The Yu Zisan Incident was a series of political events caused by the death of Yu Zisan, the chairman of the Students' Autonomous Association of National Chekiang University (NCKU), after he was imprisoned at the Hangzhou Garrison Headquarters, Hangzhou, China, on 29 October 1947. While the Nationalist government claimed that Yu committed suicide out of fear that he would be convicted as a Communist, the death became a cause célèbre and led to nationwide demonstrations in November and December 1947.
Background
Yu Zisan (also romanised as Yu Tse-san), was a third-year undergraduate student of Agronomy at the College of Agriculture of NCKU. He was elected as the chairman of the Students' Autonomous Association (SAA) of NCKU in May 1947. In August 1947, Yu participated in the national meeting of All-China Students' Federation secretly held in Hangzhou and was appointed the contact person of student unions in Zhejiang. He was a member of New Democratic Youth Federation (YF), but he was not a Communist. In fact, leftist ideas including New Democracy were popular among students due to a resentment of the social conditions following World War II.
In the summer of 1947, Chiang Ching-kuo organised summer camps for his Youth Army in Jiaxing and Suzhou to counter prevailing Communist influence among the students. In response, the Shanghai Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party sent its undercover member Hong Deming to strengthen influence among students. Many students of Communist-controlled organisations joined the Youth Army and took leadership roles within the SAA. Thus, Hong organised the YF as a leftist organisation at NCKU and a special scout within the SAA to counter the influence of Chiang's Youth Army.
Arrest and death of Yu
On 25 October 1948, after Yu attended the wedding of a NCKU alumnus in the city centre of Hangzhou, he went to Datong Inn, where he was arrested by several agents of Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (CBIS), a secret police force of Kuomintang, along with three other NCKU students: Chen Jianxin, Huang Shimin and Li Bojin. Chen and Yu were then taken to the prison of the Hangzhou Garrison Headquarter, while Huang and Li were sent to a local police office.
The agents searched the belongings of the students, finding Chen's letters in which he planned to found a new organisation named the New Tide with several others including Yu. The organisation would be based on the profits from a peace orchard in Fenghua. In Chen's belongings, the police also found books they considered to be Communist, which included The Academic History of Modern Economics by Shen Zhiyuan, The Poverty of Philosophy and Wage Labour and Capital by Karl Marx. In Huang's belongs, they found The Secrets of America and The Russia Problem and The Prospect magazine. The students claimed that the books would be later shared to other students.
On 26 October, several SAA members notified university President Chu Coching of the arrests. Chu asked the government to either commence legal procedures if they had strong enough evidence or else he would stand bail for the students. The head of Zhejiang Garrison Zhu Mingtao told Chu that the four students were almost certainly Communists. When Chu requested to let the court deal with the issue, the head of Hangzhou police office replied that the evidence was solid and that the students would be sent to a court within one or two days. The SAA then resolved to go on a strike if the four students were not given a hearing by 29 October. Chu also telephoned the Garrison Headquarters on 28 and 29. When he was about to meet the Zhejiang Governor Shen Honglie, he was then informed that Yu committed suicide with two pieces of broken glass at 18:30 on 29 October.
Chu quickly went to the Garrison Headquarters with Li Tianzhu, a staff doctor of the university, who confirmed to him that Yu had been dead for at least 6 hours. Chu examined the Yu's deposition provided by the police and found that they were written in a way inconsistent with the Yu's way of answering exam questions. Thus, Chu refused to recognise the police's conclusion on the case and organised an autopsy the following day with the university faculty and students. The autopsy confirmed that Yu died of asphyxia after two pieces of broken glass cut through his throat and caused bleeding that blocked trachea. However, it did not conclusively show whether Yu committed suicide or was murdered, and also found evidence that Yu was tortured one or two days before his death.