Chang Hsi

Background

He was born in 1912 in P’ing-hsiang, a small town in southern Hopeh about 20 miles east of Hsing-t’ai on the Peking-Hankow Railway.

Education

It is claimed that he was influenced by the patriotic activity that was so prevalent among the Chinese youths in the late 1920’s. In 1931, when he was 19, he joined the Communist Youth Corps presumably at the Hsing-t’ai Fourth Normal School where “he first participated in revolutionary activity.” While a student at this school, he served as secretary of the Youth Corps chapter there. In 1932 he was arrested and imprisoned until 1936. During his imprisonment it was said that he “did not abandon the struggle against the enemy” and “displayed the high standards” of a Communist. As the official obituary gives the year 1934 as the date that Chang joined the CCP, he was apparently admitted while in prison.

Career

Three of the most important Communists in these areas during the war years were Yang Te-chih, Yang Yung, and Su Chen-hua, each of whom was a member of Chang’s funeral committee when he died in 1959. A broad outline of the military and political activities in the Hopeh-Shantung-Honan area can be found in the biographies of these three men, who led forces of the Eighth Route Army’s 115th and 129th Divisions into this strategic area in 1938-1939 and who remained there throughout the war. Chang’s obituary states that during these years, under the leadership of the Party center, he “activated the masses” and contributed to the guerrilla warfare effort behind the Japanese lines.

In 1949 Chang became the ranking Party secretary in Honan, a post he retained until mid-presumably being replaced by P’an Fu-sheng, who took over in Honan by early During these same years he also served as a member of the Central Committee’s Central-South Bureau, headed by Party and military veteran Lin Piao. The governmental counterpart of the Central-South Bureau was established in February 1950 under the name Central-South Military and Administrative Committee. Chang was named to membership on this Committee; in July of 1950 he was also appointed as a member of the Honan Provincial Government and in December of the same year he was named chairman of that Government’s Finance and Economic Committee. Finally, in terms of official positions, he was serving as the political commissar of the Honan Military District in August 1952. One of the few clues to his major work in the early 1950’s comes from his obituary, which states that in these years he was engaged in “advancing the land reform and agricultural cooperatives movements.”

In November 1952, on the eve of the First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957), the State Planning Commission was created in Peking. It was headed by the ill-fated Kao Kang, destined to be purged in 1955, and included some of the most eminent political figures in the regime, men such as Ch’en Yun, Lin Piao, Teng Hsiao-p’ing, and Li Fu-ch’un. Chang was appointed as one of the 15 original members of the Commission and remained with the organization until his death six years later. As a consequence of this transfer, he was removed from his posts in central China. In the fall of 1954, when the central government was undergoing a major reorganization, Chang was elevated to a vice-chairmanship on the Planning Commission, serving now under Chairman Li Fu-ch’un.

In December 1954 he was named as a CCP representative to the Second National Committee of the quasi-legislative CPPCC, another post he held until his death. He was mentioned in the national press rather regularly in 1955; in February of that year he gave a major report on the First Five-Year Plan before a meeting of the New Democratic Youth League, and in April 1955 he presented an official report to the State Council on the Second National Provincial and Municipal Planning Conference. He reached the apex of his career in September 1956 when he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee at the Eighth National Party Congress. From that time, however, he may have been in poor health, for his activities received little attention in the press. He died of cancer at age 47 in Peking on January 8, 1959. His death was prominently featured in the press and his funeral committee, headed by State Planning Commission Chairman Li Fu-ch’un, included most of the top economic officials in the regime. The final tribute in his obituary stated that he had made major contributions to the establishment and development of economic planning in China.

Achievements

• Though only a bare outline is available of Chang’s post-imprisonment career, it is sufficient to establish the fact that he was one of the more important Communists in the Hopeh-Shantung-Honan area during and after the Sino-Japanese War. His official positions listed in the obituary for this period (but without dates) are as follows: Secretary of the Hopeh-Shantung-Honan Special Party Committee, Secretary of the Hopeh-Honan District Party Committee; Secretary of the T’ai-nan (presumably “south of the T’ai-hang Mountains”) District Party Committee; Secretary of the Hopeh-Shantung-Honan District Party Committee; Secretary of the West Honan District Party Committee and concurrently political commissar for the West Honan Military District.