Background
There is no information about his background.
There is no information about his background.
Chi'en's education is not known.
It is not known how long Ch’ien remained in Shanghai after the outbreak of war, but at sometime in the late thirties he was associated with a Chungking periodical entitled Li-lun yii hsien- shih (Theory and reality). In any event, he spent most of the early war years in east-central China at the headquarters of the Communists’ New Fourth Army (see under Yeh T’ing). In the early war years he was secretary-general of the New Fourth Army Headquarters, and in the latter years (1941-1945) he was director of the Army’s Propaganda Department. By 1941 Ch’ien was also head of the Culture and Education Affairs Committee of the CCP’s Central China (Hua-chung) Bureau.3 Liu Shao-ch’i was then secretary of the Bureau and Jao Shu-shih was the deputy secretary as well as director of the Bureau’s Propaganda Department.
At the end of the war Ch’ien went to Yenan for a brief period but was soon transferred to Peking where he remained for most of 1946 carrying out various assignments for the CCP. He was manager of the Peking office of the New China News Agency (NCNA) and a Party representative at the Executive Headquarters for the Marshall Mission (see under Yeh Chien-ying). Late in 1946, as the civil war between the Communists and Nationalists intensified, Ch’ien returned to Yenan where he assumed the editorship of both the NCNA and the Chieh-fang jih-pao (Liberation daily), the leading Communist newspaper of that period and the predecessor of today’s JMJP.
Although Ch’ien was over 40 when the Communists took Peking, he served as one of the principal officials from 1949 to 1953 in the two most important youth organizations, the New Democratic Youth League (NDYL) and. the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth, established in April and May 1949, respectively. In the Youth League he was a member of the Standing Committee (1949-1953) and director of the NDYL Department of Culture and Education from 1949 to 1950. In the Youth Federation he served as a vice-chairman of the First National Committee. Ch’ien was dropped from both organizations when they held their second congresses in mid-1953 and their initial periods of development were over, but by this time he had taken on other important responsibilities.
In the spring of 1949 he took his first extensive trip outside China, traveling widely in the Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe. As the secretary-general of Kuo Mo-jo’s delegation to the World Peace Congress, he left China for Paris where the conference was held, only to find at the last moment that the French government had refused entry to the 10 delegations from Communist countries. They were therefore forced to hold a “rump” Peace Congress in Prague in April. The following month Ch’ien attended the Ninth Congress of the Czech Communist Party as well as the Second Congress of Polish Trade Unions in early June. Later in June the group (apparently including Ch’ien) started for Italy to attend the Second World Congress of Trade Unions in Milan, but the Italian government, following the French example, refused them entry. Hence, a “rump” congress of trade unions from the Communist countries was held in Warsaw. After the congress closed, the delegation visited Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, and the USSR. Nine years later, when he sent public birthday greetings to American Negro Paul Robeson, he spoke of their first meeting in Prague in 1949, and of later meetings in Warsaw and Moscow.
Despite the many government and semi-government responsibilities that Ch’ien assumed in 1949, he probably devoted more time to the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (SSFA) than any other single activity during the period from 1949 to 1961. On July 16, 1949, a large conference was held in Peking to prepare for the establishment of the SSFA, the direct successor of the Sino-Soviet Cultural Association. At the meeting, attended by such top leaders as Liu Shao-ch’i and Chou En-lai, Ch’ien served on the presidium (steering committee), gave a report on the purposes of the organization, and was named to head an 18-member group charged with the task of establishing the organization on a fulltime basis. When the SSFA was inaugurated in October 1949, Ch’ien was named as a member of the Executive Board and as general secretary (secretary-general after 1954). Although Liu Shao-ch’i was the nominal head of the Association until 1954 and Sung Ch’ing-ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen) thereafter, Ch’ien was the most active of the top leaders.
Re-elected secretary-general at the Second SSFA Conference in December 1954, and again at the Third Conference in May 1959, he made six trips abroad after 1949 on behalf of the Association or its allied interest. In November 1950 he traveled via Moscow to the Second World Peace Congress held in Warsaw; in March 1953 he was a member of the delegation led by Premier Chou En-lai to Stalin’s funeral, in 1954 he led a group to Moscow for the May Day celebrations; and in November 1957 he was a deputy leader of the “working peoples’ ” delegation, which Liu Ning-i took to Moscow for the celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of the USSR.
In addition to these government posts, Ch’ien received additional assignments in the “people’s” organizations. In May 1954, when the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries was formed, he was named to the Board of Directors. This very active organization underwent a reorganization in 1959, and since that date it is not certain if Ch’ien is still a board member. In August 1960 he was elected to National Committee membership in the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, a position he continues to hold.
When the Communists occupied Peking in January 1949, Ch’ien was among the first civil officials to go there. He was immediately assigned as chairman of the Cultural Control Committee under the Peking Military Control Commission, the first of his many posts related to cultural and educational affairs. He was already dean of Education of North China University, an institution for cadre training established by the Communists soon after they occupied north China. With the arrival of the Communists in Peking, Ch’ien also had a hand in their takeover of the well-known Tsinghua University, and prior to the establishment of the PRC in October 1949 he was made a vice-chairman of the Higher Education Committee in the Communists’ administration governing north China, the North China People’s Government. He was also a vice-chairman and secretary-general of the Preparatory Committee for the National Educational’ Workers’ Conference (July 1949), which ultimately established the All-China Educational Workers Trade Union in August 1950.
Ch'ien took an active part in the establishment of the central government that was formed under the aegis of the First CPPCC in September 1949 (and formally inaugurated on October 1). Representing the National Educational Workers’ Conference, he attended the meetings in September, serving as a member of the ad hoc committee to draft the Common Program, the document that served as the equivalent of a constitution until 1954. When the government organs were staffed in October 1949, Ch’ien was named to membership on the Government Administration Council’s Culture and Education Committee, a committee headed by cultural leader Kuo Mo-jo. He was also named as a vice-minister of Education, serving concurrently (from December 1949 to November 1950) as head of the Ministry’s Higher Education Office. Ch’ien’s political position within the Ministry was accentuated by the fact that neither the minister (Ma Hsu-lun) nor the other vice-minister (Wei Chueh) belonged to the Communist Party. In November 1952 the Education Ministry was split into the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education, but Ch’ien was not reappointed to either. However, he was promoted to the post of secretary-general of the Culture and Education Committee, replacing Party historian Hu Ch’iao-mu.
Like most of the important government leaders, Ch’ien was given a number of semi-official assignments in the latter part of 1949. In October he was made a member of the Association for the Reform of Written Chinese (to 1954) and of the China Peace Committee (to 1958). It was also in October 1949 that he became a member of the All-China Athletic Federation as a representative of the Education Ministry (but he did not serve in this organization after it was fully organized in June 1952). Two months later, in December 1949, he was named to the Board of Directors of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, a position to which he was re-elected in 1951 and 1955.
In addition to the above, Ch’ien has worked with the Communist program for adult education and has been associated with the plans to phoneticize written Chinese and to standardize the pronunciation. In this connection he has been a member of the State Council’s National Association for the Elimination of Illiteracy since its establishment in March 1956, a member of the State Council’s Committee for the Phoneticiza- tion of the Chinese Language since its inception in October 1956, and a member of the presidium of a conference for “advanced” cultural and educational workers in June 1960. He has also attended a number of conferences and meetings on behalf of each of these organizations.
Quotes from others about the person
Some insight into Ch’ien’s views on certain Communist practices can be gained from an account describing the living conditions of students at Peking University in 1950. Speaking of their state of health, one student reported that news had “trickled down” to them that Ch’ien had addressed a special meeting of the Culture and Education Committee on the subject. He made “a moving and emotional plea,” citing as an example his own daughter who had gone in good health to the Northeast College of Medicine in Mukden, only to be sent home suffering from tuberculosis. This condition had been brought on, he said, because she had been overworked and had been forced to attend too many meetings at the college in addition to her heavy assignments. In a 1956 interview with French statesman Edgar Faure, Ch’ien asserted that though art must serve the workers, it need not be political propaganda. This view, of course, was in accord with the Party policy of that time the famed Hundred Flowers Movement. Faure described Ch’ien as follows: “He gives an impression of intellectual and physical vigour and, .... of frankness. The information that he gave me, especially on the problem of the illiterates, had no suggestion of bluff.”