Background
A native of Kiangsi, Ch’en’s birth year is probably about 1905, although it has also been reported as 1900.
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Chen Cheng-jen
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He had joined the CCP by 1928 when he was identified as a deputy secre¬tary of the local Party committee in the Hunan- Kiangsi Border Area Base, the headquarters of Mao Tse-tung and his followers who fled with him to Chingkangshan in the fall of 1927.
Career
Mao’s forces were joined by those under Chu Te in the following spring, forming the nucleus of the Chinese Communist Army. Mao Tse-tung, in his Selected Works, describes the establishment of a Party Committee for the Hunan-Kiangsi base. The committee was formed in the spring of 1928 at a congress of Party groups and was reorganized in October of that year, at which time a 19-member Special Committee was elected, num-bering Mao, Chu Te, T’an Chen-lin, and Ch’en Cheng-jen among its members. Five of the 19 were members of the Standing Committee, which was headed by T’an Chen-lin with Ch’en as his deputy. Mao’s writings indicate that Ch’en is of bourgeois origins, for T’an is spoken of as a representative of the workers, but Ch’en is called a representative of the “intellectuals.”
The next reports of Ch’en’s activities place him in Kiangsi in 1930 by which time, to judge from other positions he held, he must have been a leading member of the Kiangsi Provincial Party Committee. According to an interview of American journalist Edgar Snow with Ch’in Pang-hsien, a leader of the “28 Bolshevik” clique, Ch’en headed the first Soviet government established in Kiangsi in 1930 and was later succeeded by Tseng Shan. This report requires some explanation, and because of the obscurity surrounding political events in Kiangsi at this time, Ch’en’s position is a matter of conjecture. There is good evidence that at least by December 1930 the chairman of the Kiangsi Provincial Soviet was Tseng Shan. However, the soviet was created in October 1930 when the Red Army commanded by Chu Te captured Chi-an (Kian) on the Kan River (see under Tseng Shan), and hence it is possible that Ch’en held the chairmanship briefly when the government was first organized. On the other hand it is possible that Ch’in’s report refers to yet another Communist government in the hinterlands, a short-lived Southwest Kiangsi Soviet (about which very little is known), which came into being following a local Party conference held in south Kiangsi early in February 1930 to plan for the establishment of soviets in other Communist-held areas in China. How long this organization in southwest Kiangsi existed is not known, but some of its functions may have been taken over by the one at Chi-an later in the year. In May of 1932 the Communists held the first congress of the reestablished Kiangsi Provincial Soviet in central Kiangsi, and at that time Tseng Shan was named soviet chairman and Ch’en became a vice-chairman. Then at the end of December 1933 a second congress of the Kiangsi Soviet was held; again the principal officers changed. An unknown Communist from Kiangsi named Liu Ch’i-yao became soviet chairman, Tseng became a vice-chairman, and Ch’en was dropped from all positions.
Over a decade passed before the threads of Ch’en’s career were again picked up. It seems likely that he made the Long March, for by at least early 1942 he was in Yenan. No details of his activities are available, but it is known that he was associated socially with Party veterans Lin Po-ch’ii and Hsiao Ching-kuang. Lin was at that time head of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region Government and Hsiao was head of the Rear Office of the Eighth Route Army.
It is probable (but undocumented) that Ch’en was in the forces led by Liu Po-ch’eng in the civil war with the Nationalists in the late 1940’s. In any event, he was with Liu’s units when they captured Nanchang in Ch’en’s native Kiangsi in late May 1949. When the Communists captured major cities during their conquest of the main-land, the first administrative act was always the establishment of a military control commission to govern the city. Thus, in early June 1949, Ch’en became the chairman of the newly established Nanchang Military Control Commission, a post he held until his transfer in late 1952 (see below). Subordinate to him in this post were Vice-Chairmen Ch’en Ch’i-han and Shao Shih-p’ing. From June 1949 Ch’en Cheng-jen was also political commissar of the Kiangsi Military District, which was commanded by Ch’en Ch’i-han, and at approximately this same period Ch’en Cheng-jen also became the ranking secretary of the Kiangsi CCP Committee. These two posts alone probably made him the most powerful leader in Kiangsi from 1949 to 1952; the only others who could have rivaled him were Governor Shao Shih-p’ing and Military District Commander Ch’en Ch’i-han.
Ch’en relinquished all his positions in Kiangsi in late 1952, with the most important one (the secretaryship of the Kiangsi Party Committee) being assumed by Yang Shang-k’uei, a fellow native of Kiangsi whose career also reaches back to the pre-Long March days of the Chinese Communist movement. Ch’en surrendered these posts in order to assume new and more important duties in Peking at the ministerial level. In preparation for the inauguration of the First Five-Year Plan (1953), a number of changes were made in the central government. One of these changes was the establishment of a Ministry of Building (sometimes translated as “construction engineering”), a Ministry that had been carved out of sections of the Ministry of Heavy Industry. Ch’en assumed this portfolio in November 1952. He remained as the minister until another reorganization of the central government in September 1954, at which time he was replaced by Liu Hsiu-feng. Shortly thereafter, Ch’en entered into a new career, that of agricultural planning and production. This began in December 1954 when he was selected for membership on the Second National Committee of the legislative advisory body, the CPPCC, as a representative of the peasants (nung-min). He was also named to the CPPCC Standing Committee, charged with handling the work of the National Committee when the latter is not in full session. A more important assignment was revealed in the summer of 1955 when he was identified as a “responsible member” under the Party Central Committee; in view of the fact that he was specifically identified as a deputy director of the important Rural Work Department by July 1956, it may be inferred that he was associated with this organization from at least 1955. He continues to hold this post under Teng Tzu-hui, one of Peking’s top specialists in agricultural affairs. In November 1955, Ch’en received a closely related position when he was appointed as a deputy director of the State Council’s Seventh Staff Office, redesignated the Agriculture and Forestry Office in September 1959. He also served in this post under Teng Tzu-hui until November 1962, and thereafter under Politburo member T’an Chen-lin, his immediate superior in the Hunan-Kiangsi Party Committee over 30 years earlier. The Agriculture and Forestry Office, in which he continues to serve, is charged with the task of coordinating the activities of the several State Council commissions, ministries, and bureaus engaged in agricultural work.
Politics
Already deeply involved with important posts in the agricultural sector, Ch’en received another ministerial portfolio in August 1959 when he was appointed to head the new Ministry of Agricultural Machinery. He continues to lead the Ministry, known since January 1965 as the Eighth Ministry of Machine Building. Not surprisingly, Ch’en has attended many conferences related to agriculture and has written for important journals on agricultural affairs. He gave a major report, for example, at an agricultural cooperation conference held in Lanchow in June- July 1958, and he spoke on the problems of rural villages before a national conference of “young activists in building socialism” in November 1959. At the official government level, in his capacity as Minister of Agricultural Machinery, he gave a two-part report before consecutive meetings of the NPC Standing Committee in February 1963, describing the work of the Ministry in three previous years. His writings include two articles for China’s most important journal, Hung-ch’i (Red flag, issues dated January 16, 1959, and February 16, 1960). The former dealt with the “rectification” movement in the communes, whereas the latter outlined the pace at which China hoped to proceed in the mechanization of agriculture. Ch’en claimed that overall mechanization and electrification would be completed within 10 years (i.e., about 1970).
Membership
Like almost all major provincial officials in the early 1950’s, Ch’en was given assignments in the provincial government in addition to his positions in the military and Party hierarchies. Thus, in March 1950, he was named to membership on the Kiangsi Provincial People’s Government Council, and in the following September he was appointed as chairman of this government’s Finance and Economics Committee. Still another position that he held during the takeover period in Nanchang was that of president of the August First Revolutionary College, a school named for the founding date of the Red Army in 1927. In 1950 this college was amalgamated with others to form Nanchang University, with Ch’en retaining the presidency. Finally, at the multi-provincial level, Ch’en was also a member of the Central-South Military and Administrative Committee (from February 1950), the administrative body that governed Honan, Hupeh, Hunan, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, and Kwangsi. Owing to his transfer in 1952, he was not reappointed to this committee when it was reorganized in early 1953.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party