Background
Chang was born in Li-ling hsien, the native hsien of such other prominent Communists as Li Li-san and Tso Ch’uan. Chang has also been known by the alias of Yii Tai- ch’un.
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Chang Chi-chun
Edit ProfileEducation
After completing middle school Chang, then in his 20th year, enrolled in the first class of the Whampoa Military Academy (June 1924- Fcbruary 1925), where he was given infantry training.1 Japanese sources assert that he also received training in the USSR, presumably in the mid-twenties. In any case, by the late summer of 1927 he was in China, where in his native Hunan he participated in the Autumn Harvest Uprisings led by Mao Tse-tung and others. When these failed he apparently joined Mao’s retreating forces, because by the end of 1927 he had joined the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army as a political officer, and in the next year he joined the CCP.
Career
Chang was transferred by 1929 to Shanghai, where for a brief time he engaged in trade union work for the outlawed Shanghai General Labor Union. In August of that year, together with top Party leaders P’eng P’ai and Yang Yin, Chang was arrested by the International Settlement police. They had been betrayed by a fellow Communist. Chang was identified at that time as a deputy director of a special unit (subordinate to the General Labor Union), which was responsible for controlling picket lines during strikes. He and his colleagues were turned over to Nationalist military authorities and taken to Lung-hua, the well-known prison outside Shanghai. P’eng and Yang were executed a few days later, but Chang somehow managed to escape this fate and subsequently made his way to the hinterlands of Kiangsi where Chu Te and Mao Tse-tung were leading Red Army units. By 1930 he was director of the Propaganda Department of the Fourth Army, one of the major components of the Chu-Mao First Army Corps. In the following year he was transferred to the same post in the Fifth Army Corps, and in this capacity he made the Long March. Many elements of the Fifth Corps did not reach north Shensi until late 1936, but it is not known if Chang was with these men or with forces led by Mao, which arrived a year earlier.
After completing the Long March Chang was assigned as an instructor in 1937 to the Anti-Japanese Political and Military Academy (K’ang- ta), and by 1939 he was director of the Academy’s Political Department. His record during the war years is poorly documented, but he probably remained at K’ang-ta. In any case, his long Party career was given recognition when at the Seventh Party Congress (April-June 1945) he was elected one of the 33 alternate members of the ССР Central Committee. By the same year he was serving as director of the Political Department of the Shansi-Hopch-Shantung-Honan (Chin-Chi-Lu-Yii) Military Region. This highly important region was under the command of Liu Po-ch’eng, with Teng Hsiao- p’ing as the political commissar.
By September 1946 Chang was further identified as a deputy political commissar of the Region, his fellow deputy commissar was the important leader Po I-po. Thus, from the end of the Sino- Japanese War to the defeat of the Nationalists in 1949-50, Chang was a key figure in Liu Po- ch’eng’s forces, known as the Central Plains Field Army by 1947. Continuing in his dual political role, Chang was with Liu’s forces when they crossed the Yellow River in mid-1947 and thrust southward into the Ta-pieh Mountains on the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei borders.5 Returning to the north, he also took part in the fighting along the Lunghai Railway, which led to the fall of Kaifeng and Chengchow, Honan. When the latter city was finally captured in October 1948, Chang was named chairman of the Chengchow Military Control Commission. By the following spring he had left this post to continue with Liu Po-ch’eng’s units (now known as the Second Field Army) as they crossed the Yangtze. Still serving as deputy political commissar, Chang was in Nanking from the early summer to the fall of 1949, after which he moved with Liu’s forces into southwest China. Chungking fell to the Communists on November 30, and a few days later Chang was appointed chairman of the city’s Military Control Commission.
Although Chang was of Central Committee rank, he was politically overshadowed in his first years in the southwest by such top Party leaders as Teng Hsiao-p’ing, Liu Po-ch’eng, Ho Lung, and Sung Jen-ch’iung. Nonetheless, as the military, government, and Party organs were established for the southwest in 1949-50, Chang received significant appointments. By the latter part of 1950 he had become both a deputy political commissar and head of the Political Department of the Southwest Military Region, positions that continued to place him directly under the jurisdiction of Political Commissar Teng Hsiao-p’ing. In July 1950 the Communists established their governmental administration for the provinces of Szechwan, Kweichow, Yunnan, and Sikang; known as the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee (SWMAC), it was headquartered in Chungking where Chang was working.
He was named to membership on the SWMAC and in March 1951 he was appointed to head at the same time the Land Reform Committee of the SWMAC, one of its most important subordinate organizations. Chang continued in both posts when the SWMAC was reorganized into the Southwest Administrative Committee in February 1953. Within the Party apparatus for the southwest he became the second deputy secretary of the Southwest CCP Bureau by October 1952, placing him below Secretary Ho Lung, Second Secretary Liu Po-ch’eng, and First Deputy Secretary Sung Jen-ch’iung. In fact, however, both Ho and Liu were frequently called to Peking in the 1952-1954 period, and thus Sung and Chang’s significance in Southwest Party affairs was enhanced.
In 1954 Chang relinquished all his positions in the southwest and was transferred to Peking. His first national assignment was as a deputy from Szechwan to the First NPC (1954-1959), he was re-elected from Szechwan to the Second NPC (1959-1964) as well as the Third NPC, which opened in December 1964. More important, however, by October 1954 he was identified as a deputy director of the Party Propaganda Department, a position he still retains under Director Lu Ting-i, an alternate member of the Party Politburo. Among his colleagues in this important department are fellow Deputy Directors Ch’en Po-ta, Hsu T’e-li, and Chou Yang, all of Central Committee rank. He advanced further in the Party hierarchy at the Eighth National Congress in September 1956. While the Congress was in session Chang served on the ad hoc Secretariat (headed by his former superior Teng Hsiao-p’ing), and at the close of the meetings he was promoted from alternate to full membership on the Party Central Committee.
In the meantime, Chang was named to represent the CCP on the Second National Committee of the CPPCC when it was established in December 1954. He was also appointed at this time as a member of the Standing Committee, the governing organ of the quasi-legislative CPPCC when the National Committee is not in session. Chang also served on both the National and Standing Committees of the Third CPPCC (1959-1964). In June 1957 he received a new post in the central government, which is closely related to his assignment in the Propaganda Department; the new position was as a deputy director of the State Council’s Second Staff Office, an organization responsible for coordinating the activities of the State Council ministries dealing with culture, education, and science. Chang worked in the Second Staff Office under Lin Feng, one of the Party’s top specialists in educational affairs; on occasions Chang served as the acting director. Then, during a partial government reorganization in September 1959, the Second Office was renamed the Culture and Education Office, with Chang succeeding Lin Feng as the director. Since that time most of Chang’s public appearances have been in this capacity.
Chang received another post directly subordinate to Lin Feng in January 1960 when he was appointed vice-chairman of the State Council’s Spare-time Education Committee. However, he is probably less active in this position than another vice-chairman, Li Chieh-po. In the following month he was named as a vice-chairman of the preparatory committee for a national conference of “advanced workers” in the fields of cultural and educational work. The conference, convened in June 1960, was one of the largest ever held in the history of the PRC (see under Lin Feng); during the conference Chang served on the presidium (steering committee). His involvement in cultural and educational affairs has also been illustrated by inspection trips he has taken around China, by his participation in major cultural festivals, and by articles he has written for the Chinese press. In 1958, for example, Chang went to Canton to issue instructions to personnel at the newly founded Chi-nan University (for training returned overseas Chinese) ; in June 1964 he was one of the “responsible personnel” attending a festival of Peking operas devoted to contemporary (as opposed to classical) themes, and in the same month he spoke before a national conference of pediatricians. His writings, dealing mainly with education, include an article for the Party’s leading journal, Hung-ch’i (Red flag, issue of February 1, 1960). Chang has also lent his name to various ad hoc bodies established to commemorate major historic events, as in November 1956 when he was on the presidium for a rally marking the 90th anniversary of the birth of Sun Yat-sen, and in September 1961 when he was a member of the preparatory committee set up to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution.
While the major portion of Chang’s activity has been devoted to domestic affairs, he has played a limited role in international affairs, having made three trips abroad between 1961 and 1964. In January 1961 he was the chief CCP representative at the 19th Congress of the Swedish Communist Party. He led a “friendship” delegation to North Korea in September 1963 to attend celebrations commemorating the 15th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Democratic People’s Republic, and in September-October 1964 he was in North Vietnam for festivities marking the 15th anniversary of the PRC.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party