Chou Chien-jen was born in Shao-hsing, Chekiang. Shao-hsing is the home of his two brothers and also of such prominent Chinese intellectuals as Ch’ien San-ch’iang and Fan Wen- lan. Chou came from a wealthy landlordscholar family, which lost its money in 1894. Despite the family misfortunes, the three Chou brothers received university training, Chou Chien-jen as a biologist.
In contrast to his more famous brothers, Chou lived in relative obscurity until he went to Communist-controlled areas in the late 1940’s on the eve of the Communist takeover of the China mainland. He spent most of these years as a biology professor and researcher in various universities, principally in Shanghai where he came into contact with the left-wing circles that included his brother Lu Hsun and the writer Mao Tun (Shen Yen-ping). During his years in Shanghai he also served as an editor for the Commercial Press, China’s largest publishing house. Chou remained in Shanghai throughout the Japanese occupation (1937-1945) and then spent the year 1947-48 in Hong Kong. In 1948 he went to Communist-controlled north China where he was assigned to be a vicechairman of the Textbook Editing Committee under the North China People’s Government’s Education Department.
Chou accompanied the North China People’s Government when it moved to Peking shortly after the city fell to the Communists in January 1949. In the summer of that year the Communists initiated the first major steps toward establishing the new national government. In June, under the chairmanship of Mao Tse-tung, a Preparatory Committee for the CPPCC was established. Chou served as a member of this committee and was also named to a small sub-committee given the task of drafting the “Organic Law” for the new government, the law that was to serve as the constitution of the PRC until a formal constitution was adopted in 1954. When the first session of the CPPCC was convened in September 1949, he attended as a representative of the China Association for Promoting Democracy. It is one of the non-Communist political parties whose existence is intended to lend credence to the claims that the PRC is governed by a “united front” of political groups. Five years later (December 1954), Chou was named to membership on the Second National Committee of the CPPCC as well as on its Standing Committee; he served in a similar capacity under the Third CPPCC (1959-1964). When the Fourth CPPCC was formed at the end of 1964, Chou was again named as a representative of the China Association for Promoting Democracy, but he was not reappointed to the Standing Committee, probably because he was named at this same time to the Standing Committee of the more important NPC.
As a trained biologist, the PRC has called upon Chou to lend his talents to the major efforts of the regime to promote the development of science. In June 1949 he was appointed to a preparatory committee for a large conference of scientists held the following month in Peking, From these efforts two national scientific organizations were established in August 1950—the All-China Federation of Scientific Societies and the All-China Association for the Dissemination of Scientific and Technical Knowledge (ACADSTK). Chou was named to Standing Committee membership on the latter, retaining this post until September 1958 when the two societies were merged (by which time he had been transferred to Chekiang). Within the ACADSTK, he also headed the Propaganda Department from 1950 to 1958. In addition to his association with this ostensibly non-governmental society, Chou has also been affiliated with both national and provincial scientific bodies. At the national level he was a member of the State Council’s Scientific Planning Commission from May 1957 to November 1958, and within Chekiang he has headed both the Chekiang Government’s Scientific and Technical Work Committee and the provincial branch of the Academy of Sciences since 1958.
Although Chou was working in Peking at the time, he was appointed a vice-governor of his native Chekiang in February 1951. He relinquished the post in the fall of 1954 but later returned to become the governor (see below). In 1952 he made his only known trip abroad when, as a biologist, he was a member of the “mission for the investigation of American imperialists’ crimes of bacteriological warfare” in North Korea. Led by Public Health Minister Li Te-ch'iian, the mission visited Korea for three weeks in March-April 1952 when the Korean War was still in progress. The large delegation’s visit was a major component of one of the most extensive propaganda campaigns ever staged by the PRC.
Chou was elected a deputy from Chekiang to the First NPC (1954-1959), the Second NPC (1959-1964), and the Third NPC that held its first session in December 1964-January 1965. For the First and Second NPC’s he also served as a member of the governing Standing Committee, and then in January 1965 he was promoted to a vice-chairmanship of the Standing Committee. He has been a rather active NPC member, serving several times on the presidiums (steering committees) established to manage the affairs of the annual sessions. From October 1954 to February 1958 he was a vice-minister of the State Council’s Ministry of Higher Education where he worked under Minister Yang Hsiu-feng,he relinquished this position just one month after becoming the Chekiang governor.
Chou’s rather unusual position within the PRC was illustrated during the “rectification” campaign of 1957-58. In the spring of 1957 he criticized certain practices' of the CCP that he claimed had created a “gulf” and a “wall between Party members and non-Communists. Many other non-Party intellectuals who spoke out in a similar vein were pilloried by the Party press throughout much of 1957-58. It is reasonable to assume that the regime has allowed Chou a greater latitude mainly because he is the brother of Lu Hsun whom the CCP has persistently attempted to picture as an ardent supporter of CCP policies prior to his death.
In late 1957, Chekiang Governor Sha Wen-han, a Party member, was charged with “antiParty activities" and purged as the provincial governor. Shortly after, in January 1958, Chou was made the new governor, a position he still holds. It is clear, however, that political authority in Chekiang does not rest in Chou’s hands. Major political decisions in Chekiang undoubtedly pass through the provincial CCP Committee headed by alternate Central Committee member Chiang Hua. Moreover, Chou spends more time than most governors in the national capital where, for example, he continues to devote some time to the China Association for Promoting Democracy or the China-Nepal Friendship Association that he has headed since its formation in September 1956. Even when in Chekiang he appears to spend most of his time in greeting visiting dignitaries, many of whom are sent to the province to visit the scenic capital at Hangchow.
From the earliest days of the PRC, Chou has been a prominent figure in two of the non Communist parties. In addition to the above- mentioned China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD), he has been associated with the China Democratic League (CDL). Both parties were formed in the forties (before the CCP came to power) and the membership of both is drawn largely from cultural and educational circles; the principal task of each is officially described as “uniting and remoulding intellectuals.” In the CDL, Chou has been a Central Committee member since December 1949 and a Standing Committee member since December 1958. Also, from 1949 (presumably to date) he has been deputy director of CDL’s Culture and Education Department. Within the CAPD, he had been a Standing Committee member since April 1950 and a vice-chairman since mid-1955. In addition, he has headed the CAPD’s Culture and Education Department since April 1950.
Like his two brothers, Chou has been a rather prolific writer. In 1947 he translated Darwin’s The Origin of Species (although it was not published until 1955), and in the following year he published a booklet on eugenics and racial discrimination and translated a work by Marx and Engels. Since the PRC came into existence he has also written on scientific subjects. In September 1949, for the inaugural issue of the important Party journal Hsueh-hsi (Study), he wrote an article on the contributions made to biology by T. D. Lysenko, the famous and controversial Soviet scientist who was supported in his theories by Stalin.
