Background
Chao An-po was born in January 1915 in Chekiang.
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Chao An-po
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He has risen within the Chinese hierarchy to be one of the top specialists on Japanese affairs and is so regarded by influential and knowledgeable Japanese. Chao is fluent in Japanese, probably because he lived in Japan at least long enough to attend a Japanese high school. Japanese sources state that Chao was “reportedly” a staff member of the Social Affairs Department of the CCP Central Committee (long the euphemism for Chinese Communist intelligence) and was then both the deputy head of a section of the “foreign affairs” bureau of the Northeast People’s Government and head of a “Northeast committee to control overseas Japanese.” None of these items are dated, but the terminology suggests that they refer to the latter stages of the Sino-Japanese War and the postwar period in Manchuria, where tens of thousands of Japanese were prisoners of the victorious allies, including the Chinese.
Career
By 1955 Chao was involved in another field that is of great sensitivity to Japan, namely, the fishing industry. Here again it was necessary to use an ostensibly unofficial organization, and thus Chao became an adviser to the China Fishery Association, another position he continues to retain. He took part in negotiations in 1955 with Japanese fishery experts leading to the signing on April 15, 1955, of an agreement on fishing in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, and a year later he participated in discussions that led (on May 8, 1956) to the signing of an extension of this agreement for another year. Also, in November—December 1956, he visited Japan as a member of a delegation led by the chairman of the China Fishery Association.
Chao’s increasingly important role in foreign affairs was given official recognition in July 1955 when he was elected to the Standing Committee of the Board of Directors of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, the most important of the technically unofficial instruments of foreign policy in Communist China. He was re-elected to this position as late as December 1964 at the fourth congress of the Institute. In August 1955 Chao was again in Japan, on this occasion for the first World Conference Against Nuclear Weapons as a member of a delegation led by Liu Ning-i, a top Party international liaison official and a Central Committee member since 1956. These conferences became annual events and Chao attended three more of them after the first one in 1955. He was a deputy leader to the sixth conference in August 1960, secretary-general to the eighth conference in August 1962, and deputy leader to the ninth conference in August 1963.
Chao made his eighth trip to Japan in February 1964 when he led a delegation of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee of China for a tour of Japan at the invitation of a counterpart organization in Japan. During this visit he met with members of the Central Committee of the Japan Communist Party. Five months later, in July 1964, Chao was denied entry into Japan to attend the 10th World Conference Against Nuclear Weapons, reportedly, he was officially declared by the Japanese to be an “undesirable person” (along with Wang Chao-hua, a youth leader also en route to Japan). The Chinese issued a series of bitter denunciations of this “extremely unfriendly act,” which would “have an adverse effect” on Sino-Japanese relations. Chao was further described as a man who had “done much in the past ten years ... to strengthen the . . . relations” between China and Japan. In retrospect, Chao’s troubles with the Japanese authorities appear to stem from two earlier sessions of the annual “Conference Against Nuclear Weapons.” By the early 1960’s these meetings had become forums for the airing of Sino-Soviet disputes, with complex ramifications within Japanese Communist, left-wing, and peace movements. Thus, at the close of the August 1962 conference, Chao issued a blistering denunciation of “some officials” of the Japanese Socialist Party and the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (SOHYO) who, he charged, had “slandered” the Chinese delegation for the “alleged” attempt by the Chinese to impose its views on other delegations. Exactly a year later (August 1963), at the next conference, Chao bitterly protested the signing by the Americans, Russians, and British of the nuclear test ban treaty on the eve of the opening of the conference in Japan, and throughout the stormy conference Chao issued a number of volatile statements.
Chao has on occasion served as a Japanese interpreter for important Chinese leaders, including Mao Tse-tung. He is regarded by well-placed Japanese as second only to Liao Ch’eng-chih in dealing with Japanese affairs.
Politics
Chao’s entry onto the national scene in contemporary Chinese Communist politics occurred in early 1953 when he was identified as an adviser to the Red Cross Society of China, a position he continues to hold. The apparent unimportance of this title is deceptive, one of the major issues in Sino-Japanese affairs in the early and mid-1950’s was the return of the above-mentioned thousands of Japanese left on the China mainland after the war (many, but not all of whom, were military men). Lacking diplomatic relations, both sides resorted to various semi-official devices to negotiate for the release of these men. The Red Cross Society served as a useful instrument, and thus Chao has been intimately connected with the society for many years. It was in this capacity that he was twice a member of Red Cross delegations to Japan led by Red Cross President Li Te- ch’iian in October-November 1954 and December 1957-January 1958. And in June 1956 in Peking, he was one of the Chinese signatories to a joint communiqué signed with quasi-official Japanese repatriation specialists on the release of Japanese “war criminals.”
Personality
From the late 1950’s, Chao began to receive increasing attention in the national press. In particular, he has very often been on hand to entertain and negotiate with the many Japanese visitors to the mainland and frequently was a witness (or signatory) to a joint communiqué signed with one Japanese group or another. To cite a random but typical example, Chao was one of the Chinese signers to a joint statement dealing with peace and “American imperialism” signed in Peking on October 12, 1962, with a visiting Japan-China Friendship Association delegation. In the late 1950’s and 1960’s he received (and continues to hold) several new appointments. He was named in July 1958 to the National Committee of the China Peace Committee; by January 1961 he was a deputy secretary-general of the Chinese People’s Relief Administration.
At a far more important level he was identified in September 1963 as a “leading functionary” of a department under the Party Central Committee. Peking has never openly identified a Party organ dealing with foreign affairs, but some such “international liaison department” obviously exists. It is probable that such a department has sections dealing with different areas of the world, almost certainly Chao has responsibilities regarding Japan within some such Party organization. Still another post that Chao holds is that of secretary-general of the Japan-China Friendship Association, created in October 1963 under the chairmanship of Liao Ch’eng-chih, generally regarded as Peking’s leading specialist on Japanese affairs.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party