Patriot games behind a tale of betrayal, war and defeat

When the Communist Party held its first national meeting in a one-storey brick building in Shanghai's French concession in July 1921, it chose as deputy chairman a handsome intellectual in his 20s from a poor village in Hunan province who was the representative of Chinese students in Tokyo.

After the meeting, Zhou Fohai was sent inland to recruit new members and prepare for the revolution and the overthrow of the government.

None of the 15 delegates at that historic meeting could have imagined Zhou's future - he left the communists to become an official of the rival Nationalist Party and, in December 1938, joined a pro-Japanese government in which he served as minister of finance, chief of police and Shanghai mayor.

In 1946, a court in Nanjing sentenced Zhou to death for treason, before then president Chiang Kai-shek commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Zhou died of heart failure in prison on February 28, 1948. He was 51.

The anniversary of his death next month will not be remembered. 'Zhou was a traitor to the nation and sentenced to death,' said an official of the museum built on the site of the first party meeting. Zhou's photograph hangs on the wall - a young face - and a likeness is one of the wax figures seated around the table, to remember the meeting. 'But Zhou attended the event, that is history, so we keep him here,' the official said.

Zhou's extraordinary life embodies the hopes and tragedy of his country in the 20th century.