Li Yaotang (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: L?Yáotáng; Wade-Giles: Li Yaot'ang, November 25, 1904 ?October 17, 2005), courtesy name Feigan (), is considered to be one of the most important and widely-read Chinese writers of the 20th century.

He wrote under the pen name of Ba Jin (, also Pa Chin), allegedly taking his pseudonym from Russian anarchists Bakunin and Kropotkin. Ba Jin started composing his first works in the late 1920s. Born in Chengdu, Sichuan, Li was born into a scholarly family of officials.

His paternal grandfather ruled the large, five generation-tiered household with an autocratic hand, which young Li found stifling, not unlike that depicted in his famous novel, Family. As a child Li was taught to read and write first by his mother, and later by privately engaged house tutors. It was not until the death of this grandfather in 1917, causing a power struggle which ended with an elder uncle emerging victorious, that released him to explore the world.

As a youngster Li read widely and was deeply influenced by Piotr Kropotkin's famous pamphlet, An Appeal to the Young, which he read at age fifteen. Hugely impressed by Emma Goldman, whom he later referred to as his "spiritual mother", Li started a lifelong correspondence with her. In 1920, Li enrolled, with an elder brother, in the Chengdu Foreign Language Specialist School to study English.

It was there he first engaged in the organization of literary journal Crescent and wrote a number of vers libre. Joining an anarchist organization, the Equality Society, Li became its most prominent member, actively distributing propaganda leaflets.

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