Ch’en Chung-ching was one of the more important Chinese Communist officials engaged in the field of international cultural liaison. He was first involved in left-wing activities as a student at Peking University in the mid-thirties.
Background
Ch’en was born in November 1915, but the place of his birth is uncertain. It is known that his family comes from Kiangsu (either Su-chou or Ch’en-chiang), but a person well-acquainted with Ch'en believes he may have been born in Shansi, where his father, for many years an officer in the Nationalist army, was serving as a private secretary to Hsu Yung-ch’ang, a former governor of Shansi. Ch’en’s mother died when he was an infant. His father remarried, but Ch’en did not get along well with either his father or his stepmother.
Education
He graduated from a middle school in Nanking in about 1934 and then studied at Peking University (Peita) from 1934 to 1937. Ch’en was at Peita in December 1935 when thousands of students from Peita and other schools in north China vented their anger at the Nationalist Government for continuing to countenance Japanese incursions into north China.
In Kunming, Ch’en studied at the Southwest Associated University and was also a part-time employee of the Kunming Broadcasting Studio in 1943. Although almost certainly then a Communist Party member, he returned to Shensi in 1943, where he resumed work in the San-min Chu-i Youth Corps.
Like his wartime friends Shen Chien and Hsiung Hsiang-hui, Ch’en went to the United States after the war. Shen and Hsiung enrolled in Western Reserve University in Cleveland, but Ch’en studied economics at Columbia for about two years and returned to China in 1948 or 1949.
Career
When Ch’en joined the Communist government he was assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Possibly because of his experience in the U.S., he was given an important assignment in in November-December 1950 serving as a technical counselor to Special Representative Wu Hsiu-ch’uan when Wu led a delegation to the United Nations to present China’s case regarding the Korean War. (Just one month before Wu, Ch’en, and the others arrived in New York, Chinese Communist forces had entered the Korean War.) After returning to China, Ch’en continued to work in the Foreign Ministry, but then in October 1951 he was assigned as a deputy director of the Liaison Bureau for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, then headed by playwright Hung Shen. The bureau was then subordinate to the Culture and Education Committee of the Government Administration Council (the cabinet).
In the fall of 1954 (when the government was reorganized), the bureau was placed directly under the State Council; Ch’en continued to serve as a deputy director and, following the death of Director Hung Shen in August 1955, he became the acting director. In the meantime, in May 1954, the Communists had formed a “people’s organization” with a title almost identical to that of the government bureau: the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. In this association Ch’en served first as a member of the Standing Committee (1954 to date), as the secretary-general from 1954 to 1959, and since 1961 as a vice-chairman. The governmental organ and the “people’s organization” seem to differ in that the former deals with nations having diplomatic relations with Peking, while the latter works mainly with nations having no formal diplomatic ties with the Chinese. Ch’en’s major assignment appears to be the governmental organization that, in February 1958, was elevated to a commission (paralleling the ministries) under the State Council. When this reorganization took place, Ch’en became the secretary-general of the commission. The commission is nominally chaired by non-Party member Chang Hsi-jo, but two former employees of the commission claim that Ch’en and Chang Chih-hsiang, an important Party member, are in fact the persons of real authority within the organization. Ch’en received still another promotion within the commission in April 1964 when he was promoted to a vice-chairmanship (concurrent with his post as secretary-general).
Politics
Like most officials deeply immersed in foreign affairs, Ch’en has been abroad on several occa¬sions. In March and April 1958 he led a delegation to Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Rumania; in each nation he signed agreements covering cultural exchanges. In July 1959 he took a music and dance ensemble to Iraq ih commemoration of the first anniversary of the Iraqi revolution. In the summer of 1960 Ch’en led a Chinese classical theater group to Cuba where they remained for about two months; the Chinese press noted that the group had also toured Venezuela and Colombia, but it is not clear whether Ch’en visited these two countries with the group. On July 23, while he was in Havana, he signed a cultural cooperation agreement with the Cubans covering a five-year period. Ch’en then took the 90-odd member troupe to Canada, where they spent two months (August-October) on a visit described by the Chinese as the first artistic group to visit Canada. En route home, the theater group performed in Switzerland.
Membership
By 1945 was serving as a member of the Corps’ National Committee. Also, in 1946, he became an executive member of the Shensi Provincial KMT Headquarters.
Closely related to his travels abroad and his work in international cultural liaison is Ch’en’s membership in four of the friendship associations vis-à-vis foreign countries. From its formation in May 1952 he has served on the Standing Committee of the China-Burma Friendship Association (FA). Similarly, he has been on the Executive Councils of the China-Fatin American FA and the China-African People’s FA from their formation in March and April 1960, respectively. He was also identified in April 1961 as an Executive Council member of the China-Hun- gary FA (originally formed in September 1958). He received a closely related appointment in July 1958 when he was named to the Standing Committee of the reorganized China Peace Committee. As a corollary of his work abroad, Ch’en makes numerous appearances in Peking, particularly as a host for foreign visitors. For example, he was on hand to greet the president of Toronto University in April 1962 and a Mongolian cultural delegation in June 1964. In the latter instance, he signed the annual 1964 plan for cultural exchanges with the Mongols on June 17, 1964. Although Ch’en does not seem to have played any role of importance in domestic affairs, he has served as a deputy from Kiangsu to the First, Second, and Third NPC’s, which first met in 1954, 1959, and 1964.
Connections
He married a woman surnamed Fi in about 1938, and by 1946 they had two children. Like her husband, Li was also a student in the political course at the school controlled by Hu Tsung-nan in Sian.
