IN a city known for its pioneering ways, the Chinese Communist Party pulled off a couple of its own firsts.

Shanghai was the birthplace of the first local communist team in China before the founding of the nationwide Chinese Communist Party, and also had the honour to witness the first Party congress.

Chen Duxiu was the founder of the first local communist team. Early in September 1915, Chen established the communist-oriented publication, New Youth.

In 1916, Chen left the city for Beijing to teach at Peking University. However, he returned to Shanghai in January 1920 and began to organize communist adherents.

Since May of the same year, Chen had been talking with Li Hanjun, Li Da and Yu Xiusong, among others, about establishing a national communist party.

In August of that year, Chen founded the first local communist team in Shanghai. Communist teams soon appeared in Beijing, Hunan, Hubei and other regions.

The expansion of communist teams throughout the nation called for a publication solely to disseminate Marxist-Leninism. The Shanghai team revised New Youth into the first open publication of the Communist Party in the country, and followed it quickly with another.

The existence of local communist teams and publications spreading communism helped set the stage for the first act of the Communist Party.

The foreign settlements were ideal cover for communists in the city. Chen and other members of the Shanghai team suggested the first congress be held in Shanghai.

In June 1921, the International sent two representatives to Shanghai to help organize the first congress and build the Chinese Communist Party.

Li Da was responsible for the preparation work in Shanghai. He and other members of his team invited other teams to send two representatives to attend the congress in Shanghai.

On July 23, 1921, 13 representatives from Beijing, Hankou, Guangzhou, Changsha, Jinan and Japan attended the first congress.

The meeting was held on the ground floor of a two-storey house on Rue Wantz, now Xinye Lu, in the French Concession. It was the residence of Li Shucheng, Li Hanjun's brother.

The representatives sat around a table on which they spread out a mah-jong game as a ruse, in case they were discovered.

However, on July 30, halfway through the congress, a suspected spy of the French authorities visited the house. The representatives moved to Jiaxing in neighbouring Zhejiang Province, where they finished the congress on July 31 in a boat on Nanhu Lake.

(Zou Huilin)