In the run-up to and parallel to the publication of the bi-weekly magazine Voice of China, an informal Marxist study group met secretly on Sunday mornings to discuss the problems of ‘historical materialism’ and the ‘dialectical way of thinking‘, as well as Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. The organiser was the German communist and journalist Heinz Grzyb, who worked under pseudonyms such as Asiaticus, Heinz and Erich Möller, Hans Shippe and M.G. Shippe and was published in various magazines and newspapers, including T’ien Hsia Monthly, The China Critic, Pacific Affairs, China Weekly Review and Weltbühne, among others. The study group included the American Talitha Gerlach, the Austrian-born Ruth Weiss, the American doctor George Hatem, the wife of Heinz Gryzb, Trudy Rosenberg, Agnes Smedley, Richard Paulick and others.

Song Qingling, Sun Yatsen’s widow, commissioned the American journalist Agnes Smedley in the second half of 1935 to develop a new political journal to replace The China Forum that had collapsed the previous year. The China Forum was founded in 1932, appeared weekly in English in Shanghai, was ideologically close to the Trotskyists and openly criticised the Guomindang’s policies.

The new magazine should also publicly criticise the activities of the Guomindang, present the communist movement in the country positively and appear in English in order to draw the attention of other countries to conditions in China. The publication had to be produced by foreign journalists and be located in the concession areas in Shanghai, as the national government there had no legal recourse against the publishers. But the magazine was also a thorn in the side of the American government. The American consul in Shanghai tried several times to stop publication. Song Qingling sponsored Agnes Smedley three times to launch the magazine. The latter used the money, however, for ‘emergencies’ such as escape aid and the publication of a book about Käthe Kollwitz. In early 1936 the American communists Grace and Max (Manny) Granich reached Shanghai and took over the editing of Voice of China.

The first issue of Voice of China came out on 15 March 1936 under the direction of Grace and Max Granich. Thereafter, the magazine appeared every two weeks until November 1937, after the occupation of Shanghai by the Japanese army. Most foreigners wrote for the magazine under pseudonyms. Agnes Smedley was nicknamed ‘Rusty Nails’ in Shanghai because of her violent arguments – e.g. with Heinz Grzyb about equal rights for women. She herself put a K in front of Nails and published articles under the pseudonym Rusty Knails in the first four editions of Voice of China. Ruth Weiss wrote under the name Lucie Vey, Rewi Alley under many different names such as Han Su-mai, Chiao Ta-chi, Kate Dawson, Richard, Howard and Ming Fu. Allegedly Grzyb also wrote for Voice of China, but nothing was published under his well-known pseudonyms. Richard Paulick published one article under the pseudonym Peter Winslow. The editors Grace and Max Granich appear with their real names, and Edgar Snow, Mao Dun, Lu Xun and Sun Fo also wrote without pseudonyms. The art of Käthe Kollwitz was so important to Lu Xun that he featured it in Voice of China.