Background
Nothing is known about his education.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Chiang I-chen
Edit Profile
Chiang I-chen was associated with the Chinese Communists by the early 1930’s when he was serving in the Red Army medical school in the Kiangsi Soviet. He subsequently made the Long March to Shensi (1934-35) and was then assigned to the Shansi-Chahdr-Hopeh (Chin-Ch’a-Chi) Border Region in 1938 where he worked under Norman Bethune, a Canadian surgeon and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.
Education
Actually nothing is exactly known about his education.
Career
Chiang was mentioned in 1951 in Fukien where he was to remain for nearly a decade. However, he had no connections at that time with the field of medicine. Instead, his career in the 1950’s was strongly oriented toward agricultural affairs.
In April 1951 he was appointed as a vice-chairman of the provincial Land Reform Committee under chairman Chang Ting-ch’eng, who was also the provincial governor and a veteran Party leader. In December of that year Chiang was elected to the provincial People’s Government Council and in the second half of 1952 became both director of the Forestry Department and member of the Labor Employment Committee. He probably held all these government posts until February 1955 when the province was partially reorganized. Chiang also held three quasi-governmental posts in the early and mid-1950’s
when he served as a vice-chairman of the Fukien Peasants Association (by 1952), as chief of a “production and drought-prevention office” (a position to which he was named in March 1952) , and as president of the Fukien Agricultural Institute (from January 1955 to April 1957). Several of these positions, it should be noted, illustrate a deep involvement in agricultural affairs which was to culminate in the 1960’s when Chiang served in two national ministries dealing with agricultural affairs.
In Party activities Chiang began quite modestly in 1952 as a member of a Committee for the Exchange of Commodities under the Fukien Provincial Party Committee. By April 1954 he was a member of the Standing Committee in the Party structure in Fukien and was then a deputy secretary from 1955 to 1956, he was made a secretary under first secretary Yeh Fei by the early fall of 1956. He served in still another post under the Fukien Party structure when he became chairman of the Planning Committee, a post he held by January 1956. As a Fukien Party Secretary, Chiang moved in rather exclusive company when, in September 1956, he spoke before the historic Eighth Party Congress in Peking on the subject of improving the “old revolutionary bases,” the phrase the Communists use to describe their former guerrilla and “soviet” areas dating back to the late 1920’s.
As already noted, Fukien underwent a government reorganization in February 1955. At that time, Chiang was elected as a vice-governor, serving under Governor Yeh Fei (elected at the same time), who was also Chiang’s superior in the provincial Party hierarchy. However, for unexplained reasons Chiang was not listed in this post in the official annual handbooks for 1956 through 1958. Yet during this same period he was mentioned in the press rather frequently and in April 1956 succeeded Tseng Ching-ping, a former alternate Central Committee member, as Chairman of the First Fukien CPPCC, a post Chiang held until February 1959 when he was replaced by Yeh Fei.
In January 1959 Chiang was deputy leader of a Fukien “10,000-man inspection corps to tidy up” the communes, as the Communists described it. In the following month he replaced Yeh Fei as Fukien governor. He was a Fukien deputy to the Second NPC and at its first session in April 1959 spoke of the “victories in production” as well as the “frontline battle.” The latter term referred to the continuing struggle with the Chinese Nationalists over the off-shore islands of Matsu and Quemoy. Although Chiang had long been a senior official in Fukien, he had not often been associated with the off-shore islands, apparently leaving such matters to Yeh Fei, the provincial Party first secretary.
-
Born
-
Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
-
Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
-
1951
-
1952