Deng Yingchao (simplified Chinese: 邓颖超; traditional Chinese: 鄧穎超; pinyin: Dèng Yǐngchāo; Jyutping: Dang6 Wing6-ciu1; 4 February 1904 – 11 July 1992) was a Chinese revolutionary, politician and women's rights activist who was a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for more than six decades. She chaired the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) from 1983 to 1988, and she was the wife of Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People's Republic of China.
Born in Guangxi, Deng became a leader of the women's movement in Tianjin during the May Fourth Movement, founding women's organizations and publications that called for women's education and employment and opposed arranged marriage and foot-binding. She joined the CCP in 1925, the year she married Zhou, and she was one of the few women to complete the Long March. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, she directed the party's work among women from Wuhan and Chongqing, and she was the only woman among the CCP's members of the People's Political Council. After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, she was a vice chairwoman of the national women's federation and helped draft the country's first marriage law. In the reform era, she joined the Politburo, served as second secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and headed the party's leading group on Taiwan affairs, before retiring in 1988.
Deng Yingchao was born on 4 February 1904 as Deng Yu'ai in Nanning, Guangxi, with ancestral roots in Guangshan County, Henan. Her father, Deng Tingzhong, practised martial arts from an early age and later passed the imperial military examination, after which he was appointed as a garrison commander in Nanning. Her mother, Yang Zhende, was born into a wealthy family in Changsha, Hunan, and was literate and educated in traditional Chinese medicine. Following her family's decline, Yang married Deng Tingzhong.
Influenced by feudal patriarchal values, Deng Tingzhong preferred sons over daughters. Upon Deng Yingchao's birth, he intended to give her away, but Yang resisted desperately, even threatening her own life, to keep and raise the child. Deng Tingzhong showed little affection toward his daughter growing up.
Although her husband's position could have provided a comfortable life, Yang chose to live independently and supported herself by practising medicine and teaching at an elementary school rather than by relying on him. When Deng Yingchao was about three years old, her father was exiled to Xinjiang, placing the financial burden entirely on her mother. As the family of a convicted official, Yang was no longer permitted to practise medicine in Nanning, so she decided to leave the city. To make a living and support the family, the mother and daughter moved from place to place, living successively in several cities including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin. Despite living in poverty, these experiences broadened Deng's horizons and enriched her knowledge. Her mother taught her to read and taught her traditional Chinese culture, and she opposed foot-binding for her daughter. At the age of seven, Deng began learning weaving and knitting to earn money. Around that time, her father died in Xinjiang.
In 1913, nine-year-old Deng began attending school when she and her mother moved to Beijing after Yang obtained a teaching position. Her mother gave her the formal name Deng Wenshu for school. Yang actively read progressive articles and books, engaging with ideas of freedom and equality, which deeply influenced her daughter. In 1916, Deng entered the Zhili First Women's Normal School with a full scholarship, where she received a comprehensive education in various subjects. She was reported to have been among the top five students in her school.
In 1919, at the age of fifteen, Deng participated as a team leader in the May Fourth Movement, where she met Zhou Enlai, whom she would marry in 1925 and who would later become the Premier of China. During the protests, she led a contingent of women students and was injured in clashes. That year, she and Zhou were among the founders of the Awakening Society, a progressive youth group. She was later arrested for her radical activities. During the May Fourth Movement, Deng held a pessimistic view of marriage, believing that a woman's life effectively ended when she married.
Also in 1919, Deng Yingchao helped establish the Tianjin Women Patriots' Association (Tianjin nüjie aiguo tongzhihui), which called on women to step beyond the boundaries of the household and societal expectations to participate in the "patriotic movement". As the head of its lecture group, she delivered speeches that initially appealed to women's patriotism and later expanded to advocate women's education, employment, independence, opposition to feudal marriage, and the abolition of foot-binding.
From 1920, she worked as a primary school teacher in Beijing and Tianjin. In 1922, Deng organized and led the Tianjin Women's Rights Alliance (Tianjin nüquan yundong tongmeng). In 1923, she founded the semimonthly journal Women's Star (Nüxing) and established the Women's Star Society, where she served as a leading organizer and editor. The journal focused on exposing the oppression of women and promoting women's rights. That same year, she also co-founded the Tianjin Women's Star Supplementary School, which aimed to help unemployed women gain basic education and vocational skills for self-support. In 1924, Deng participated in founding the Women's Daily (Funü ribao) and later became its chief editor and general manager. It was the only women's newspaper in China at the time and sought to reform women's thinking nationwide. The same year, she organized the Women's Star Sunday Volunteer School, which provided one-year, tuition-free education for lower- and middle-class women. On 7 June 1925, Deng helped establish the Tianjin Women's Federation (Tianjin funü lianhehui).
In early 1924, Deng joined the Socialist Youth League in Tianjin. In March 1925, she joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and she became head of the women's department of the party's Tianjin local committee. After the May Thirtieth Movement in 1925, she also helped found a citizens' association in Tianjin to support the anti-imperialist protests in Shanghai. In August 1925, the party sent her to Guangzhou as a member of its Guangdong Regional Committee and head of the committee's women's department.
During the First United Front between the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT), Deng also worked in the KMT's Central Women's Department under He Xiangning, organizing women in support of the Nationalist Revolution. In January 1926, she was elected an alternate member of the KMT's Central Executive Committee at its Second National Congress.
Underground work and the Long March
After the KMT turned on the Communists in the Shanghai massacre of 1927, Deng and Zhou were forced underground. She then worked secretly in Shanghai for five years. In 1928, she attended the Sixth National Congress of the CCP in Moscow as a non-voting delegate. During this period, her posts included secretary of the party's Central Women's Committee, secretary to the Politburo, secretary-general of the Central Bureau, member of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic and head of the Central Committee's confidential section. In 1932, she and Zhou moved to the Jiangxi Soviet.
Deng was one of the few women to survive the Long March, a military retreat by the CCP to their new headquarters in Yan'an, Shaanxi between 1934 and 1935. During the march, she developed pulmonary tuberculosis. In December 1934, after a Politburo meeting at Liping, her work as secretary-general of the Central Committee was taken over by Deng Xiaoping.
After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Deng was sent to Wuhan and Chongqing to lead women's organizations. She was the women's organizer of the Eighth Route Army office in Wuhan and a member of the women's committee of the CCP's Yangtze Bureau, and she was later a member of the party's Southern Bureau and secretary of its women's committee. Deng met with women leaders from areas under KMT rule and called for the creation of a women's movement to support the national resistance against Japan. She urged women across the country, regardless of party or organizational affiliation, to put aside political disagreements and work together to defend the nation from the Japanese. In August 1937, the Second United Front between the CCP and KMT was established. In December 1937, Deng helped organize the formation of a women's committee in the Second United Front.