still in operation today. Châlette is a short distance outside the town centre of Montargis and Deng lived in the village in a small flat (a ‘shack’ they called it) behind the factory. The American industrialist Hiram Hutchinson had set up this rubber factory at Châlette in 1853 on the site of the former Langlée royal paper mill and he began to hire foreign labourers after World War I as the French economy began to improve after a period of retrenchment. The workforce included Indians, Vietnamese, White Russians and Chileans and between 1920 and 1927 there were 214 Chinese, including Wang Ruofei, an early member of the CCP who would die in an air crash in 1946. Most of the labourers worked an eight-hour shift and devoted their evenings to their studies, although Deng recalls that his shifts lasted ten hours and he worked as many as 54 hours each week. The work was lighter than at the steel plant, but the pace was fast and the labourers had to be nimble and precise. The factory operated a piece-work system; Deng adapted well and was able to make at least ten and sometimes as many as 20 pairs of shoes a day. This earned him approximately 15 or 16 francs per day and after deducting his living expenses he had a surplus of over 200 francs a month; just as importantly, the work was secure. Recollections of his fellow workers give a glimpse of the life that the Chinese labourers led in Châlette. The two hours between their evening meal and bedtime were the most precious. Although they were all theoretically students, very little reading took place and the atmosphere in their ‘wooden shack’ was lively. They ‘chatted, cracked jokes, teased and argued with each other but fortunately never came to blows’.

There was a lad from Sichuan, small and rather stout and only about eighteen years old. Every day at this time he would come bouncing in, going over to one corner to tell a joke, laugh and then to another to play a trick.

The Sichuan lad was of course Deng Xiaoping.

He may not have studied formally – in later years Deng would recall that, of the five years and two months that he spent in France, he spent four years working – but at the Hutchinson factory he was systematically exposed to radical ideas. Some of the other Chinese working there were already committed revolutionaries and he read copies of the radical May Fourth period journal Xin Qingnian (New Youth) that circulated among their group.

Paris: Renault at Billancourt

Still anxious to pursue the dream of an education funded by work, Deng left Hutchinson’s on 17 October 1922 to study at the College de Châtillon-sur-Seine. He enrolled on 3 November but could not afford the fees and went back to the rubber factory on 2 February 1923: he was always conscious of never having completed his education. He continued at Hutchinson’s for a little over a month but then decided to leave for good. The management at Hutchinson’s recorded his reason for leaving as ‘refusal to work’: they were not aware that he had joined the Chinese Youth Communist Party (Zhongguo shaonian gongchandang) and had decided that radical politics was to be his life’s work. According to his younger brother, Deng Xianzhi, he wrote a long letter to his family in Sichuan informing them, in one brief paragraph, of this momentous change of direction and telling them that as he was now ‘taking the revolutionary road’ he would not be able to return home. Not surprisingly this caused great consternation and his mother was particularly distressed and wanted him home immediately. Deng sent home several copies of the magazine Red Light (Chiguang) that he and Zhou Enlai were producing, but Deng Xianzhi was too young to understand the political terminology or the significance of what his brother had embarked on.

Deng Xiaoping left Montargis on 30 July 1925 and moved back to Paris where the Chinese radicals were based. He registered at the Boulogne-Billancourt police station and signed up to work as a labourer at the Renault car factory, a colossal enterprise that employed over 10,000 people, of whom some 600 were Chinese. Deng was assigned to work as a trainee fitter helping with the maintenance of tools and machines, the most technically-advanced work that he had undertaken since arriving in France. The Renault factory still retains his work card numbered 82409A with the name Deng Xixian spelled in the fashion that he had also used in Montargis, Teng Hei Hien. It also included in Chinese characters the name Deng Xiaoping that he was now using, his address at 27, rue Traversiere and a note that his wage in the polishing workshop was 1 franc 5 centimes. Forty years later during the Cultural Revolution, Deng was to find his experience at Renault unexpectedly useful when he was banished to Jiangxi Province and worked in a tractor-fitting plant in Xinjian on the outskirts of Nanchang.⁶

Evolution of Chinese communism in France

In Montargis there had been endless political discussions: in the students’ lodgings after work; at the female students’ house where Deng and others would go to eat authentic Chinese noodles; in the nearby park on their days off; or while walking to and from the public bathhouses near the river. There was, however, no political organisation in Montargis: the focus for activist Chinese students in France was, perhaps not surprisingly, Paris. In addition to his work at Renault, Deng became involved in a scheme proposed by Zhou Enlai. Zhou suggested that Deng should manage a doufu (tofu) shop to benefit the many work–study students who found themselves in straitened circumstances; the shop also brought him into close contact with the wider Chinese student community in Paris. By this time Deng’s dream of an education for its own sake had evaporated, his initial plan of studying to benefit China was metamorphosing into a revolutionary vocation, and he became more deeply involved in the creation of a communist group within the Chinese community. In true Parisian style the activities of this group revolved around a small café, in this case one close to the Place d’Italie in the 13th arrondissement, which also happened to be near Zhou Enlai’s lodgings at 12, rue Godefroy. The building in which Zhou lived now sports a plaque to mark his stay there between 1922 and 1924.

In June 1922 the activist group that had been established by 18 Chinese students, including Zhao Shiyan, Zhou Enlai and Li Weihan transformed itself into the Chinese Youth Communist Party in Europe (Lű Ou Zhongguo shaonian gongchandang) at an open air meeting in the Bois de Boulogne on chairs that they had hired from a cafe owner. On 1 August of the same year, the first issue of their journal, Youth (Shaonian), was published from a room above a café at 17, rue Godefroy. According to Cai Chang, the production of this duplicated paper was a collaborative effort. Zhou Enlai was in overall charge; Deng, who had become a member of the group at a provisional congress in February 1923, and Li Dazhang cut the stencils and Li Fuchun distributed it. In February 1924 Youth changed its name to Red Light (Chiguang) to indicate a shift from a theoretical orientation to a more militant and activist role; it appeared irregularly although it was intended to be bi-monthly. The group worked during the day and carried out their duties for the paper and the Party in the evenings. Deng often worked well into the night to try to ensure that the paper appeared every two weeks and he became so skilled at the mimeograph production process that he was known as the ‘Doctor of Duplication’. Zhou Enlai did not have to work as a labourer because he was a full-time organiser for the new Party. In June 1923 the group held its Second Congress, by which time it had changed its name to the Chinese Communist Youth League in Europe (Lü Ou Zhongguo gongchanzhuyi qingniantuan). Zhou Enlai became secretary and Deng was involved in ‘branch work’ (zhibu gongzuo), the nature of which is not specified. It presumably involved organising and coordinating the work of different branches, but even at this early stage Deng was recognisably taking responsibility for the organisation of the group.

Chinese ideological battles in Europe

The political struggle in China between radicals who supported the nationalist Guomindang and those whose primary allegiance was to the Chinese Communist Party was also fought in the émigré community in France. The ideological weapon of the young communists was Red Light, which was formally launched under its new name in February 1924 and appeared bi-monthly in sextodecimo (16mo) format with at least ten pages in each issue until it ceased publication in 1925. Its readership included work–study students but also Chinese labourers and other Chinese living in France. Deng wrote many articles for Red Light under a number of different names. He later recalled that these were in support of a national revolution in China and attacked the representatives in France of one of the rightwing factions of the Guomindang, notably Zeng Qi and Li Huang, who had founded the Young China Party (Zhongguo qingnian dang). That group was nationalist, anti-communist and anti-fascist, but its members were also wary of the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi). Zeng was for a time the Paris correspondent of the Shanghai newspaper Xinwenbao and, although favouring a ‘third way’ that was neither nationalist nor communist, eventually threw in his lot with Chiang Kai-shek after Japan invaded China in 1937. Zeng and Li were nationalists and opposed the class struggle approach of the communists and the participation of the CCP in the United Front, the period of political cooperation with the GMD during the Japanese occupation. However, in the complex and confused politics of the time, Zeng had worked with Zhou Enlai in creating an Association of Chinese Clubs in France. Among the most important polemical articles that Deng wrote for Red Light at this time were in issues 18 and 21, in which he castigated the counter-revolutionary nature of the Young China Party.

Deng takes a leadership role

By the time that the Chinese Communist Youth League in Europe held its Fifth Congress from 13 to 15 July 1924, Deng had become a fixture in the leadership. He was elected to the executive committee and at the first meeting was one of the three chosen to operate as the secretariat. Deng was responsible for copying, duplicating and printing and for managing the financial affairs of the executive. He was still only 20 but he had demonstrated a flair for inserting himself into a position of influence – albeit one that called for hard work and attention to detail – that foreshadowed his later roles in the Chinese Communist Party, culminating in his work as general secretary of the CCP in the 1950s. Working in a secretariat of one kind or another would become a recurring feature of his political life. He was also deployed to work with trade unions in the factories and in the spring of 1925 was sent to carry out propaganda and organisational work in the Lyon area.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Deng’s time in France, apart from his exposure to Marxism and the organisational experience that he gained, was the close political friendship that he forged with Zhou Enlai. Fifty years later, he recalled Zhou as having been a diligent and conscientious party worker whose working day all his life was at least 12 hours and often 16 and who never shirked the difficult jobs. Zhou was, he said, like an elder brother to him. Zhou was six years older and that was enough to put him well ahead of Deng in terms of the family hierarchy, which is often used by analogy in school, universities and employment to indicate seniority and precedence. Zhou was already highly regarded in the emerging Chinese communist leadership and was a full-time Party worker in Paris. Deng learned a great deal from him, both in terms of factual knowledge and style of working, and seems to have accepted Zhou’s leadership without any reservation. The group of Chinese radicals in Paris had originally coalesced around the philosopher Zhang Shenfu, who together with Liu Qingyuan (the first woman member of the CCP) had introduced Zhou as a member of the CCP. Personal animosity and the divisive personality of Zhang had created tensions between his group and the Montargis radicals with whom Deng was associated. Zhou succeeded in forging an alliance between the two groups, demonstrating tact and organisational skills even at this early stage in his career.

Deng retained a great affection for the café in the 13th arrondissement which had made such an impression on him as a teenage activist. Many years later when he passed through Paris en route for a meeting at the United Nations in 1974 he asked staff at the Chinese embassy to take him to the Place d’Italie, but the area had changed beyond all recognition and he was not able to revisit the café of his youth and drink coffee there. Nevertheless, he got the staff to fetch him coffee from the little cafés on the nearby street and liked to compare Parisian cafés with the teahouses that he recalled from his childhood in Sichuan.

Police surveillance and expulsion

The activities of these youthful communists inevitably brought them to the attention of the French police. All of Europe was alert to the possibility of insurgency in the wake of the October Revolution that had overthrown the Tsarist regime in Russia in 1917. An atmosphere of near paranoia accompanied the failure of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war, and ‘red scares’, including the fake Zinoviev letter calling for communist agitation in Britain that appeared in 1924 just before the general election, were commonplace.

The date of the foundation of the French Communist Party is usually taken to be the Tours Conference of December 1920, when socialists and communists went their separate ways, the latter supporting the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and backing the establishment of the Committee for the Third International. This split took place during a period of industrial unrest and a growing labour movement and in the words of its daily newspaper L’Humanité, the French Communist Party perceived itself to be ‘in daily conflict with the bourgeois state’. For the historian of France, Rod Kedward, ‘This was more than polemic. Sackings and arrests for Communist activities were commonplace,’ and party officials frequently found themselves in prison.⁷

Chinese student activists were also under constant surveillance and on 22 June 1925 an order was issued to track down and arrest the most prominent of them. Within a few days over 20 of the most active had been rounded up and imprisoned and 47 work–study students were expelled from France. The Chinese Communist Youth League decided to continue its activities under the name of the Guomindang, which was not quite as bizarre as it sounds since the CCP and the GMD were theoretically co-operating in a United Front. Deng Xiaoping was still in Lyon, alone and isolated from the Youth League leadership in Paris. There was no news from the capital, but it was clear that the central organisation no longer existed. He returned to Paris and established what later became known as the Extraordinary Executive, taking the lead in re-creating an organisation that had collapsed. In June 1925, with two other members he also created a new secretariat. The new body met at a café in Billancourt on 1 July 1925 but had to disperse after the proprietor warned them that the police were about to carry out a raid. The League could still muster between 30 and 70 members at meetings, but it was increasingly under surveillance and obliged to operate clandestinely. The underground members concentrated on whether the League could survive and how to rebuild its organisation.

Deng became an individual of particular interest to the police. In August 1925 they discovered where he was living and in the French archives there is a police report of meetings that he chaired in September and October. He was named in a detailed intelligence report of 7 January 1926, but the police complained that they had been unable to discover the location of meetings or the identity of the organisers in advance, which suggests a high degree of security within the Chinese Communist Youth League and the Chinese community in France. The exclusiveness of the Chinese organisation and the language barrier made the task of the police difficult, but it was noted that Deng received an unusually large number of letters from China along with communist pamphlets and newspapers. Zhou Enlai returned to China in July 1924 to undertake other duties for the CCP and many of the activists realised that France was no longer safe for them and left for China. In November and December Deng Xiaoping received letters from the European branch of the CCP, instructing him and another four or five members to leave France and travel by rail to Moscow for further training. They left Paris for Moscow on 7 January 1926; their rooms were searched the following evening but the birds had flown. According to Deng’s daughter, Maomao, as they boarded the train they were served with an official order from the French police, marked ‘to be delivered in person’, expelling them from the territory of France in perpetuity. That story provides a wonderfully dramatic ending to Deng’s sojourn in France, but police files indicate that the order was not in fact made until the following day, 8 January, when the room above the rue Godefroy café was searched and their printing press and radical library, which included The ABC of Communism by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, books on Sun Yat-sen and copies of the group’s newspaper, the Chinese Worker (Zhongguo gongren), were seized. By then the revolutionaries had already left the country. Fifty years later Deng returned to Paris as the rising political leader of post-Mao China but it did not seem politic to enquire whether the permanent expulsion order was still in force.

Thus ended Deng’s five years in France, a period which he was to remember with great affection and in which he made political contacts that he would maintain for the rest of his life. His experiences in France were the basis for the political attitudes (never really a fully-fledged philosophy) that he would retain until his death.⁸