Background
Nothing is known about his background.
Nothing is known about his background.
He was identified at that time merely as being an official in the All-China Athletic Federation (alternately known as the Chinese Olympic Committee and officially renamed the All-China Sports Federation in July 1964).
Within the next decade Chang was to make seven more trips abroad, each involving athletics. In June 1955 he went to attend the 50th session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Paris, and in January 1956 he was in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, for the 51st IOC meeting; while there, he was an official “observer” of the Seventh Winter Olympic Games. In June of 1956 Chang was again in Europe, this time in Lisbon for the 30th Congress of the International Federation of Football Associations (IFFA), and when the Federation would not expel the Chinese Nationalist delegation, he walked out of the meeting. (Chang is one of the very few Chinese Communists to have visited Portugal.) Two years later (June 1958), Chang led a group to another IFFA Congress (the 31st) in Stockholm and once more walked out when the Taiwan issue arose. Two days later, on June 7, 1958, he formally announced that Peking had withdrawn from the IFFA. Two months later, in August 1958, Chang was given the task of making the official announcement that the PRC had withdrawn from the International Olympic Committee. As might be expected, his withdrawal statement was accompanied by a stinging denunciation of the “two Chinas” plot, which he claimed had caused the Chinese action.
In the meantime, Chang received a number of official and semi-official positions with an expected concentration in the field of physical education. By November 1955 he was deputy chief of the International Liaison Department of the State Council’s Physical Culture and Sports Commission, a body established in November 1952. By May 1958 Chang was promoted to the directorship of the Liaison Department and still retains this post. In January 1956, while Chang was in Italy (see above), he was elected to the preparatory committee for participation in the 16th Olympic Games held later that year in Melbourne, Australia. The preparation was in vain, however, for at the last minute Peking re-fused to take part owing to Taiwan’s participation. He also had taken an active part in the third congress of the All-China Athletic Federation in October 1956. He made a report before the gathering on a revision in the Federation’s regulations, and was then elected a Standing Committee member as well as secretary-general of the organization, positions to which fie was re-elected at the fourth congress in January- February 1964. Subsequent to this he has been identified as a leading official in Federation affiliate organizations, such as the China Track and Field Federation, of which he was men-tioned as a vice-chairman in February 1957. Between 1958 and 1963 he was also named to four newly established friendship associations. He became a Council member of the Sino-Iraq Friendship Association (FA) in September 1958; the secretary-general of the China-Hungary FA in the same month; a Standing Committee member of the China-Latin America FA in March 1960; and, Council member of the China-Japan FA in October 1963.
In addition to the five trips abroad already mentioned, Chang made three more between 1961 and 1964. In June-July 1961 he led a soccer team to Albania and the U.S.S.R.; he was a deputy leader of a sports delegation to Indonesia in November-December 1962; and in August 1964 he was a member of a delegation to Indonesia to attend a conference of the “Games of the New Emerging Forces” (GANEFO) Federation. The Chinese had taken a very active part in GANEFO (see under Jung Kao-t’ang). When the Chinese set up a preparatory committee in June 1963 to participate in the first games (held later that year in Indonesia), Chang was named as the secretary-general. And in August 1964, immediately prior to his departure for the above-mentioned trip to Indonesia, he was named secretary-general of the permanent National Committee of the PRC for the GANEFO.
Although Chang does not appear to be an official of particular political significance, he does stand as a symbol of the emphasis that the PRC has placed on the development of sports in China. The international political benefits derived from this emphasis are already clear, if only because of the prestige gained from the rather outstanding Chinese record in sports competition, particularly with other Asian nations. The political aspects become more overt when a Chinese official like Chang, on August 10, 1964 signs a joint statement with an exiled South African denouncing the International Olympic Committee for racial discrimination.