Chang Han-fu was one of Peking’s most important diplomats and has served in the Foreign Ministry since the Communist takeover in 1949. He spent most of the war years in Chungking, where he worked as a journalist and aide to Chou En-lai. He has been an alternate member of the Party Central Committee since 1956.
Background
Chang was born about 1905. Since he became known as a writer in the early thirties he has used the name Chang Han-fu, although his original name was Hsieh Chi-tai. He comes from Ch’ang-chou (Wu-chin), which lies on the Grand Canal in Kiangsu between Nanking and Shanghai.
Education
Chang studied at Tsinghua University in Peking but apparently did not graduate. According to some reports he went to the United States for graduate work in political science and economics. He is alleged to have been deported from the United States about 1929 for leftist activities, but these accounts conflict with reports that he did not return to China until 1933, after which he served a jail term in the mid-thirties. Still other reports assert that Chang studied in England. Whatever the certainties of his early career, his knowledge of English suggests that he spent some time in either the United States or England.
Career
Upon his return to China, Chang went to Shanghai, where he was associated with a group of leftist intellectuals that included Liu Shih, a member of the National Salvation Association, Li Kung-p’u, who also belonged to the Association, and Ai Szu-ch’i, who later became famous as a Communist polemicist and theoretician. All four men wrote for Tu-shu sheng-huo (Study life), a magazine that was popular among the younger generation. The dates of Chang’s association with this journal are uncertain, but it was probably in the mid-thirties. In 1937 Chang became an editorial committee member of Chan-hsien (War front), a Shanghai publication that appeared at five-day intervals and dealt with wartime political and military affairs.1 Serving on the editorial committee with Chang were Ai Szu-ch’i and Chang Nai-ch’i, the latter then a financial expert and a key member of the National Salvation Association. In addition to Chang Han-fu’s editorial work with Chan-hsien, he is known to have contributed articles to issues published in 1937.
Chang became a CCP member in 1938. The following year he was in the wartime capital, Chungking, where he was on the staff of the important Communist daily, Hsin-hua jih-pao (New China daily). He became editor-in-chief in 1942, remaining so for the next four years. During the early war years he frequently contributed articles on international affairs to the Communist weekly, Ch’iin-chung (The masses), and in 1939 he and Hsu Ti-hsin, an economic expert, published a translation of Engels’ writings on capitalism. In the Chungking period Chang began an association that was to serve him well after 1949, when Chou En-lai, the first Communist foreign minister, brought a number of his associates into the Foreign Ministry. It was about 1939 that Chang began working for Chou as a secretary. Chou was in Chungking during the war as the principal Communist representative in the Nationalist capital.
In 1945 Chang went to the United States to attend the founding conference of the United Nations. He was one of two Communist aides to veteran CCP member Tung Pi-wu, the only Communist member of the Chinese delegation. Tung and his two aides, Chang and Ch’en Chia-k’ang, arrived in New York from Chungking on April 21 and reached San Francisco in time for the conference that opened on April 25. Tung took no active part in the proceedings, although his presence there caused considerable interest, especially on the part of left-wing groups. His press and public relations were handled by his English-speaking secretaries, Chang and Ch’en, and while in San Francisco, Chang himself addressed meetings sponsored by Chinese members of the American Communist Party. At the close of the U.N. meeting Tung and his group toured the United States in the latter half of 1945, visiting New York and its City Council in July. In December 1945 they returned to Chungking, where presumably Chang continued work for a short while with the Hsin-hua jih-pao. The paper was closed down by the Nationalists in February 1947, but Chang had left Chungking for Shanghai before that date. On January 15, 1946, after a silence of six years, he contributed an article to Ch’un-chung, then being published in Shanghai. In 1946 he was an editor of the magazine, and after the Nationalists closed down its Shanghai office, he moved to Hong Kong and resumed publishing from there, serving as editor from January 1947 through the year 1948. Other contributors to Ch’un-chung at this time were such well-known Communist publicists as Ch’en Po-ta, Lu Ting-i, and Li Wei-han. At the end of 1948 Chang left Hong Kong for Communist-controlled territory.
After reluming to the mainland, Chang left journalism for the field of foreign affairs, a change in which his wartime association with Chou En-lai is likely to have played a part. His first assignments were with the municipal administrations established in Tientsin and Shanghai as the Red armies began to take over the mainland. From January to May 1949 he directed the Alien Affairs Office of the Municipal People’s Government in Tientsin, and from the late summer to the fall he was in charge of a similar office in Shanghai. Then, with the establishment of the central government in Peking in October, Chang was transferred to the capital to serve as a vice-minister in the Foreign Ministry, then presided over by Premier Chou En-lai. When first appointed, Chang was outranked in Party stature by Wang Chia-hsiang and Li K’o-nung, and in the subsequent years other appointments to a vice-ministership were given to men of higher political rank. However, Chang is the only one of the many vice-ministers (as of the mid- 1960’s) who has served continuously since 1949. In December 1949 he was given the additional assignment of heading the Foreign Ministry’s Committee on Foreign Treaties (although this committee was apparently abolished in the early fifties).
Chang’s duties within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) have been wide ranging, involving him in relations with both Communist and non-Communist nations. He appears to be the administrative head of the MFA, as suggested, for example, in August 1952, when he reported to the Government Administration Council (the cabinet) on “unified measures for entering into treaties, agreements, protocols, and contracts with foreign countries.” Similarly, he has frequently spoken before government organizations on treaties signed by the PRC, as in November 1956, when he presented a report on agreements signed with the Nepalese Government. On numerous occasions he has participated in, or led, negotiations with foreign governments, both at home and abroad. One of his more important assignments was in heading the Chinese side in talks with the Indian Government over the status of Tibet, negotiations held in Peking from December 31, 1953, to April 29, 1954. The resulting agreement provided for the withdrawal of all Indian troops in Tibet, in addition to other terms that had the effect of dissolving Indian activities in Tibet. For almost two months in late 1954 Chang led the Chinese side in preliminary talks with Indonesian officials on the difficult problem of settling the dual nationality status of Chinese living in Indonesia. These negotiations were later continued by Peking’s ambassador to Indonesia, Huang Chen.
Chang was abroad twice in 1964, the first time in October-November, when he accompanied Ch’en I to Algeria to attend celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of the Algerian Revolution. While in Algiers he took part in talks with Algerian President Ben Bella. En route to Algeria Ch’en and Chang stopped over briefly in Karachi, where they conferred with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bhutto on questions of common interest talks held at a time when Sino-Pakistani relations were growing increasingly close. A few days after returning to China, Ch’en and Chang were sent abroad again, this time to Cambodia to take part in celebrations commemorating the 11th anniversary of Cambodian independence. In April 1965 Chang accompanied Chou En-lai to Indonesia for the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Bandung Conference, and in June 1965 he was again with Chou when the latter led a Chinese delegation to Pakistan and Tanzania, where talks were held concerning the convocation of a second Afro-Asian conference.
Politics
Chang became a CCP member in 1938.
Connections
Chang married Kung P’u-sheng in July 1949, and through his wife is related to Ch’iao Kuan-hua the husband of his wife’s sister, Kung P’eng, an assistant minister in the Foreign Ministry since 1964. The Kung sisters were well known in Christian and Y.W.C.A. circles in Shanghai during the 1930’s, and Kung P’u-sheng was also known to Western diplomats and journalists in Chungking during World War H.