Background
Chao Po-p’ing, a native of Shensi, was born in 1909.
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Chao Po-p’ing
Edit ProfileEducation
He was first identified in May 1944 as a member of the Drama Committee of the Yenan Literary and Art Association. This was probably one of the groups of entertainers sponsored by the CCP to Which numbers of Chinese students belonged during the Sino-Japanese War and which brought many young people to the Yenan area to entertain and indoctrinate the soldiers and peasants. Chao was a deputy from Ch’un-yao hsien to the first session of the Third Assembly of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia (Shen-Kan-Ning) Border Region Government that met in April 1946. Ch’un-yao hsien is some 40 miles north of Sian and was located in the southernmost section of the Border Region. At the close of the assembly session he was made deputy director of the Border Region Government’s Education Office.
Career
He apparently remained in the northwest, because when Nationalist forces evacuated the city of Sian in May 1949, Chao was appointed to the Communist-established Sian Military Control Commission. From this date it became apparent that he was important as a Party and government leader in Sian, in Shensi Province, and later in the over-all administration for the northwest region to which Shensi belonged, the Northwest Military and Administrative Committee, inaugurated in January 1950.
As a Party official in the northwest, Chao was a deputy secretary of the Sian Party Committee for about two years from June 1949. He became the ranking secretary of the Sian Committee by June 1951, a position that was redesignated as first secretary in 1954. At the provincial level, he became second secretary of the Shensi Provincial Party Committee by April 1955, and a full secretary in November 1956, serving under First Secretary Chang Te-sheng. At the time Chao became a full secretary in Shensi (1956) he relinquished his Party post on the Sian Municipal Committee to Fang Chung-ju. The other Party post that Chao was known to have held in the early 1950’s was as director of the Propaganda Department of the Northwest Bureau, a position he occupied from early 1953 to 1954.
In addition to these assignments directly under the jurisdiction of the CCP, Chao also held several posts in the civil administrations at the municipal, provincial, and regional level. For the municipal government in Sian, he served as head of the Finance and Economics Committee from 1950 to about 1953. From December 1949 to January 1953 he was a member of the Shensi Provincial People’s Government Council. However, his major activities in civil government centered around the Northwest Military and Administrative Committee (NWMAC). He was named to head the NWMAC’s Labor Department in March 1950 and at the same time was appointed as a member of its Finance and Economics Committee. Later, in November 1950, he was named to membership on the NWMAC’s Land Reform Committee. Chao held the Labor Department post until March 1953 and the other two until mid-1954. When the NWMÁC was reorganized in January 1953 and renamed as the Northwest Administrative Committee, he was named to membership and continued to hold it until the NWAC was abolished in 1954.
In that year Chao received his first assignment at the national level when he was elected as a deputy from Sian to the First NPC (1954— 1959). He was elected to the Second NPC (1959-1964) from Shensi, which in the interim had absorbed the Sian constituency. Chao was once more elected to represent Shensi at the Third NPC, which held its initial session in December 1964-January 1965. In the meantime, Chao rose to higher levels within the Shensi Provincial Government. In December 1954 he was elected as a vice-governor, nominally subordinate to a former KMT General, Chao Shou-shan. Chao Po-p’ing was probably actually running the provincial government from that time onward; in fact he served for most of the period between late 1956 to mid-1959 as the acting governor. Finally, in July 1959, after Chao Shou-shan was transferred to Peking, Chao Po-p’ing was elected to succeed him as governor.
Chao’s labors in the northwest for the Party and government were rewarded in May 1958 at the second session of the Eighth Party Congress. At this session, 25 men were added as alternate members of the Party Central Committee, Chao among them.
Like many of his prominent Party colleagues, Chao has given extracurricular time to the affairs of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (SSFA) and the Communist-sponsored peace movement. He was identified as a vice-president of the SSFA’s Sian branch in March 1953 and as president of the branch in December. In December 1950 he was identified as chairman of the Sian Branch of the China Peace Committee, a position he retained as late as September 1957. In July 1958 the China Peace Committee was reorganized, with Chao named to the organization’s national committee.
After at least two decades in the northwest, Chao was transferred in January 1963 to Peking to become a deputy secretary-general of the NPC Standing Committee, serving under Politburo member P’eng Chen, the secretary-general. At the close of the first session of the Third NPC (January 1965), Liu Ning-i, a Central Committee member and specialist in international liaison work, replaced P’eng Chen as Chao’s superior. Because of Chao’s transfer to Peking in 1963, his post as Shensi governor was assumed by Li Ch’i-ming, first as the acting governor and then in December 1963 as the newly elected governor.
Politics
Because Sian is an important rail and commercial center in China’s northwest, many important persons visit the city, foreigners as well as Chinese. Chao, as a high Party official in the area, attended a large number of social functions. In the period after 1956 he was especially active in welcoming distinguished foreign visitors to Sian; in 1957 he was deeply involved in the meetings and rallies staged for the “rectification” campaign.
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Born
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China -
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party