Background
Ch’en was born in Kiangsi about 1898 (though Japanese sources say it was about 1905).
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Ch’en Ch’i-han
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He graduated from the Nationalists’ Whampoa Military Academy in the mid-twenties and then took part’in the Northern Expedition, which began in mid-1926, as a member of Yeh T’ing’s staff.
Career
In July of the following year he was an instructor in the training regiment of the Nationalists’ Third Army, a Yunnanese army led by Chu P’ei-te, whose headquarters was in Nanchang, the Kiangsi capital. A number of the Third Army soldiers, Ch’en among them, participated in the revolt against the Nationalists on August 1, 1927, an event known in Communist histories as the Nanchang Uprising (see under Yeh T’ing). At some time in the next three years he was a staff officer in Huang Kung-lueh’s Third Red Army and the Kiangsi Military District, as well as an instructor in a Red Army military school in Kiangsi.
In the early 1930’s Ch’en was a regimental commander with the Communist forces that supported the Chinese Soviet Republic established in November 1931 at Juichin in southeast Kiangsi. In late December 1933, at the Second Congress of the Kiangsi Provincial Soviet (not to be confused with the larger Chinese Soviet Republic, often popularly called the “Kiangsi Soviet”), Ch’en was named to the 67-mcmber Provincial Executive Committee. The Kiangsi Provincial Soviet had been in existence at least since 1930 (see under Tseng Shan). Ch’en presumably made the Long March to north Shensi, for in November 1935 he was serving in Hsu Hai-tung’s 15th Army Corps.
Little is known of Ch’en’s activities during the Sino-Japanese War aside from the fact that he was a staff officer of the Revolutionary Military Council (the highest Communist military organ) and an official in the Party’s intelligence network. In the late forties, during the civil war with the Nationalists, he once again served as a staff officer, this time in the Hopeh-Jehol-Liaoning area. In 1949, as the Communists began their final conquest of the mainland, Ch’en commanded an army corps, and he was with the troops that captured Nanchang on May 22, 1949. In June he was appointed a vice-chairman of the Nanchang Military Control Commission, then headed by another native of Kiangsi, Ch’en Cheng-jen. In the same month Ch’en Ch’i-han was also appointed commander of the Kiangsi Military District, a post he held until 1954. For a part of that time (1949-1952) Ch’en Cheng-jen was the political commissar. Their careers in the regional and provincial governments ran somewhat parallel for a time. In December 1949 both were appointed to the regional administration that governed Kiangsi, the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee (CS-MAC), and both held this post until the CSMAC was reorganized early in January 1953, at which time they were dropped. From March 1950 to September 1954, Ch’en Ch’i-han was also a member of the Kiangsi Provincial People’s Council.
Ch’en was a CCP representative to the Third CPPCC, which opened in April 1959; he was not, however, elected to the Fourth CPPCC, which was first convened in December 1964. At the Party’s 10th Plenum in September 1962 the decision was made to expand the important Central Control Commission to 38 full and 22 alternate members. Ch’en was named to full membership. His affiliation with the Commission, charged with discipline and supervisory functions, may account for the fact that he is seldom in the news. As described above, Ch’en was a Kiangsi deputy to the First NPC (1954—1959). Though not elected to the Second Congress, he was selected to represent the PLA in the Third NPC, and at the close of its first session in January 1965 he was elected a member of the NPC Standing Committee, the governing body between sessions of the full Congress. At that same time he was again reappointed a member of the Na-tional Defense Council.
Membership
In July 1954, Ch’en was elected a Kiangsi deputy to the First NPC (1954-1959). By September, when the Congress convened its first session, he had been transferred to Peking. The Congress elected Ch’en to membership on the National Defense Council, a post he still holds. Exactly a year later (September 1955), when the Communists first awarded military decorations, Ch’en was given one or more of the three orders that cover military service from 1927 to 1950. Personal military ranks were also given at that time, but it was not until October 1958 that he was identified as a colonel-general, the equivalent of a three-star U.S. Army general. In the meantime, at the Party’s Eighth National Congress in September 1956, Ch’en was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee. In the following April he was appointed a vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court. In this capacity he has served under Presidents Tung Pi-wu (to 1959), Hsieh Chueh-tsai (1959-1965), and Yang Hsiu-feng (since 1965). In October 1958, while on an inspection tour in Inner Mongolia, Ch’en was identified in another judicial post the presidency of the Supreme Military Court (which comes under the jurisdiction of the Supreme People’s Court). He was not mentioned in this post after 1958, and in any event the 1963 len-min shou-ts'e listed it as vacant.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1930
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May 22, 1949
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1965