Chen Jiongming

Chen Jiongming (18 January 1878 – 22 September 1933), courtesy name Jingcun (竞存/競存), nickname Ayan (阿烟/阿煙), was a Chinese lawyer, military general, revolutionary, federalist and politician who was best known as a Hailufeng Hokkien revolutionary figure in the early period of the Republic of China.

Early life
Chen married Huang Yun, the daughter of his school principal, and had five daughters and three sons. In 1904, Chen attended the Haifeng Normal School to train to become a schoolteacher, graduating and applying for a teaching position at the advanced primary school in Haifeng in 1905. He was initially supposed to be the principal, but was banned from joining for his revolutionary ideas. He occasionally went to Huizhou to tutor wealthy students for the district examination. In early 1906, he tried to create a private normal school for training teachers.

Early revolutionary
During his time at the Academy of Law and Political Science, Chen and his friends often used their vacations to return to Haifeng and promote their Self-Government Association (Zizhihui), trying to eradicate opium smoking, improving local grain depots, and creating nurseries for children.

As the East River region was becoming more disorderly, the Governor-General (Zongdu) in Guangzhou gave the magistrate in Huizhou the power to execute prisoners without trial at the scene of the crime, leading to the arrest and execution of everyone in sight when the magistrate heard of a disturbance, once arresting a 13-year-old boy, of which his release was appealed successfully, but to no avail as the villagers discovered he had been executed the day before the appeal went through. Due to this misconduct, the local gentry pleaded to remove the magistrate, but the position of lead petitioner was not taken up by anyone initially, due to the risk of execution if the Governor-General proved the accusations to be false. Therefore, Chen was asked to take up the position for a reward of 1000 US Dollars. He replied, saying that he would first look into the matter himself. He collected evidence and interviewed witnesses, and went to Guangzhou to confront the Governor-General, successfully defending the petition and impeaching the magistrate, later donating his monetary reward at the Huizhou Fraternal Association in Guangzhou, explaining that he would not have done it for money as he was a citizen from the East River region.

During his vacation from the Academy in February 1908, at the shrine to Wen Tianxiang in Haifeng, Chen persuaded over 30 men to swear their support for the National Revolution.

Chen Jiongming returned home from the Academy in 1908, establishing the Haifeng Self-Government Gazette (Haifeng Zizhibao) in early 1909, where he was the editor-in-chief. Before Chen's gazette, the people of Haifeng were already readers of revolutionary literature. According to Chen Qiyou, "Secret revolutionary literature, such as Zou Rong's The Revolutionary Army, was read widely among young intellectuals".

Guangdong Provincial Assembly
In 1909, 94 members were elected to the Guangdong Provincial Assembly, three of which represented Manchu bannermen. The number of assemblymen from each prefecture varied greatly - there were only 36 for Guangzhou Fu and only 6 for Huizhou Fu. The minimum age to join was 30, and Chen Jiongming, who was barely above the limit, was one of the people elected to the assembly to represent Huizhou.

The first annual session of the Guangdong Provincial Assembly was called on October 14, 1909, but delayed by 10 days. Chen Jiongming was elected Resident Member by 53 votes. Chen Jiongming was one of the only progressives in the conservative-dominated assembly. He was elected to chair the Committee of Legal Matters. Chen introduced 6 of the 25 bills the Assembly passed during its first session. He submitted a proposal about gambling, stating in his speech that:

"(1) The prohibition of gambling shall not be limited to certain kinds of gambling; (2) it shall not be done by stages; (3) that it shall not be limited to certain districts of the province; (4) the raising of funds to make up for the loss of gambling revenues shall not be the sole burden of the villages and towns of the province; (5) the raising of funds for certain transportation and military purposes shall not be the sole burden of the province, since it should be the responsibility of the central government; (6) the "law of the land" should be uniform and consistent; and (7) gambling is an obstacle to political enlightenment."

Chen also supported a bill to expropriate funds from family and clan estates. However, when the matter was left to the gentry to decide, Chen protested, saying that from experience, the gentry would do nothing, and some sort of government intervention would be preferred. In the third meeting, Chen proposed a bill to abolish the Bureau of Rehabilitation, which was passed by the Assembly but rejected by the Governor-General in Guangzhou. In the fifth meeting, Chen again spoke against gambling and, on the subject with the border dispute with Macau, urged the Assembly to petition the Governor-General to talk to Beijing and set a course to negotiate with Portugal. During the ninth meeting, Chen expressed his opinion that the Assembly should not be subordinate to the Governor-General.

A month after the creation of the Guangdong Provincial Assembly, the Jiangsu Assembly created the Union of Provincial Assemblies to urge Beijing to accelerate the constitutional program. Three delegates from each province were sent to Shanghai, which in February 1910 went to Beijing to call for the inauguration of a national parliament within one year. Chen Jiongming was one of the delegates representing Guangdong, along with another progressive, Qiu Fengjia. Chen went to Shanghai, but not to Beijing. By then, he was already back in Guangzhou, committed to a revolutionary uprising that had been planned to begin on February 12.

First attempts at revolution
Chen Jiongming may have joined the Tongmenghui between 1906 and 1908, inspired by his Japanese-educated instructor at the Academy, Zhu Zhixin, but another source states that he joined the organization in 1909 at the meeting of the Union of Provincial Assemblies in Shanghai.

The Canton New Army, measuring around 7,000 men, had prepared a coup that was to be launched on February 12, 1910, during Chinese New Year celebrations. Zhang Lucun, a participant in secret meetings of the coup planning, recalls:

"Chen Jiongming, taking advantage of his position as the senator from Huizhou fu, had rented a house outside the Big East Gate for storage of weapons and ammunition."

Had the coup succeeded, Chen Jiongming would have become the Deputy Chief of Guangdong, with his fellow Assemblyman Qiu Fengjia as Chief Executive. However, authorities had become aware of the coup around 3 months before it was to happen and put Canton under martial law. Chen Jiongming's village comrades and revolutionaries gathered at his house to receive arms and ammunition, but the fierce gunfight that ensued on the way to the Big East Gate killed leaders on both sides.

On February 9, when the first clashes were starting, Chen Jiongming told the revolutionaries in Haifeng to send his mother to Hong Kong for safety and to alert East River revolutionaries. After one of the leaders of the revolutionary army, Ni Yingdian, was killed in battle, Chen Jiongming secretly left to Hong Kong.

Even though Chen Jiongming's involvement in revolutionary activities were revealed to Manchu authorities, he continued his activities as a member of the Guangdong Provincial Assembly. When Chen returned to Canton in May 1910, the Assembly was in hot debate over the Canton-Hankou Railway Company. The Assembly appointed Chen and 5 others to form a special committee to draft new by-laws by June 1. During a meeting with representatives of interested organizations on the next day, Chen reminded the members that the by-laws would have to receive shareholder approval, and that a shareholder meeting was scheduled for September.

Chen was skeptical about the Assembly's plan to push for the early inauguration of the national parliament. Chen agreed with another Assemblyman that he would support the proposal only to "ride with the tide", as he was already committed to a revolution instead of reform.

Later on, an issue started over the full suppression of gambling. Fully aware that he would lose the vote as many assemblymen were bribed by gambling companies, Chen put it to a written vote, which lost. Chen then turned this around and exposed the bribed assemblymen, with the 35 assemblymen who voted against the proposal forced to resign. Newly-appointed Governor-General Zhang Mingqi agreed to the proposal and promised to implement it on March 30, 1911. In December 1910, the assemblymen who were exposed and forced to resign from their positions started 2 newspapers, criticizing and responding to Chen. The assemblymen who voted for the proposal made a newspaper in response, known as Ke Bao (Assent), in a reference to their votes on the proposal. Its first issue appeared on March 30, 1911, on the same day the proposed changes were supposed to be implemented. However, the newspaper was quickly closed down on April 23, as authorities in Guangzhou accused content in it of being "derogatory toward the Throne and so inflammatory as to disturb the peace and tranquility of the nation".

By early 1911, Chen Jiongming was funneling his fellow revolutionaries from the East River district into Guangzhou. Chen's residence on Sihou street was their headquarters, the Siping School and the Ke Bao office were their munitions depots, Chen's quarters at the Provincial Assembly were used as an explosives depot, and Chen Dasheng's house was used as a staging point for setting fire to the Manchu quarters.

Political career


Chen was instrumental in backing Sun Yat-sen's Constitutional Protection Movement. In 1918, Chen led the Guangdong Army and captured southern Fujian. Chen stayed in southern Fujian for two years, during which he devoted himself to building the Constitution Protection Region of Southern Fujian with Zhangzhou as its center, and implemented anarchist policies.