Chen Kangrong [Xinhua]

Chen Kangrong, an outstanding Party member from southeast China's Fujian Province who sacrificed her life for the Party at the age of 25 in the 1940s, was recently commemorated by the local government.

Chen was a native of Xiashan Village in Yongding, Fujian. She was born in 1915 to an overseas Chinese family in Myanmar, where she first resided.

In 1930, Chen returned to China with her father and studied at a local middle school. Deeply influenced by the thoughts of her revolutionary friends, she took active part in progressive activities and was admitted to Xiamen University.

In 1934, in order to evade the attention of the Kuomintang government, Chen went back to Myanmar and worked as a teacher at a Chinese girl school in Yangon, while at the same time devoted herself to the anti-Japanese national salvation movements organized by overseas Chinese.

With the increased domestic solidarity in the resistance against Japanese aggression, Chen resolutely returned to Xiamen University, where she continue with her study while at the same time engage in anti-Japanese national salvation movement under the leadership of the Xiamen Working Committee of the Communist Party of China.

After the beginning of China's full-scale resistance against Japanese aggression in 1937, Chen gave up the comfortable life that her father had arranged for her in Myanmar, instead she chose to devote herself to the anti-Japanese movement, and secretly joined the CPC.

In November 1937, the Party sent her to Longyan to attend the first training class of the special committee of the CPC based in southwestern Fujian.

Afterwards, Chen joined several associations to console the front-line soldiers and publicize the anti-Japanese culture.

She led enthusiastic youths and women from different sectors of society in Xiamen to take to the streets, taught and sang anti-Japanese songs, gave speeches on national salvation, performed anti-Japanese dramas, went deep into society to run women's evening schools, and inspired the general public to participate in the cause.

In March 1938, Chen was sent back to her hometown to teach at Qiling Primary School.

There, she established anti-aggression support clubs both on and off campus, carried out various forms of anti-Japanese activities, and used the classroom, posters, gatherings, speeches and other methods to call on people from the general population to participate in the struggle.

Chen was arrested by the Kuomintang in 1940 and got killed the same year.