Background
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Chung Ch’i-kuang
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Chung Ch’i-kuang is a veteran political officer whose origins are obscure. He was born in 1909 in Mei-hsien (Ka-ying). Mei-hsien is located about 80 miles northwest of Swatow in Kwangtung Province, not far from areas in southwest Fukien where such prominent Communist leaders as Chang Ting-ch’eng, Teng Tzu-hui, and T’an Chen-lin were active in establishing Communist bases.
Education
By no later than the fall of 1940, Chung was a political officer in Ch’en I’s New Fourth Army forces operating around the city of Yen- ch’eng near the coast in central Kiangsu.
Career
In November 1940, the Communists established the North Kiangsu Provisional Administrative Committee, an executive organ of government that has been described as the “highest civilian agency in the evolving guerrilla base” that “marked the first step in bringing the civilian population of north Kiangsu into the Communist war effort.” Ch’en I and Chung were both members of this important Committee which was headed by Kuan Wen-wei, a Party leader from south Kiangsu who is currently a vice-governor of the province. In this same month Chung was identified as deputy director of the North Kiangsu Command’s Political Department, and by the following month (December 1940) he was the director. After the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941 (see under Yeh T’ing), Chung was assigned to direct the Political Department in Su Yu’s First Division. (For details on the work of this division and its area of control, see under Su Yu.)
The importance of Chung’s Political Department can be judged in part from the names of the eight sections under his jurisdiction: organization, propaganda and education, “people’s” movements, “enemy work” (i.e., intelligence), youth work, battleline services, military law, and general affairs. Chung’s role in the army can also be judged from the number of directives he co-signed with such figures as Ch’en I and Su Yu, such as a February 1941 appeal to the troops under the command of KMT General Han Te-ch’in (see under Lo Ping-hui) urging them to come over to the Communist side in the fight against the Japanese. Chung was also connected with two of the more important publications put out by the Communists in Kiangsu; he is known to have contributed to the magazine Chiang-Huai (Yangtze-Huai Rivers) in late 1940 and to have been involved in the editing of K’ang-ti chou-pao (Resistance weekly), which began in January 1941.
Chung received political recognition for his past work at the Eighth Party Congress in September 1956 when he was elected as an alternate member of the Party Central Committee. He remained in Nanking until mid-1961 when he was transferred to Peking (presumably relinquishing his posts in Nanking). His public appearances in the capital have been confined almost exclusively to receptions and social functions held to celebrate important military holidays (such as Red Army day on August 1) or to fete visiting military delegations from abroad. Despite the lack of information on a specific assignment, it is probable that Chung holds some political post in the PLA hierarchy.
Politics
Chung remained with the First Division throughout the Sino-Japanese War and in the postwar period he continued with elements of the New Fourth Army in their fight against the Nationalists. The New Fourth Army units eventually evolved into the Third Field Army, a designation adopted in early 1949 as this army was in the process of conquering Nationalist-held areas in east China and preparing for the takeover of the important cities of Nanking and Shanghai. In view of Chung’s rather extensive experience with the Communists, it is somewhat surprising that he was not given a political position of importance in east China following the conquest of the mainland in 1949-50. In the early fifties he was reportedly a commander in the Third Field Army, but nothing more specific was known about his activities until February 1954 when he was identified among a group of Third Field Army commanders and commandants of military schools in Nanking, it is probable that Chung belonged to the latter category because by 1956 he was deputy commandant and deputy political commissar of the PLA Military Academy in Nanking, and by 1957 he was the political commissar. The academy is China’s equivalent to a Western command and staff college.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party