Ch’en Yii

Background

Ch’en was born in Pao-an hsien, located in Kwangtung on the eastern shore of the Pearl River estuary near Hong Kong

Education

He was a sailor in his youth, and like many of his fellow seamen in south China he was a member of Sun Yat-sen’s KMT. He first achieved some degree of prominence as a participant in the famous two-month long Hong Kong seamen’s strike, which began in January 1922 under the leadership of Su Chao-cheng. The strike was led by the Chinese Seamen’s Union, which had been established in 1921. Ch’en was a “responsible official” in the union, but the exact nature of his duties is not known.

Career

He was again associated with Su in the long Hong Kong-Canton strike, which began in June 1925 to support the May 30th Movement (see under Su Chao-cheng) . By this time Ch’en had joined the CCP and was a member of the Kwangtung Regional Committee headed by Ch’en Yen-nien, a son of Ch’en Tu-hsiu. In December 1927 Ch’en Yii was one of the key figures in the armed uprising in Canton and the establishment of the short-lived Canton Commune (see under Chang T’ai-lei). Under the “soviet government” that was to have ruled Canton, Ch’en served as People’s Commissar of Justice.

A half-year after the Canton debacle the CCP held its Sixth Congress in Moscow (June-July 1928). It is not known if Ch’en attended, and there are conflicting reports regarding his election to the Central Committee and Politburo. Some sources assert that he was elected to the Central Committee; others claim he was elected only as an alternate member. Similarly, various reports indicate that he was elected to alternate or full membership on the Politburo. In any event, he had risen to a rather high position in the CCP by the latter part of 1930 when Li Li-san was deposed as the de facto head of the CCP. Of the two major factions opposing Li, one was led by Ch’en Shao-yii and his “28 Bolsheviks,” the other by top labor leaders Ho Meng-hsiung and Lo Chang-lung. Ch’en Yii is said to have sided with the labor faction in the struggle that culminated at the Fourth Plenum in Shanghai (January 1931), when Ch’en Shao-yii’s group gained control of the Party apparatus. Ch’en Yii reportedly re-canted shortly afterwards, and at the behest of Chou En-lai issued a statement denouncing the labor faction as “rightists.” He was identified at this time as secretary of the CCP group within the Seamen’s Union. If in fact Ch’en had been a Politburo member or alternate, it appears that he was dropped during or shortly after the Fourth Plenum.

After the fall of Mukden to the Communist armies in November 1948, Ch’en was transferred there to become a member of the Mukden Military Control Commission, which was chaired by Ch’en Yun. In the following spring and summer he served concurrently as director of the Industry Department of the Northeast Administrative Committee. At the end of the summer Ch’en was transferred to Peking to become chief of the Fuel Industry Division of the North China People’s Government (NCPG). However, he held this post for only a brief time, for the NCPG was abolished shortly after the Communists established the central government. The new national government was brought into existence by the CPPCC, which held its inaugural session in September 1949. Ch’en attended these meetings as a representative of the Labor Federation, and when the major administrative assignments were made in October, he was given the portfolio for the Ministry of Fuel Industry. In addition, he was made a member of the Finance and Economics Committee, the most important economic body in the central government until 1954, in this post Ch’en again served under Ch’en Yun.

Politics

Ch’en’s Ministry of Fuel was responsible for three basic industries - coal, electric power, and petroleum. During the six years he headed the ministry he gave a number of reports before government organs and government-sponsored conferences concerned with these industries. He also received several new appointments in the early years of the PRC, mainly in the economic field. In May 1950 Ch’en was appointed one of the supervisors of the Communications Bank, a specialized bank under the Finance Ministry, which handles the state’s investments in joint state-private enterprises. From July 1951 to January 1955 he was president of the China Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He was on a special committee established in December 1951 to investigate the economy and to propose austerity measures. In August-Septembcr 1952 Ch’en was a member of a high-level delegation led by Premier Chou En-lai to Moscow where they negotiated the return of the Chinese Changchun Railway to China and the extension of the joint use of naval facilities at Port Arthur. Several months later, in January 1953, Ch’en signed the Sino-Rumanian Technical and Scientific Cooperation Agreement in Peking. He was presumably selected to lead these negotiations because his ministry would have the greatest interest in the technical assistance for the petroleum industry that the Rumanians might be able to offer.

Membership

Ch’en remained in Shanghai through the spring of 1931, but as the KMT suppression of the CCP grew more severe many Communists left for Juichin, Kiangsi, where Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung had built a sizable military base. Ch’en was apparently among them, because in November 1931 at the First All-China Congress of Soviets he was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee (CEC), the ruling organ of the Chinese Soviet Republic. However, he was not re-elected to the CEC at the Second Congress two years later (early 1934). His where abouts and activities during the next few years are not known, but in the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War he was working in the Yenan area as an assistant to Ch’en Yun in economic affairs. At the Seventh National CCP Congress, held in Yenan from April to June 1945, Ch’en was elected one of the 33 alternate members of the Central Committee.

In the summer of 1945 Ch’en became a member of the newly established Preparatory Committee of the Liberated Areas Trade Union Federation in Yenan. In the early autumn he was nominated as a Federation delegate to attend the inaugural congress of the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions. Teng Fa led the Chinese Communist delegation to Paris, but it is not known if Ch’en accompanied him. In the postwar period he was among the many Party leaders sent from Yenan to Manchuria where, by 1948, he was deputy director of the Industry Department subordinate to the Northeast Administrative Committee, the governmental body that administered those areas of Manchuria under Communist control. In August of the same year Ch’en attended the Sixth National Labor Congress in Harbin after having served on the Congress Preparatory Committee. He gave a report on the nearly 400 proposals put before the Congress, and at the close of the meetings he was elected a member of the Executive Committee of the All-China Federation of Labor (ACFL).

Connections

Ch’en is married to Yuan P’u-chih who worked with her husband in the late forties in Manchuria, where she was director of a workers’ school under the Manchurian government’s Industry Department. In August 1950 she became deputy director of the Personnel Division in her husband’s Fuel Industry Ministry. Accompanying Ch’en to Kwangtung, she has been a deputy director of the provincial government’s Higher Education Bureau since at least 1960.

Spouse:

Yuan P’u-chih