38 Facts About Liu Liangmo

Liu Liangmo was a musician and Chinese Christian leader known for his promotion of the patriotic mass singing movement in the 1930s and promotion in the United States of support for China's resistance to Japan in World War II.

Liu Liangmo was a leader in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement after 1949.

Liu Liangmo's mother worked to send Liu and his older brother Liu Liangtza to school.

Liu Liangmo became a scholarship student and attended the Baptist Minqiang Academy in Shanghai and the Middle School Affiliated to the University of Shanghai from 1922 to 1928.

Liu Liangmo was active in the student union and contributed essays to the school journal.

Liu Liangmo won second place in a national essay competition presided over by Ma Yinchu on the topic of defeating opium addiction.

Liu Liangmo supported his studies with a scholarship, a student loans, part-time jobs, and some royalties from his essay-writing.

Liu Liangmo graduated in 1932 with a degree in sociology with honors.

Liu Liangmo then took a position with the Chinese National YMCA.

In June 1936 Liu Liangmo stood on a two-meter high platform in a sports arena in Shanghai packed with thousands to lead a several hundred member chorus in the March of the Volunteers, a patriotic song which after 1949 became the national anthem.

Liu Liangmo wrote about gender issues, and during the 1930s he contributed articles to leading women's magazines.

On 7 July 1937, Liu Liangmo was a witness to the Japanese attack on the Marco Polo Bridge.

Liu Liangmo's group managed to save the YMCA building and to evacuate many of the wounded soldiers, but determined it would be safer to move on to Zhejiang.

In Zhejiang, Liu Liangmo tried to keep good relations with local Nationalist government and army, but when Zhou Enlai visited him, the military police became suspicious and raided Liu Liangmo's relief camp.

The CCP's New Fourth Army invited him to join their cultural work, but Liu Liangmo feared the political control that the move would have required.

Liu Liangmo saw his Christian faith as more important than loyalty to either the GMD or the CCP.

Liu Liangmo set out for Shanghai to seek the support of Soong Ching-ling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, who had become the protector of leftist cultural activities, but before he could reach her the Nationalist police put him under house arrest.

Liu Liangmo soon left with his family for the United States and did not return to China for nearly ten years.

Mass singing continued to be a way for Liu Liangmo to raise support for China.

Liu Liangmo briefly attended Crozer Theological Seminary a Baptist institution outside Philadelphia.

Liu Liangmo rallied support for China's war effort through the international network of progressive figures.

From 10 February 1941 through September 1956, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US War Department, and the Chester and New York City Police Departments regularly surveilled Liu Liangmo and monitored his activities.

Liu Liangmo toured the country to raise money for United China Relief.

Liu Liangmo appeared in places with a less high profile, such as Bedford, Trimble County, in the hills of Kentucky, where some 400 farmers contributed eggs, sorghum, chickens, turkeys, potatoes, apples, corn and home canned foods to be auctioned.

Joseph Stillwell's struggles with Chiang Kai-shek, who had demanded that the US recall Stillwell, Liu Liangmo advocated on behalf of Stillwell in the US Between April and May 1942, Liu Liangmo was a guest speaker for United China Relief meetings at the home of Stillwell's brother, Col.

Liu Liangmo urged readers to start a write-in campaign to tell Congress to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act and pass the anti-poll tax bill and the anti-lynching bill.

Yet Liu Liangmo was disappointed that some blacks were suspicious of Chinese.

In 1945 Liu Liangmo addressed the Chinese Students' Christian Association, the oldest such group in North America, to attack the dictatorial rule of the Nationalists.

Liu Liangmo criticized censorship by the Nationalists, their economic policies which lead to stagnation and inflation, and what he described as Chiang Kai-shek's one-man rule.

In September 1949 Liu Liangmo attended the People's Consultative Conference in Beijing, along with other left-liberal figures.

Liu Liangmo was on the rostrum for the proclamation of the People's Republic of China on October 1,1949.

Liu Liangmo published articles in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement's journal, Tian Feng, such as one criticizing imperialism.

The Shanghai YMCA Press published books by Liu Liangmo explaining Mao Zedong's New Democracy and How America Uses Religion to Invade China.

Especially after the Korean War started, Liu Liangmo was well-regarded as a commentator on US issues, including the experiences of Black Americans.

In 1950, Liu Liangmo attended the second World Peace Congress in Warsaw.

The Chinese government responded with similar measures, including seizing church institutions that had previously been funded from the US Liu Liangmo was among the Chinese religious leaders who praised and sought to encourage support for these moves.

In 1954 Liu Liangmo attended the First National Chinese Christian Conference, held in Beijing.

Liu Liangmo was one of the leaders of China's delegation to the December 1957 Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Conference, along with Guo Moruo, Liu Liangmo Ningyi, and Ji Chaoding.