Zhang Xichen

Zhang Xichen (Chinese: 章锡琛; pinyin: Zhāng Xīchēn; 24 September 1889 – 5 June 1969) was a Chinese editor who founded the publishing firm Kaiming Press. Born to a family of poor merchants near Shaoxing, he received traditional tutoring, failed to pass the civil service exams, and was forced to drop out of a private school in order to enter an arranged marriage when he was 17. He established a rudimentary primary school for his hometown, enrolling in a normal school after an inspector refused to certify him. He grew close to the school's principal, who found him employment at the Shanghai publisher Commercial Press in 1912.

Initially serving as an assistant editor for The Eastern Miscellany, he was appointed as the editor-in-chief of the women's magazine The Ladies' Journal in 1921. Despite lacking prior interest, he became deeply invested in women's issues, pushing the journal towards a feminist perspective and founding a study group to promote gender equality. The magazine was successful under his tenure, but he caused scandal after a 1925 special issue on the "new sexual morality", in which he advocated for free love and criticized monogamous marriages and the nuclear family as restrictive. He was removed from editorship and later fired by the Commercial Press after establishing a competitor magazine titled The New Women with a group of his colleagues.

New Women and his academic society began to serve as a de facto publishing firm, and on the urging of his friends, he incorporated it as Kaiming Press in 1926. Initially focused on gender and sexuality materials, the press saw success in the school textbook market and incorporated as a joint-stock company in 1929. Chosen to head the publication and circulation divisions, he founded the journal The Juvenile Student in 1930. He was one of a few Kaiming employees who stayed in Shanghai after the headquarters's destruction during the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, and continued to serve as a manager until 1949, when he was removed after a corporate dispute. He became the deputy editor-in-chief of the Zhonghua Book Company in 1955. He came under political criticism as a rightist during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution, but was posthumously rehabilitated.