Background
Chang was born on September 3, 1906, probably in Lin-li hsien in northern Hunan (although some sources use Honan).
Chang was born on September 3, 1906, probably in Lin-li hsien in northern Hunan (although some sources use Honan).
Little is known of his early background aside from the fact that in 1929 he was a guerrilla fighter in Anhwei. At this time there was a certain amount of Communist direction among bands of peasant guerrillas in Anhwei, one such band in southwest Anhwei having been the focus of CCP activity since 1926.
By about 1929 these guerrilla units began to cooperate with similar bands across the borders of Hupeh and Honan. Subsequently, Communist activity in the three provinces was united under the direction of the Oyiiwan Soviet. It seems likely that Chang was a participant in this important soviet (see under Chang Kuo-t’ao), in part because he was later closely associated with Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien, the top Oyiiwan military leader. Like most of these men, Chang Ching-wu probably made the Long March, but if in fact he was with the forces of Chang Kuo-t’ao and Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien, then he reached north Shensi in late 1936, almost a year after Mao Tse-tung and his forces had arrived. By 1939 Chang was commander of the PLA’s Shantung Column, and two years later he was serving under Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien in Shantung as commander of one of the columns in Hsu’s forces. Hsu, the deputy commander of Liu Po-ch’eng’s 129th Division, had been sent to Shantung in the spring of 1939 to strengthen the local resistance there.
Chang was called back to Yenan by the late summer of 1942, and from approximately 1943 to early 1946 he was chief-of-staff of the Joint Defense Headquarters. This military command had been formed about 1940 by a merger of Ho Lung’s forces in the Shansi-Suiyuan area with those stationed in the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region. Chang was also reported in 1945 as a brigade commander in Ho Lung’s 120th Division.
In early 1946 the Peking Executive Headquarters was established in accordance with the agree-ment worked out by U.S. Special Envoy George C. Marshall between the Nationalists and Communists. Its task was to implement a cease-fire, and in order to bring about a cessation of hostilities in local areas, a number of mobile truce teams were established. Holding the simulated rank of major general, Chang served on one of these teams in Manchuria. But later in 1946 he was assigned to the Peking Headquarters as chief-of-staff to Yeh Chien-ying, the chief Communist representative.
Chang was with the forces that captured Sian, capital of Shensi, in late May 1949. He became a member of the Sian Military Control Commission under Ho Lung, as well as commander of the Sian Garrison Headquarters. Later that year he followed Ho Lung to the southwest, serving under him there as deputy chief-of-staff of the Southwest Military Region. Chang was transferred to PLA Headquarters in Peking about mid-1950; he was on the presidium for a national conference of “fighting heroes” in the PLA in September-October 1950 and assumed (by October 1950) the directorship of the People’s Armed Forces Department, the department in charge of the militia under the People’s Revolutionary Military Council (PRMC). At an October 1950 conference of “people’s armed forces” attended by senior military leaders Chu Те and Lo Jung-huan, Chang gave the major report, stressing the importance of the militia, its past history as an integral part of the CCP movement, and the future tasks it faced. Interest in the militia at this time was probably height-ened by the Korean War, which had begun in June 1950.
Concurrently with his post as head of the militia, Chang was also identified in January 1951 as director of the Staff Office of the PRMC. But both positions were soon relinquished in favor of a new assignment, one that would occupy virtually his entire time for the next 15 years. In his new task Chang served as one of three delegates under Chief Delegate Li Wei-han to negotiate an agreement for the “peaceful liberation” of Tibet. A delegation from the so-called Tibetan Local Government had arrived in Peking for talks with the Chinese in the spring of 1951 in the wake of the Chinese invasion of Tibet begun in the previous fall.
The negotiations lasted from April 29 to May 21, and on May 23, 1951, Chang and the others signed the “Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet.” Chang was subsequently named as the “Repre-sentative of the Central People’s Government in Tibet”, he set out from Peking on June 30 and two weeks later (traveling via Calcutta) arrived in southern Tibet where he first met the 16-year- old Dalai Lama, the spiritual ruler of the Tibetans. A few weeks later Chang proceeded to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, arriving there on August 8, a historic date in modern Sino-Tibetan relations. Chang’s arrival and his early days in Tibet have been described by the Dalai Lama following his self-exile in India in March 1959.“ Chang's earliest days in Tibet placed him in the highly uncomfortable position of being the new viceroy without access to immediate military force his arrival in Lhasa having proceeded by about two months the arrival of PLA forces commanded by Chang Kuo-hua, who had been fighting his way westward from China across the incredibly rugged Tibetan terrain. However, by the end of 1951 Chang Ching-wu had approximately 6,000 troops to call upon. With this backing, the Communists immediately set about organizing Tibet with a view to ultimate integration into the mainstream of Communist life. Chang was a major figure in these activities and was thus frequently mentioned in the press in connection with his appearances at meetings with local Tibetan leaders, holidays of various sorts (including both Chinese Communist anniversaries and local Tibetan religious holidays), and the inauguration of institutions brought to Tibet by the conquerors (such as the opening of a branch of the People’s Bank of China in Lhasa in February 1952).
For reasons that are not clear, Chang did not return to Tibet until a year and a half after the NPC session in September 1954. In the meantime he received new appointments and new honors. As a representative of the CCP, Chang was named to the Second National Committee of the CPPCC in December 1954 and was also elected to the permanent body of the CPPCC, the Standing Committee. (He was re-elected to both committees in April 1959 when the Third CPPCC was formed, but not to the Fourth CPPCC, which opened its first session in late 1964.) Also in December 1954, Chang attended the second national conference of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association as a PLA representative. In March 1955 he presented before the State Council the most complete report yet available on Tibet and at the same meeting the decision was taken to set up the Preparatory Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region, an organization formally established 13 months later (see below).
In July 1955 Chang was appointed chief of the Staff Office of the PRC Chairman (chu-hsi pan-kung-t’ing), that is, head of an administrative office directly under Chairman Mao Tse- tung (and, after April 1959, Chairman Liu Shao- ch’i). Such a post would seem to require Chang’s presence in Peking, but in fact he spent most of the next decade in far-off Tibet. Nonetheless, he continues to hold this position. Soon after, in September 1955, he received the three standard military awards, the Orders of August First, Independence and Freedom, and Liberation, which indicates that Chang must have held significant military positions from the late 1920’s or early 1930’s.
In the spring of 1956 the Communists made a major effort to consolidate their rule in Tibet. This received organizational expression with the formal establishment of the Preparatory Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region in April 1956. For the inauguration the central government in Peking sent a huge delegation led by Vice-Premier Ch’en I, with Chang serving as one of his eight deputy leaders. Apart from the formal meetings, there was a long series of banquets and other festive gatherings, most of which were attended by Ch’en and Chang. After six weeks in Tibet, Chang accompanied Ch’en back to Peking in June. He was apparently in attendance at the Eighth Party Congress in September 1956, when he was elected the sixth-ranking alternate member of the Central Committee.
Chang’s pattern of activity from 1960 to early 1965 was not notably different from that of his previous years. He appears to have spent most of his time in Tibet, but he returned occasionally to Peking for such important affairs as meetings of the NPC. As already noted, he has served from 1954 as a deputy from Szechwan to the NPC; at the first session of the Third NPC (held in December 1964-January 1965) he was named for the first time to membership on the NPC Standing Committee, the organization in charge of NPC affairs when the annual congress meetings are not in session. Chang apparently did not return to Tibet after the NPC meetings, and by the middle of 1965 he had been replaced by Chang Kuo-hua as the ranking secretary there. Chang Ching-wu’s new assignment was not immediately revealed, but by May 1966 he was identified as a deputy director of the Party’s United Front Work Department. Because one of the major responsibilities of this department is to deal with non-Han minority groups, the selection of Chang was evidently based on his long experience with the Tibetans.