Pan Hannian

Who was Pan Hannian?

Pan Hannian was a major figure in the Chinese Communist intelligence by the early 1930s and until 1955. He began his work with the Chinese Communist Party in 1926 as a propagandist with the editorial department of the magazine "Oazo" and later with "Crossroads". Pan became a CCP member in February 1927 and was assigned as managing editor of the "Revolutionary Army Daily" in Nanchang. Ordered to Shanghai for the entry of the KMT in April, Pan had barely arrived when the 12 April anti-communist coup forced him underground. This may have been the time when Pan was first assigned intelligence duties. Pan escaped Shanghai with Zhou Enlai to Wuhan, but eventually returned to Shanghai to take up a leadership position with their paramount intelligence organization, the CCP Central Committee Special Branch. He became the head of CCSB's Second Section and later the Third Section, in 1931-33 stayed on in Shanghai as the rest of Central Committee was evacuated under intense pressure from KMT intelligence and police in the Shanghai International Settlement and the Shanghai French Concession. Pan eventually left Shanghai in 1933 and participated in the Long March, but returned to Shanghai and regularly visited Hong Kong after the 1935 Zunyi Conference.