Background
He was born about 1901 (though some sources use 1896) in the small town of Huang-an, located about 100 miles northeast of Wuhan in Hupeh province.
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Cheng Wei-san
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Several important Communists also came from Huang-an, among them Tung Pi-wu and Li Hsien-nien, and during the late 1920’s Huang-an hsien witnessed considerable peasant unrest, much of it fomented by the CCP. Later, in the early thirties, Huang-an became part of the Oyiiwan (Hupeh, Honan, and Anhwei) Soviet, the second in importance to the “central” soviet in Kiangsi, which was established in 1931.
Career
After receiving the equivalent of a university education at about the time of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, Cheng joined the CCP. He may have become a Communist shortly after the Party was founded in 1921, for by 1923 he was already working among the peasantry in Hsin-chi hsien (now Hsin-hsien), southeast Honari, inciting them against the local landlords and the high taxes. It is not clear if Hsin-chi hsien fell within the territory that was later a part of the Oyiiwan Soviet, if not, it was close by. In any case, during the first 10 years of his career as a Communist, Cheng was active in and around the Oyiiwan area.
By 1926 Cheng was working as a Party functionary in Wuhan, the Hupeh capital. The importance of Wuhan at this time was rapidly increasing, especially when major elements of the Nationalist government were transferred there during the winter of 1926-27 in the wake of the Northern Expedition. And it became even more important from the Communist viewpoint when the CCP was vigorously suppressed in Shanghai in the spring of 1927, an action that caused the Party to transfer many of its activities to Wuhan. Cheng was presumably in or near Wuhan on August 1, 1927, when the Communists mutinied at Nanchang, the Kiangsi capital. The uprising signaled a complete break in the uneasy relations between the Communists and the KMT, and it forced the CCP to go underground. In the succeeding months many CCP activists in central China were dispatched to the countryside to continue (or start anew) the work of organizing the peasants. In 1927, following the uprising at Nanchang, Cheng was serving as the secretary of the CCP Committee in his native Huang-an. Together with Wang Shu- sheng and others, he led a series of peasant uprisings in and around Huang-an and Ma-ch’eng hsien.
Late in 1932 Chang Kuo-t’ao and Hsu Hsiang- ch’ien, the senior military figure in Oyiiwan, were forced by Nationalist military strength to evacuate the area. Leading their military units, known as the Fourth Front Army, they sought refuge in west Szechwan. However, some military units were left behind in Oyiiwan under the command of Hsu Hai-tung’s 25th Red Army. For the next two years Cheng remained in the Oyiiwan area where he carried on Party work clandestinely. When the Second All-China Congress of Soviets was convened under the chairmanship of Mao Tse-tung in Juichin, Kiangsi, in January-February 1934, Cheng was elected a member of the governing Central Executive Committee (CEC). It is quite possible, however, that this position was more nominal than real, for in view of the Nationalists’ blockade of the “central soviet” in Kiangsi it is unlikely that Cheng actually attended the Congress. Nonetheless, he was in touch with the top leadership in Juichin, and in September 1934 (immediately prior to beginning of the Long March by Mao and his men), Cheng received an important directive from the “Party Center.” Cheng was then serving as secretary of the CCP Hupeh District Committee. The directive was delivered from Kiangsi by Ch’eng Tzu-hua, and upon its receipt Cheng Wei-san sent an emissary to Hai-tung’s 25th Red Army, which was then in western Anhwei Province. The directive ordered Hsu to move his army into eastern Hupeh before moving north from Oyiiwan to Shensi. Hsu carried out the order, and then he, Ch’eng Tzu-hua, and Cheng Wei-san led the 25th Army to Shensi, arriving there a year ahead of Mao Tse-tung, who arrived in Shensi in the fall of 1935.
Upon arriving in Shensi, Hsu Hai-tung and his political officers began to organize and arm the peasants in the southern part of the province. Early in 1935 Cheng became secretary of the Party’s South Shensi Special Committee. Moreover, a small soviet was established. Journalist Edgar Snow, who visited Communist territories in 1936, described this as a “provisional Soviet Government” with Cheng, a “member of the Cheka of Shensi province, as chairman.’ By 1936 Cheng had left south Shensi for the northern part of the province where the main Communist leaders and military units were stationed. From that time until midway through the Sino-Japanese War, nothing is recorded of his activities, but it appears that he was assigned to the New Fourth Army, which operated in the lower reaches of the Yangtze.
Politics
In any case, early in 1941, at the time of the disastrous defeat of New Fourth Army units by the Nationalists (see under Yeh T’ing), Cheng was political commissar of Chang Yun-i’s Second Division of the New Fourth Army.5 He was soon succeeded by Lo Ping-hui and was transferred to the old Oyiiwan area where, in collaboration with Li Hsien-nien, he played a key role in establishing the new Fourth Army’s Fifth Division. Li commanded the Division, and by the latter part of the war (and probably earlier), Cheng was the political commissar. By 1944 he was head of the Communists’ Honan-Hupeh Border Region Assembly, in 1945 he was deputy secretary and then secretary of the Party s Central Plains Bureau, serving concurrently as head of the Bureau’s Organization Department and deputy political commissar of the Central Plains Military Region. Thus by the closing stages of the war Cheng was among the Party’s leading figures in central China. He gained additional stature in 1945 when, at the Party’s Seventh Congress held in Yenan from April to June, he was one of only 44 persons elected a full member of the Party Central Committee. In view of his assignments in central China, Cheng was probably elected in absentia.
Membership
In September 1949 he did, however, attend the inaugural session of the CPPCC (as a representative of the CCP), the organization that brought the national government into existence (October 1). During the term of the Second CPPCC (1954-1959), he served as a member of the National Committee, on this occasion representing the “peasants.” He has also been a member of the Third and Fourth National Committees (again representing the CCP), which held their initial sessions in April 1959 and December 1964 - January 1965, respectively. Since the formation of the Second CPPCC in 1954, Cheng has also been a member of the governing Standing Committee, but he seems to have done little except lend his name to the list of delegates. Far more important and virtual proof that his “illness” is physical and not political Cheng was present in Peking in September 1956 for the Party’s Eighth National Congress. He served on the Congress Presidium (steering committee) and was one of the presiding executive chairmen for one of the daily sessions. At the end of the meetings he was re-elected to full membership on the Party Central Committee. He is not known to have made a public appearance since then, presumably because of continuing ill health.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1919
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1927